3 ms·

As an undergrad student, I can tell you that cheating is rampant. It kind of sucks for those who don't and are genuinely curious because it's frustrating to see

As an undergrad student, I can tell you that cheating is rampant. It kind of sucks for those who don't and are genuinely curious because it's frustrating to see someone else easily passing with less effort spent. What I think teachers could do is to come up with truly novel and strange assignments that require real curiosity and creativity (and some do, which is great). I can only assume this to get harder and harder with modern AI readily available to everyone but perhaps the key is to assign something that would take a long time even with these tools. It should be as hard as necessary which is only all the more fulfilling to a curious student.

mlechu 1y ago
Agree that time spent preventing cheating is preferable to time spent detecting or punishing cheating, and that all are terrible distractions from time spent actually teaching. In response to OP saying that honor pledges are unhelpful, GP only mentions that they can make the punishment part less painful and time-consuming, but I can personally confirm GP exhausts the prevention route (including putting out "novel and strange" assignments :) ) before trying to detect and punish cheating, at least in my experience. I've heard many a story about professors treating it like a trap door, paying no attention to prevention and much more to detection/punishment to the point you'd think they're sadistic pleasure out of it. (I doubt they are, but you'd have to numb yourself to it in that position.) In certain ways, I guess this is better than pushing people through to the next class—giving them no option but to catch up quickly or cheat more—but it isn't great... OP mostly talks about detection/punishment, but I think it's also the job of course staff to make cheating as impossible as possible before it happens. Engaging and novel assignments are great; putting more weight on exams is low-cost and acceptable.
Fezzik 1y ago
I don’t know how this would work for CS, but in law school I had one professor that did final oral examinations as follows: there were about 15-20 cornerstone topics from the class that were possible exam questions and were announced a few weeks before finals. Then, during finals week(s), each student had a 30 minute block during which they would randomly select 3 of the 10 topics by pulling note cards and engaging in a conversation about the topic with the professor. If you knew the basics of the topic you were almost guaranteed a B or B+; if you demonstrated novel or expansive knowledge you got a higher grade… and you really had to not study to get a C+ or lower. There are flaws in every method of measuring competency but I thought this was one of the better ones, and it is very difficult to cheat on. His exams were by far the least grumbled about and I don’t recall a single student that thought the method was unfair. And even though this required more upfront work from the professor he said it was ultimately less time consuming than grading written exams, and far more enjoyable.
- y-curious 1y ago
  I think the cost here is that conducting this examination for a small cohort of law students is much easier than a huge CS class. 300-person class sizes would mean you optimistically would spend 150 hours examining every student, notwithstanding scheduling conflicts. I do like the idea, though. My parents from the former Soviet Union had oral examinations for their entire schooling.

mlechu 1y ago

Agree that time spent preventing cheating is preferable to time spent detecting or punishing cheating, and that all are terrible distractions from time spent actually teaching. In response to OP saying that honor pledges are unhelpful, GP only mentions that they can make the punishment part less painful and time-consuming, but I can personally confirm GP exhausts the prevention route (including putting out "novel and strange" assignments :) ) before trying to detect and punish cheating, at least in my experience. I've heard many a story about professors treating it like a trap door, paying no attention to prevention and much more to detection/punishment to the point you'd think they're sadistic pleasure out of it. (I doubt they are, but you'd have to numb yourself to it in that position.) In certain ways, I guess this is better than pushing people through to the next class—giving them no option but to catch up quickly or cheat more—but it isn't great... OP mostly talks about detection/punishment, but I think it's also the job of course staff to make cheating as impossible as possible before it happens. Engaging and novel assignments are great; putting more weight on exams is low-cost and acceptable.

Fezzik 1y ago

I don’t know how this would work for CS, but in law school I had one professor that did final oral examinations as follows: there were about 15-20 cornerstone topics from the class that were possible exam questions and were announced a few weeks before finals. Then, during finals week(s), each student had a 30 minute block during which they would randomly select 3 of the 10 topics by pulling note cards and engaging in a conversation about the topic with the professor. If you knew the basics of the topic you were almost guaranteed a B or B+; if you demonstrated novel or expansive knowledge you got a higher grade… and you really had to not study to get a C+ or lower. There are flaws in every method of measuring competency but I thought this was one of the better ones, and it is very difficult to cheat on. His exams were by far the least grumbled about and I don’t recall a single student that thought the method was unfair. And even though this required more upfront work from the professor he said it was ultimately less time consuming than grading written exams, and far more enjoyable.

y-curious 1y ago
I think the cost here is that conducting this examination for a small cohort of law students is much easier than a huge CS class. 300-person class sizes would mean you optimistically would spend 150 hours examining every student, notwithstanding scheduling conflicts. I do like the idea, though. My parents from the former Soviet Union had oral examinations for their entire schooling.