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A lot of courses can indeed be improved by being more legible in expectations. But there is actually a counterpoint. As you make your course more legible past a

A lot of courses can indeed be improved by being more legible in expectations. But there is actually a counterpoint. As you make your course more legible past a certain point, there arise the "lawyer" students. They will use the rules laid out to weasel out of work, to to get a grade bump - long and tedious bad faith argumentation. Its actually the kind of thing you don't see till you actually become a teacher and try to make these sort of changes. The only way out is to have a a minimal amount of illegibility that allows the prof to actually stop these students in their tracks. Time and again I have seen new profs try to be legible and then realize a year later that there is a limit to it. In general, course design would be so much better if students cooperated. I would have all my exams be take home, open book (but solo work). But what do I do about the 20% of the students who have zero respect for any sort of honor code and even less fear of any consequences? You don't even have to hunt for the existence of these students. On many cheating related threads on HN, a frighteningly people openly and proudly say that they will and have cheated because its only the degree that matters.

watwut 4y ago
I was also at the teachers side. Unclear rules and situations harm especially students that don't tend to complain and argue. But back to student time, I had class where we were expected to write super detailed explanation on every homework. If you skipped a tiny step, you got marked down. And then came test. I could answer every single question and did not even stopped to think. When time run out, I was still writing. People complained and the response was that we should not be that detailed on test - but that is exactly what they trained us to do. The op complained about this: "from classes where I walked into tests expecting that I should be able to answer every question perfectly, to classes where my 70% score on the midterm (of a handful of questions) was considered an excellent result, with no explicit indication beforehand that this would be the case. " This is sort of guesswork about what you are even supposed to do sux. > I would have all my exams be take home, open book (but solo work). But what do I do about the 20% of the students who have zero respect for any sort of honor code and even less fear of any consequences? Don't do home exams, imo. Cheaters always, literally always exists. In some cultures they are effectively normalized and more frequent, in some less. Consequences for cheating in American colleges are quite high actually, they can kick you out. They do not want to be kicked out, but there is no way to catch cheater in their home.

watwut 4y ago

I was also at the teachers side. Unclear rules and situations harm especially students that don't tend to complain and argue. But back to student time, I had class where we were expected to write super detailed explanation on every homework. If you skipped a tiny step, you got marked down. And then came test. I could answer every single question and did not even stopped to think. When time run out, I was still writing. People complained and the response was that we should not be that detailed on test - but that is exactly what they trained us to do. The op complained about this: "from classes where I walked into tests expecting that I should be able to answer every question perfectly, to classes where my 70% score on the midterm (of a handful of questions) was considered an excellent result, with no explicit indication beforehand that this would be the case. " This is sort of guesswork about what you are even supposed to do sux. > I would have all my exams be take home, open book (but solo work). But what do I do about the 20% of the students who have zero respect for any sort of honor code and even less fear of any consequences? Don't do home exams, imo. Cheaters always, literally always exists. In some cultures they are effectively normalized and more frequent, in some less. Consequences for cheating in American colleges are quite high actually, they can kick you out. They do not want to be kicked out, but there is no way to catch cheater in their home.