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No. Group work is terrible and students are—at least perceptually, when not in fact—in competition with each other both for grades and for time. Even in the bes

No. Group work is terrible and students are—at least perceptually, when not in fact—in competition with each other both for grades and for time. Even in the best case scenario students are incentivized to do the parts of the work they already do best which seems antithetical to education. Multiple choice quizzes are also useful to the student because they provide a snapshot of fact memorization and maybe some application but there is no point in counting the grades, IMO. If we must evaluate students, then we should be treating evaluation as important as imparting knowledge and experience and spend the time on it that it deserves. Students deserve and need timely and thoughtful individual feedback in order to improve anyway. That means thoughtful projects and a lot of time spent grading. How you incentivize this amongst educators who often don’t even want to be teaching is beyond my pay grade. (Additionally, a grade should reflect level of mastery at the end of the course regardless of progression but that’s not how grades are generally calculated.)

eloisius 4y ago
Group work is terrible, but project-based ability assessment is much better than multiple-choice tests. I quit school before graduating, so maybe I’m not the best example, but I had one instructor that noticed a few of us were bored out of our minds in an intro to OO class and told us we could skip all assignments and the final if we turned in a working clone of Asteroids that met certain criteria, using a vector drawing library called Processing, by the end of the semester. Instead of making class Dog extend class Animal for the whole semester, I found myself learning how to do polygon collision detection, optimize it with a rectangle intersection pre-test, modeling thrust and inertia, etc. I started adding level-ups like extra lives, missiles, procedurally generating increasing difficult levels. Still some of the most fun I remember having with a computer.
- dleslie 4y ago
  > making class Dog extend class Animal for the whole semester I expect this is hyperbole, but the sense that degrees have softened their content density is palpable. Even when I was attending, decades ago, the administration at my university was conjuring plans to greatly diminish the breadth and depth of content in their courses in order to graduate more students.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    They're talking about an intro class, so doing beginner level OO stuff isn't exactly surprising.
    - dleslie 4y ago
      My intro courses had me building an HC11 out of logic gates. The next semester we wrote code to run on it.
      - TulliusCicero 4y ago
        And what exactly does that have to to with an intro OO class? Is this a "if it's lower level it must be harder" kind of thing?
        dleslie 4y ago
        It's not harder, it's more fundamental. Logic gates express forms of the basic foundations of computation, and building from there conveys their power and expressiveness. In my degree, object oriented programming came in later semesters, often paired with courses on symbolic computing, discrete mathematics, and computability and complexity.
        TulliusCicero 4y ago
        I still don't see what this has to do with the comment I was responding to. Who cares whether you tackle low level computing earlier or later?
        dleslie 4y ago
        Someone who cares about how our existing knowledge shapes or understanding of new knowledge. Knowing how a computer works helps to understand the why and how of higher level concerns.
- cgriswald 4y ago
  I don't think multiple choice tests and project-based assessment are in conflict. They are both useful tools for evaluation. Multiple choice tests can allow a student to evaluate himself to make sure he has the base level of knowledge required (facts and application) in order to develop mastery. I do think it's useless as a grading metric, even discounting cheating issues. Project-based ability assessment is useful both for gaining mastery (with timely expert feedback) and for evaluating a students' mastery. I think project-based ability assessments for grading purposes ought to be coupled with a conversation about the project so the student can explain/defend his or her choices. As a side effect, it will help prevent cheating by having someone else write your project. In your particular case, I'm glad you had a good professor that allowed you to spend otherwise wasted time learning. However, I can't help but feel you should never have been forced to take (and presumably pay for) that class.
  - eloisius 4y ago
    > However, I can't help but feel you should never have been forced to take (and presumably pay for) that class I felt the same way, so I dropped out of school and started looking for someone who would hire me without a degree. I regret not having a university experience, but as far as career goes, I got a two year head start and no debt.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  That sounds like a great option, though I imagine offering an alternative objective like that will get harder to do as the course difficulty/level increases.

eloisius 4y ago

Group work is terrible, but project-based ability assessment is much better than multiple-choice tests. I quit school before graduating, so maybe I’m not the best example, but I had one instructor that noticed a few of us were bored out of our minds in an intro to OO class and told us we could skip all assignments and the final if we turned in a working clone of Asteroids that met certain criteria, using a vector drawing library called Processing, by the end of the semester. Instead of making class Dog extend class Animal for the whole semester, I found myself learning how to do polygon collision detection, optimize it with a rectangle intersection pre-test, modeling thrust and inertia, etc. I started adding level-ups like extra lives, missiles, procedurally generating increasing difficult levels. Still some of the most fun I remember having with a computer.

dleslie 4y ago
> making class Dog extend class Animal for the whole semester I expect this is hyperbole, but the sense that degrees have softened their content density is palpable. Even when I was attending, decades ago, the administration at my university was conjuring plans to greatly diminish the breadth and depth of content in their courses in order to graduate more students.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  They're talking about an intro class, so doing beginner level OO stuff isn't exactly surprising.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    My intro courses had me building an HC11 out of logic gates. The next semester we wrote code to run on it.
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      And what exactly does that have to to with an intro OO class? Is this a "if it's lower level it must be harder" kind of thing?
      - dleslie 4y ago
        It's not harder, it's more fundamental. Logic gates express forms of the basic foundations of computation, and building from there conveys their power and expressiveness. In my degree, object oriented programming came in later semesters, often paired with courses on symbolic computing, discrete mathematics, and computability and complexity.
        TulliusCicero 4y ago
        I still don't see what this has to do with the comment I was responding to. Who cares whether you tackle low level computing earlier or later?
        dleslie 4y ago
        Someone who cares about how our existing knowledge shapes or understanding of new knowledge. Knowing how a computer works helps to understand the why and how of higher level concerns.
cgriswald 4y ago
I don't think multiple choice tests and project-based assessment are in conflict. They are both useful tools for evaluation. Multiple choice tests can allow a student to evaluate himself to make sure he has the base level of knowledge required (facts and application) in order to develop mastery. I do think it's useless as a grading metric, even discounting cheating issues. Project-based ability assessment is useful both for gaining mastery (with timely expert feedback) and for evaluating a students' mastery. I think project-based ability assessments for grading purposes ought to be coupled with a conversation about the project so the student can explain/defend his or her choices. As a side effect, it will help prevent cheating by having someone else write your project. In your particular case, I'm glad you had a good professor that allowed you to spend otherwise wasted time learning. However, I can't help but feel you should never have been forced to take (and presumably pay for) that class.
- eloisius 4y ago
  > However, I can't help but feel you should never have been forced to take (and presumably pay for) that class I felt the same way, so I dropped out of school and started looking for someone who would hire me without a degree. I regret not having a university experience, but as far as career goes, I got a two year head start and no debt.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
That sounds like a great option, though I imagine offering an alternative objective like that will get harder to do as the course difficulty/level increases.