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Professors should already be using new problems in each instance of the class. In particular, frats and other student societies often pass things down, and you

by lacker 17y ago

Professors should already be using new problems in each instance of the class. In particular, frats and other student societies often pass things down, and you don't want to advantage them. Trying to stop people from posting knowledge on the web that is already public is ineffective and unfair.

grandalf 17y ago
great point -- the prof is just being lazy. It would actually be a nice idea to build a website so that students could post old quizzes, homework assignments, etc., to help force profs to come up with something new each time.
- michael_dorfman 17y ago
  Wow. what a colossal waste of professor's time! The prof isn't being lazy, he's being efficient-- he's carefully crafting a set of exercises that he hopes best serves the need of his students, and there shouldn't be any need to change them until the curriculum changes. Believe me, there are many better things he could be doing with his time than re-creating exercises....
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Well, as someone else pointed out, frats, etc., routinely create archives of past tests/quizzes, etc., for the benefit of their members. Some people are currently exploiting the "efficiency" you mention, which is in my opinion a bigger problem than the extra time needed to create fresh materials. What course could you imagine where it would take more than a few hours to create a fresh exam or batch of quizes? We're talking about undergraduate classes and any prof qualified to teach them could easily rattle off dozens of great (and unique) questions on a moment's notice. So not only do I not think it would be a waste of time, but it would result in fairer tests/quizes, less exploitation, and fresher and more topical material.
    - jurjenh 17y ago
      Of course the counter-argument to this is that it can teach students more real-world methodology - ie don't re-invent the wheel - instead try to find alternative sources where the same problem has already been solved. I n practice (my experience) it tends to be a lot more common and is practiced widely, resulting in students that "know" the answers but can't apply the theory to new problems - having never learned how to discover the wheel. Which tends to emphasise the devaluing of a university education even more. I believe the exams / term papers where the lecturer came up with a new set of problems were more successful in weeding out the "learn by memorizing" over the "learn by understanding", but that is just anecdotal experience. Anyone got any hard data to back this up???
    - limmeau 17y ago
      If a student has a reason to hand in an archived answer instead of learning something by solving the problem himself, there's already something going wrong, and creating fresh exercises each week attacks a symptom only. Why do students use archived answers in the first place? Apparently, to get credits for (and ultimately pass) a course whose course points they need for something but whose contents they don't want to learn that badly that investing their own time would seem worthwhile. I see two ways in which to attack this situation: 1. Remove the possibility of passing a course without having understood its contents: e.g. oral exams with "why" questions. 2. Remove the perceived necessity to get a good grade: on the small scale, the easier it is to cheat in a single test, the less it should contribute to the grade. On the larger scale, perhaps curriculae need to be more diverse such that a "I just want to be a Java programmer with a degree such that I earn more money" student can become "just a Java programmer with a degree in just Java".
    - dhimes 17y ago
      My guess is that you've never been in the situation to do this. Coming up with good problems, unambiguously stated, that address the points you wish to address and not the ones you wish to skip, is very difficult. Especially at the undergrad level, where you have to be careful because the base of knowledge is so small (or, at least you have to assume it is). If the professor has to constantly come up with brand new problems, the students are forever seeing rough drafts of unvetted exams. Here's a very simple example of a failure I had that illustrates the kinds of things that can unexpectedly go wrong: "what is the angular speed of the second hand of a clock?" After struggling for a long while with this question, a very bright Asian student finally asked, me: "I see three hands on the clock: obviously they are the first hand, the second hand, and the third hand. Can you please tell me which one you are calling the second hand?" At the graduate level it may be easier (I've never written a graduate exam) because, fuck 'em, they're grad students, let them deal with it.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Your argument would also support the view that one canonical set of quizzes and exercises ought to be created once, by a properly qualified prof, and used in all schools, so that profs everywhere might allocate their precious time more efficiently.

by lacker 17y ago

grandalf 17y ago

great point -- the prof is just being lazy. It would actually be a nice idea to build a website so that students could post old quizzes, homework assignments, etc., to help force profs to come up with something new each time.

michael_dorfman 17y ago
Wow. what a colossal waste of professor's time! The prof isn't being lazy, he's being efficient-- he's carefully crafting a set of exercises that he hopes best serves the need of his students, and there shouldn't be any need to change them until the curriculum changes. Believe me, there are many better things he could be doing with his time than re-creating exercises....
- grandalf 17y ago
  Well, as someone else pointed out, frats, etc., routinely create archives of past tests/quizzes, etc., for the benefit of their members. Some people are currently exploiting the "efficiency" you mention, which is in my opinion a bigger problem than the extra time needed to create fresh materials. What course could you imagine where it would take more than a few hours to create a fresh exam or batch of quizes? We're talking about undergraduate classes and any prof qualified to teach them could easily rattle off dozens of great (and unique) questions on a moment's notice. So not only do I not think it would be a waste of time, but it would result in fairer tests/quizes, less exploitation, and fresher and more topical material.
  - jurjenh 17y ago
    Of course the counter-argument to this is that it can teach students more real-world methodology - ie don't re-invent the wheel - instead try to find alternative sources where the same problem has already been solved. I n practice (my experience) it tends to be a lot more common and is practiced widely, resulting in students that "know" the answers but can't apply the theory to new problems - having never learned how to discover the wheel. Which tends to emphasise the devaluing of a university education even more. I believe the exams / term papers where the lecturer came up with a new set of problems were more successful in weeding out the "learn by memorizing" over the "learn by understanding", but that is just anecdotal experience. Anyone got any hard data to back this up???
  - limmeau 17y ago
    If a student has a reason to hand in an archived answer instead of learning something by solving the problem himself, there's already something going wrong, and creating fresh exercises each week attacks a symptom only. Why do students use archived answers in the first place? Apparently, to get credits for (and ultimately pass) a course whose course points they need for something but whose contents they don't want to learn that badly that investing their own time would seem worthwhile. I see two ways in which to attack this situation: 1. Remove the possibility of passing a course without having understood its contents: e.g. oral exams with "why" questions. 2. Remove the perceived necessity to get a good grade: on the small scale, the easier it is to cheat in a single test, the less it should contribute to the grade. On the larger scale, perhaps curriculae need to be more diverse such that a "I just want to be a Java programmer with a degree such that I earn more money" student can become "just a Java programmer with a degree in just Java".
  - dhimes 17y ago
    My guess is that you've never been in the situation to do this. Coming up with good problems, unambiguously stated, that address the points you wish to address and not the ones you wish to skip, is very difficult. Especially at the undergrad level, where you have to be careful because the base of knowledge is so small (or, at least you have to assume it is). If the professor has to constantly come up with brand new problems, the students are forever seeing rough drafts of unvetted exams. Here's a very simple example of a failure I had that illustrates the kinds of things that can unexpectedly go wrong: "what is the angular speed of the second hand of a clock?" After struggling for a long while with this question, a very bright Asian student finally asked, me: "I see three hands on the clock: obviously they are the first hand, the second hand, and the third hand. Can you please tell me which one you are calling the second hand?" At the graduate level it may be easier (I've never written a graduate exam) because, fuck 'em, they're grad students, let them deal with it.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Your argument would also support the view that one canonical set of quizzes and exercises ought to be created once, by a properly qualified prof, and used in all schools, so that profs everywhere might allocate their precious time more efficiently.