4 ms·

Wouldn't just things were people sit in a room without or limited tools to write the exam work, too?

SoftTalker 3y ago
Yep the old "blue book" exams I had to sit. You get the exam questions on a piece of paoer, and a small booklet of blank paper in which to write your answers. Called a "blue book" because the cover sheet on the booklet was a sky blue color.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  Blue book exams were super common when I graduated undergrad less than a decade ago—they may be old, but they're enduring :)
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Or you can just trust your students. Most upper-division courses I took at university gave take-home exams. "Here's the test, come back with it in a couple days, don't talk about your answers with other students".
- Gigachad 3y ago
  lmao, and then find that the whole class has a discord group for exchanging answers.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Being kicked out of the science school and into the business school is a pretty huge punishment that late in the game, for negligible reward: "Oooh, I aced my Particle Physics final". It was just easier to do the test honestly, and lick your wounds later.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      I think later students get in degrees less issues there will be. It will be the first exams and some after them that have most cheating.
      - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
        Yeah, I remember in a freshman lab that I was TAing for I spotted an assignment that was clearly a bad photocopy of an email (complete with email address at the bottom), which wasn't the student's email. So I went and found a name that matched up with that email, which was another student, and at that point I felt the need to look through all the assignments looking for this particular copy's calling card, a strange rounding error on one of the tables. Ended up finding about a dozen cases of cheating on that prelab, alone. A prelab worth, generously, half of a percent of their overall grade. Let the professor know, finished grading the rest. Next week I had a dozen more missing assignments than usual, went to the professor asking "hey, why did a quarter of the class not turn in their assignments this week?", and they replied that the students had been served an ultimatum: Drop engineering, go transfer somewhere else in shame, or get hit with an academic dishonesty inquiry, which could carry much stiffer sentences. They all took the former. The theory was that students cheat because they're either unwilling or unable to engage with the material, which means they're not cut out for engineering.

Yep the old "blue book" exams I had to sit. You get the exam questions on a piece of paoer, and a small booklet of blank paper in which to write your answers. Called a "blue book" because the cover sheet on the booklet was a sky blue color.

spondylosaurus 3y ago
Blue book exams were super common when I graduated undergrad less than a decade ago—they may be old, but they're enduring :)

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

Or you can just trust your students. Most upper-division courses I took at university gave take-home exams. "Here's the test, come back with it in a couple days, don't talk about your answers with other students".

Gigachad 3y ago
lmao, and then find that the whole class has a discord group for exchanging answers.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Being kicked out of the science school and into the business school is a pretty huge punishment that late in the game, for negligible reward: "Oooh, I aced my Particle Physics final". It was just easier to do the test honestly, and lick your wounds later.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    I think later students get in degrees less issues there will be. It will be the first exams and some after them that have most cheating.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      Yeah, I remember in a freshman lab that I was TAing for I spotted an assignment that was clearly a bad photocopy of an email (complete with email address at the bottom), which wasn't the student's email. So I went and found a name that matched up with that email, which was another student, and at that point I felt the need to look through all the assignments looking for this particular copy's calling card, a strange rounding error on one of the tables. Ended up finding about a dozen cases of cheating on that prelab, alone. A prelab worth, generously, half of a percent of their overall grade. Let the professor know, finished grading the rest. Next week I had a dozen more missing assignments than usual, went to the professor asking "hey, why did a quarter of the class not turn in their assignments this week?", and they replied that the students had been served an ultimatum: Drop engineering, go transfer somewhere else in shame, or get hit with an academic dishonesty inquiry, which could carry much stiffer sentences. They all took the former. The theory was that students cheat because they're either unwilling or unable to engage with the material, which means they're not cut out for engineering.