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The requested change was the same for everyone. They would have also run your project through a series of unit tests and would let you fix your code if they had

by nextos 1y ago

The requested change was the same for everyone. They would have also run your project through a series of unit tests and would let you fix your code if they had encountered any bugs. Being able to implement the change was a necessary condition to prove you had authored the code and pass but, overall, the project would be graded based on architectural decisions, algorithms and data structures, coding style, etc. I guess this is not done at other schools because it's a hell lot of work for teachers and passing rates are low. It's quite brutal.

ghaff 1y ago
I'm not a big fan of final exam/related serious pass/fail screens. Students have (probably) made a big investment in time and money and , absent pretty serious deficiencies, they should probably be able to eek out a gentleman's C.
- kaonwarb 1y ago
  It sounds to me like you're in favor of grading on effort. I don't believe that investment made in time or money should factor in to assessing a student's mastery.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    I don’t believe money should ever be a factor for students. In any way. Yet, when I was a student I was incredibly loud about “I am a paying customer of this institution and you’re gonna teach me. Late to class and not allowed in? Great, I paid for this class and I’ll take it up with whomever has the ability to reprimand you/fire you if you aren’t tenured/generally make your life hell.” Money in education perverts everything. More generally money is the root of all evil, eh? But if you took my cash and I get nothing? Thats a very loud complaint and/or lawsuit.
    - afavour 1y ago
      Eh, you paid and agreed to terms and conditions. > you took my cash and I get nothing? If I book a hotel room then turn up a week later than my booking date trying to get a room I can expect to receive nothing.
      - Henchman21 1y ago
        Sure; but also the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I got my education and a couple of my professors got forced to be decent to their students. In my case it worked out. YMMV.
        afavour 1y ago
        YMMV on the definition of “decent”. Arriving late to class is disruptive to all the other paying customers in the room so IMO it should be disincentivised. There are reasonable and unreasonable levels of disincentive, of course.
        Henchman21 1y ago
        Agreed. I had a professor who’d whip whatever was on the desk at whomever was late. Some poor girl got hit with a stapler. So you know, that mileage is a highly variable thing!
        krisoft 1y ago
        That’s physical assault and i would report it to the police and then to the educational institution in that order. If the professor retaliates in any way i would further report that too.
    - Noumenon72 1y ago
      On one theory of college, you get someone to hold you to certain standards (which many people have trouble holding themselves to) and then verify that you were held to those standards, providing a signal that you can meet high standards. Somehow, I missed this theory and also just wanted to skip all my classes with no repercussions, but I wish it had been explained to me better.
      - throwaway314155 1y ago
        Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that's the theory of a functioning academy and _still_ chose to skip class and get high/drunk with my friends. Guess I'm a terrible person/s
    - bawolff 1y ago
      > But if you took my cash and I get nothing? Thats a very loud complaint and/or lawsuit. Maybe in america... but at the end of the day its not that hard to tell the customer to fuck off. The value proposition of a university is either the credential or self-improvement. Its not their customer service.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Not really. But I'm generally not in favor of all or nothing end-of-term evaluations rather than mid-course correction feedback. And also not in favor of admitting students that will probably be out of their depth. As was the case with a course I TAd and did some tutoring for. (Not engineering.)
  - ashdksnndck 1y ago
    Grading on effort with a ceiling of a C is pretty different from grading on effort full stop.
  - raydev 1y ago
    Getting a 100% final grade doesn't indicate mastery.
- HenryBemis 1y ago
  Having been the guy who got a couple of F's, and retook the exams in Sept and passed them to continue to my next years of studies and eventually my BSc I can say.. no! Do the work. Deserve the A/B/C. Get the A/B/C. I don't believe I'm the only one that suspects how the test will go, knows what the test result will be once I see the question, and know what I should have done to get that A/B/C mark. I get it that shit happens in life (imagine someone having exams two days after they buried a father/mother/brother/sister), now THAT person, yeah, boost their results by 'one step' because if they got a 40% going through THAT, then they would have gotten 60% in a normal/BAU situation. But don't hand out degrees to people who don't deserve them. It dilutes the degrees of those who do.
  - dgacmu 1y ago
    That's what incompletes are for. When life strikes - as it does - give the students a break and let them pick up where they left off with no penalty after the fan blades aren't covered in you know what any more. (This is, at least, my policy. A grade reflects mastery and only mastery, but it's my job to help students get there and sometimes that means finding creative solutions.)
    - ghaff 1y ago
      To be honest, I squeaked through undergrad in various ways. And my undergrad profs, etc. helped me with that. And things worked out and Alumni Affairs is probably happy with how things worked out. And I don't think the companies I've worked for have been that unhappy either.
andrewflnr 1y ago
The passing rates at least seem solvable, by making the required changes a little easier. Is it not viable to do this with changes that are automatically testable, so it's not as hard on the teachers?
- apparent 1y ago
  Or by grading on a curve, so that students who worked in good faith and seemed to know their code were given good grades, even if they did not 100% finish in the few hour timeframe.

