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> For example, though we were provided with practice problems to prepare for our exams, we were never given solutions. My class consistently begged my professor

> For example, though we were provided with practice problems to prepare for our exams, we were never given solutions. My class consistently begged my professor for these, yet all he could say was that not providing them was departmental policy, and it was out of his control. Wild. EDIT: A response (and +1) to other comments: of course, there are many solutions to different problems on the internet. But IMO, a big advantage of taking a class is to have shared context with a group of people, and thus interactive help (from other students, TAs, etc) working through specific problems together. Being able to know if you were "right" seems to be an important part of this process. So having solutions to the shared problems you're all looking at seems important. (Withholding solutions seems like a method for instructors to reuse questions instead of having to write more every semester.)

pfortuny 5y ago
Departmental policy? Man, what a lame excuse. As if there were not hundreds of books with solutions.
Spivak 5y ago
It's 100% because the problems come from a textbook and some other professors assign them as homework, as opposed to study, rather than writing their own problem sets. If it's from the professor's own problem sets then actually WTF. Textbooks written "for teachers" are the bane of every college student's existence if you dare to actually learn from them yourself. "Only solutions to odd problems -- cool guess I have to look on the internet or never be able to validate whether I got them right."
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  you would think Princeton professors would think that their students wouldn't cheat. Must be those kids who paid to get in.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Cheaters, if they are good/hard to detect, would be more likely to be at Princeton than at a community college. By the time you get to Princeton, you're either good at studying or cheating (or being born to the right parents.)
- pkilgore 5y ago
  My mother was a professor of one of my college STEM subjects, and had used my textbook in my introductory class. My teacher was horrible, and she agreed. So she gave me her teachers answer guide, which not only provided answers to chapter questions but explanations (some including comments about where students might go astray, and why, and why that was wrong). I gave up on lecture, and taught myself the subject by doing problems out of the back of our chapters. Aced the class, changed my prof next semester, changed my major to the subject the semester after that, and graduated with honors. To this day, I am dumbfounded by an approach to STEM education that would withhold a critical tool to iteratively learn via problem solving. It would be like XP without writing tests. You ship your knowledge to the exam, and pray it doesn't break. Seems ridiculous.
  - bernulli 5y ago
    It puts the responsibility on the student, like it will be on the job. You have all the material on this planet at your disposal. Works in other countries: lectures and classes for two years and then one final exam. No quizzes, homeworks, extra credits, etc. Just the classes, lectures, you, your self-motivation, your peers, and all the knowledge of the world in books or the internet to help you learn the topic. > STEM education that would withhold a critical tool How does it do that? Are students locked away? Is there a secret police that storms into dorms and burns all material that students try to learn from? Does the Dean come in to break up illegal learning groups?
kop316 5y ago
To offer a different perspective a bit: For every person who desires to learn for it, there are also folks who want to do as little as possible and see no issue with just copying solutions to turn into homework. This includes groups who hold onto the solutions and will give them out to folks taking the classes. Professors had one of two ways to fix that: change questions every year, or just not allow solutions. That being said, I seem to recall that when I took math classes in college, we had books that had even questions that the solutions were in the back, and the odd questions did not (they were only provided to the teachers). The questions were largely the same, so if a student had an issue with an odd question, they were able to just go to the cooresponding even question and work it out. I felt that was a reasonable compromise.
- electroly 5y ago
  Another option is not to grade homework. I had a bunch of classes in college where the homework was not graded. The problem vanishes entirely.
  - bernulli 5y ago
    Tried that after discussion with students, with the result that no one did homework and the learning outcome completely collapsed.
  - kop316 5y ago
    heh, I actually had this discussion with the professor I an TAing for. The (graduate) class is entirely a class project (it is an ASIC design class), and, if you finish the class project (you can tape out your chip), you get an A. We have a set of homework assignments to help the students learn the tools (kind of a "hello world" script for the project), and I asked if we just tell them we don't look at them and they are entirely for your benefit. The professor said you if you do that, there will be a decent amount of students who will just not do the assignments and later on complain that they have no idea how to use the tools. The solution we came up with is to have a set assignment due date so students feel like they have to do them. Personally, I am surprised that graduate students need that sort of motivation to do the work.
HWR_14 5y ago
It's highly likely that there is a large pool of exam questions, and every year, they are split into "practice" and "actual test". Providing a gold standard answer would lead to memorizing solutions in a way that providing all the questions does not. It's likely the point is to talk to the professor about the ones you're having trouble with, or where your study group disagrees.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
_mhwi 5y ago
I always believed that if a course assignment needed a student to look up anything online (provided that their background was solid enough), let alone the solution, this would be something professors would feel moderately self-conscious about. However, I found out the hard way that also in respected universities, the actual assignments in "hard" courses were long-known, extremely challenging problems that were not really meant to be solved at this level, especially on a weekly basis. Folks handing them in were often using solutions that were quite obviously inspired from online sources, if anything because of the weird methodology needed to solve some of them, without the course teams caring at all.

pfortuny 5y ago

Departmental policy? Man, what a lame excuse. As if there were not hundreds of books with solutions.

