6 ms·

It still amazes me that CS students are not allowed to google when working on their coding assignments.

by lambic 5y ago

uberman 5y ago
Same here. I personally feel that ability of successfully google should be something we test for!
Scarblac 5y ago
What about other subjects, physics, literature? Should they be allowed to Google too?
- aqme28 5y ago
  Literature students are _definitely_ allowed to do research on their assignments. As a physics student, there were some exams where I was able to "google," but almost every exam I took allowed me to bring some notes.
- lambic 5y ago
  Yep, open book exams should be the norm.
- gilleain 5y ago
  There is such a thing as an 'open book exam' where you literally have access to the textbook in the exam. The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. If you don't already understand the material, having access to it in the exam will not help as much - when the questions are properly designed - as you can't just copy down a bunch of disconnected facts. Instead you have to build an answer that relies on those facts and the framework that surrounds them.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    Open book != google. Most my CS exams in college were open notes / open book, but Google was banned. > The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. The obvious difference is the existence of Stack Overflow. Synthesizing a correct answer from my hand written notes is a proof of understanding. Being able to google a question and having the answer produced for you is absolutely not a proof of understanding. Its the difference between letting a math student have a formula sheet, so the don't need to memorize all the different formulas they need to apply, and giving them access to wolfram alpha. The later makes the exam an exercise in copy / paste.
    - gilleain 5y ago
      Oh I agree that google is the ultimate open book! Perhaps certain subjects are better suited to having broader questions. I still think it would be _possible_ to create CS questions that would not be helped by having access to a search engine. As an analogy, it's a little like the difference between a unit test and an assembly (integration, etc) test. The unit test question is just a simple one like "When did this King die?" or "What is the area of this triangle?". An assembly test is more like "What was the legacy of this King's reign?" or "What is the area of this shape that is the intersection of various other shapes?". I mean, Wolfram Alfa is only so powerful, right? Of course websites add features all the time, so it's always possible that the day the exam comes out they add a new "What is the area of this shape?" feature.
    - Tainnor 5y ago
      A big part of exams for math majors is proving stuff, not applying formulae. Wolfram|Alpha won't be able to help you there. (That said, there's stuff like proofwiki or math.stackexchange, so unless you really spend time on crafting a novel problem, a student that is good at "researching" might be able to find a solution to a similar problem or to a substep of the proof, etc.)
- ajford 5y ago
  How often do any of those subjects require instant perfect recall of knowledge/topic/concept with high stakes? That's my criterion on whether external references should be allowed in tests. A surgeon should know their specialty as they won't have time to consult a reference during a surgery. A physicist will always have the time to refer to something when performing their work, as will an editor or teacher. That's entirely different from saying they don't need to learn it however. If I drop a list of 100 formulas and equations on a person who doesn't know how to use them, they're useless. That background knowledge on what's available and how to use the tools you have is what the class should be teaching you. Or as my physics prof used to say, "I want the engineer building the bridge I drive over to have looked up a reference on the static weight load of the materials selected, not pulling figures out of their head". We were always allowed to use 1 standard sheet of paper, front & back, for our tests. Most of the time you could answer most questions without needing them beyond referring to a specific equation to make sure you weren't leaving off a constant (damn factors of 2....).
zeku 5y ago
I graduated in 2018 from a state school in the USA. No helping other students on assignments. All exams are: closed book(this means no notes or textbooks with you during the exam) and done with a pencil and a BLANK white sheet of paper. I still managed a 3.75 CS GPA, but we were literally writing syntactically correct C and C++ on blank paper. Why oh why? Early on before I had learned C++ well, I would get marked off something to the tune of -30 for missing a curly brace. No one will miss that IRL when the IDE shows you the visual prompt that it's not there, OR you waste maybe a minute of your life if you forgot it when using VIM... -30 man oh man.
dahfizz 5y ago
It depends on the content of the class. I had a class in Android programming in college where google was fair game because the API / libs were so large that google was a necessity to access all the documentation you need to write android apps. My low level systems class was closed-book, no google, etc. At some point you have to learn something. Pointer manipulation is not something you should have to look up every time you do it.