by nextos 1y ago

ghaff 1y ago

I'm not a big fan of final exam/related serious pass/fail screens. Students have (probably) made a big investment in time and money and , absent pretty serious deficiencies, they should probably be able to eek out a gentleman's C.

kaonwarb 1y ago
It sounds to me like you're in favor of grading on effort. I don't believe that investment made in time or money should factor in to assessing a student's mastery.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  I don’t believe money should ever be a factor for students. In any way. Yet, when I was a student I was incredibly loud about “I am a paying customer of this institution and you’re gonna teach me. Late to class and not allowed in? Great, I paid for this class and I’ll take it up with whomever has the ability to reprimand you/fire you if you aren’t tenured/generally make your life hell.” Money in education perverts everything. More generally money is the root of all evil, eh? But if you took my cash and I get nothing? Thats a very loud complaint and/or lawsuit.
  - afavour 1y ago
    Eh, you paid and agreed to terms and conditions. > you took my cash and I get nothing? If I book a hotel room then turn up a week later than my booking date trying to get a room I can expect to receive nothing.
    - Henchman21 1y ago
      Sure; but also the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I got my education and a couple of my professors got forced to be decent to their students. In my case it worked out. YMMV.
      - afavour 1y ago
        YMMV on the definition of “decent”. Arriving late to class is disruptive to all the other paying customers in the room so IMO it should be disincentivised. There are reasonable and unreasonable levels of disincentive, of course.
        Henchman21 1y ago
        Agreed. I had a professor who’d whip whatever was on the desk at whomever was late. Some poor girl got hit with a stapler. So you know, that mileage is a highly variable thing!
        krisoft 1y ago
        That’s physical assault and i would report it to the police and then to the educational institution in that order. If the professor retaliates in any way i would further report that too.
  - Noumenon72 1y ago
    On one theory of college, you get someone to hold you to certain standards (which many people have trouble holding themselves to) and then verify that you were held to those standards, providing a signal that you can meet high standards. Somehow, I missed this theory and also just wanted to skip all my classes with no repercussions, but I wish it had been explained to me better.
    - throwaway314155 1y ago
      Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that's the theory of a functioning academy and _still_ chose to skip class and get high/drunk with my friends. Guess I'm a terrible person/s
  - bawolff 1y ago
    > But if you took my cash and I get nothing? Thats a very loud complaint and/or lawsuit. Maybe in america... but at the end of the day its not that hard to tell the customer to fuck off. The value proposition of a university is either the credential or self-improvement. Its not their customer service.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- ghaff 1y ago
  Not really. But I'm generally not in favor of all or nothing end-of-term evaluations rather than mid-course correction feedback. And also not in favor of admitting students that will probably be out of their depth. As was the case with a course I TAd and did some tutoring for. (Not engineering.)
- ashdksnndck 1y ago
  Grading on effort with a ceiling of a C is pretty different from grading on effort full stop.
- raydev 1y ago
  Getting a 100% final grade doesn't indicate mastery.
HenryBemis 1y ago
Having been the guy who got a couple of F's, and retook the exams in Sept and passed them to continue to my next years of studies and eventually my BSc I can say.. no! Do the work. Deserve the A/B/C. Get the A/B/C. I don't believe I'm the only one that suspects how the test will go, knows what the test result will be once I see the question, and know what I should have done to get that A/B/C mark. I get it that shit happens in life (imagine someone having exams two days after they buried a father/mother/brother/sister), now THAT person, yeah, boost their results by 'one step' because if they got a 40% going through THAT, then they would have gotten 60% in a normal/BAU situation. But don't hand out degrees to people who don't deserve them. It dilutes the degrees of those who do.
- dgacmu 1y ago
  That's what incompletes are for. When life strikes - as it does - give the students a break and let them pick up where they left off with no penalty after the fan blades aren't covered in you know what any more. (This is, at least, my policy. A grade reflects mastery and only mastery, but it's my job to help students get there and sometimes that means finding creative solutions.)
  - ghaff 1y ago
    To be honest, I squeaked through undergrad in various ways. And my undergrad profs, etc. helped me with that. And things worked out and Alumni Affairs is probably happy with how things worked out. And I don't think the companies I've worked for have been that unhappy either.

andrewflnr 1y ago

The passing rates at least seem solvable, by making the required changes a little easier. Is it not viable to do this with changes that are automatically testable, so it's not as hard on the teachers?

apparent 1y ago
Or by grading on a curve, so that students who worked in good faith and seemed to know their code were given good grades, even if they did not 100% finish in the few hour timeframe.