Spivak 5y ago

It's 100% because the problems come from a textbook and some other professors assign them as homework, as opposed to study, rather than writing their own problem sets. If it's from the professor's own problem sets then actually WTF. Textbooks written "for teachers" are the bane of every college student's existence if you dare to actually learn from them yourself. "Only solutions to odd problems -- cool guess I have to look on the internet or never be able to validate whether I got them right."

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
you would think Princeton professors would think that their students wouldn't cheat. Must be those kids who paid to get in.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Cheaters, if they are good/hard to detect, would be more likely to be at Princeton than at a community college. By the time you get to Princeton, you're either good at studying or cheating (or being born to the right parents.)
pkilgore 5y ago
My mother was a professor of one of my college STEM subjects, and had used my textbook in my introductory class. My teacher was horrible, and she agreed. So she gave me her teachers answer guide, which not only provided answers to chapter questions but explanations (some including comments about where students might go astray, and why, and why that was wrong). I gave up on lecture, and taught myself the subject by doing problems out of the back of our chapters. Aced the class, changed my prof next semester, changed my major to the subject the semester after that, and graduated with honors. To this day, I am dumbfounded by an approach to STEM education that would withhold a critical tool to iteratively learn via problem solving. It would be like XP without writing tests. You ship your knowledge to the exam, and pray it doesn't break. Seems ridiculous.
- bernulli 5y ago
  It puts the responsibility on the student, like it will be on the job. You have all the material on this planet at your disposal. Works in other countries: lectures and classes for two years and then one final exam. No quizzes, homeworks, extra credits, etc. Just the classes, lectures, you, your self-motivation, your peers, and all the knowledge of the world in books or the internet to help you learn the topic. > STEM education that would withhold a critical tool How does it do that? Are students locked away? Is there a secret police that storms into dorms and burns all material that students try to learn from? Does the Dean come in to break up illegal learning groups?

kop316 5y ago

To offer a different perspective a bit: For every person who desires to learn for it, there are also folks who want to do as little as possible and see no issue with just copying solutions to turn into homework. This includes groups who hold onto the solutions and will give them out to folks taking the classes. Professors had one of two ways to fix that: change questions every year, or just not allow solutions. That being said, I seem to recall that when I took math classes in college, we had books that had even questions that the solutions were in the back, and the odd questions did not (they were only provided to the teachers). The questions were largely the same, so if a student had an issue with an odd question, they were able to just go to the cooresponding even question and work it out. I felt that was a reasonable compromise.

electroly 5y ago
Another option is not to grade homework. I had a bunch of classes in college where the homework was not graded. The problem vanishes entirely.
- bernulli 5y ago
  Tried that after discussion with students, with the result that no one did homework and the learning outcome completely collapsed.
- kop316 5y ago
  heh, I actually had this discussion with the professor I an TAing for. The (graduate) class is entirely a class project (it is an ASIC design class), and, if you finish the class project (you can tape out your chip), you get an A. We have a set of homework assignments to help the students learn the tools (kind of a "hello world" script for the project), and I asked if we just tell them we don't look at them and they are entirely for your benefit. The professor said you if you do that, there will be a decent amount of students who will just not do the assignments and later on complain that they have no idea how to use the tools. The solution we came up with is to have a set assignment due date so students feel like they have to do them. Personally, I am surprised that graduate students need that sort of motivation to do the work.

HWR_14 5y ago

It's highly likely that there is a large pool of exam questions, and every year, they are split into "practice" and "actual test". Providing a gold standard answer would lead to memorizing solutions in a way that providing all the questions does not. It's likely the point is to talk to the professor about the ones you're having trouble with, or where your study group disagrees.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

_mhwi 5y ago

I always believed that if a course assignment needed a student to look up anything online (provided that their background was solid enough), let alone the solution, this would be something professors would feel moderately self-conscious about. However, I found out the hard way that also in respected universities, the actual assignments in "hard" courses were long-known, extremely challenging problems that were not really meant to be solved at this level, especially on a weekly basis. Folks handing them in were often using solutions that were quite obviously inspired from online sources, if anything because of the weird methodology needed to solve some of them, without the course teams caring at all.