It still amazes me that CS students are not allowed to google when working on their coding assignments.

by lambic 5y ago

It still amazes me that CS students are not allowed to google when working on their coding assignments.

uberman 5y ago

Same here. I personally feel that ability of successfully google should be something we test for!

Scarblac 5y ago

What about other subjects, physics, literature? Should they be allowed to Google too?

aqme28 5y ago
Literature students are _definitely_ allowed to do research on their assignments. As a physics student, there were some exams where I was able to "google," but almost every exam I took allowed me to bring some notes.
lambic 5y ago
Yep, open book exams should be the norm.
gilleain 5y ago
There is such a thing as an 'open book exam' where you literally have access to the textbook in the exam. The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. If you don't already understand the material, having access to it in the exam will not help as much - when the questions are properly designed - as you can't just copy down a bunch of disconnected facts. Instead you have to build an answer that relies on those facts and the framework that surrounds them.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Open book != google. Most my CS exams in college were open notes / open book, but Google was banned. > The purpose of such exams is not to test your memorization of the subject, but how well you understand it. The questions are more challenging, and are explicitly designed to see if you can take the information in front of you and synthesize or interpret it. The obvious difference is the existence of Stack Overflow. Synthesizing a correct answer from my hand written notes is a proof of understanding. Being able to google a question and having the answer produced for you is absolutely not a proof of understanding. Its the difference between letting a math student have a formula sheet, so the don't need to memorize all the different formulas they need to apply, and giving them access to wolfram alpha. The later makes the exam an exercise in copy / paste.
  - gilleain 5y ago
    Oh I agree that google is the ultimate open book! Perhaps certain subjects are better suited to having broader questions. I still think it would be _possible_ to create CS questions that would not be helped by having access to a search engine. As an analogy, it's a little like the difference between a unit test and an assembly (integration, etc) test. The unit test question is just a simple one like "When did this King die?" or "What is the area of this triangle?". An assembly test is more like "What was the legacy of this King's reign?" or "What is the area of this shape that is the intersection of various other shapes?". I mean, Wolfram Alfa is only so powerful, right? Of course websites add features all the time, so it's always possible that the day the exam comes out they add a new "What is the area of this shape?" feature.
  - Tainnor 5y ago
    A big part of exams for math majors is proving stuff, not applying formulae. Wolfram|Alpha won't be able to help you there. (That said, there's stuff like proofwiki or math.stackexchange, so unless you really spend time on crafting a novel problem, a student that is good at "researching" might be able to find a solution to a similar problem or to a substep of the proof, etc.)
ajford 5y ago
How often do any of those subjects require instant perfect recall of knowledge/topic/concept with high stakes? That's my criterion on whether external references should be allowed in tests. A surgeon should know their specialty as they won't have time to consult a reference during a surgery. A physicist will always have the time to refer to something when performing their work, as will an editor or teacher. That's entirely different from saying they don't need to learn it however. If I drop a list of 100 formulas and equations on a person who doesn't know how to use them, they're useless. That background knowledge on what's available and how to use the tools you have is what the class should be teaching you. Or as my physics prof used to say, "I want the engineer building the bridge I drive over to have looked up a reference on the static weight load of the materials selected, not pulling figures out of their head". We were always allowed to use 1 standard sheet of paper, front & back, for our tests. Most of the time you could answer most questions without needing them beyond referring to a specific equation to make sure you weren't leaving off a constant (damn factors of 2....).

zeku 5y ago

I graduated in 2018 from a state school in the USA. No helping other students on assignments. All exams are: closed book(this means no notes or textbooks with you during the exam) and done with a pencil and a BLANK white sheet of paper. I still managed a 3.75 CS GPA, but we were literally writing syntactically correct C and C++ on blank paper. Why oh why? Early on before I had learned C++ well, I would get marked off something to the tune of -30 for missing a curly brace. No one will miss that IRL when the IDE shows you the visual prompt that it's not there, OR you waste maybe a minute of your life if you forgot it when using VIM... -30 man oh man.

dahfizz 5y ago

It depends on the content of the class. I had a class in Android programming in college where google was fair game because the API / libs were so large that google was a necessity to access all the documentation you need to write android apps. My low level systems class was closed-book, no google, etc. At some point you have to learn something. Pointer manipulation is not something you should have to look up every time you do it.