[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
: Dear Dr. Dallal,
: I'm interested in your statement about the 'take home portion of the exam'
: and what weight you place upon an exam that can easily be done with the joint
: help of other individuals. How do you know what portion of the 'take home
: exam' is really being done by the student, ONE HIS OR HER OWN, without
: outside help?
I trust my students. They are graduate students in science and policy.
They know the seriousness of misrepresenting someone else's work as their own.
If, at this point in their careers, they are willing to sell their honor
to cheat on an exam, they have bigger problems than I can hope to
solve by giving up the chance to let them show me what they've learned.
I tell them this in class. They agree with me.
I don't see how to test them fairly without a take home portion. The
point of the course is to get them to analyze data. It takes time, it takes
thought. As part of the exam, I give them one or two data sets and
up to a week to analyze them. And it feels *so* good to see them
take a data set, display it, recognize outliers that might destroy an
analysis performed by rote, and so on ... !
: If you look at the mailing groups I think you will find one that allows
: students to post questions to the group (obviously homework questions) and
: then various individuals reply by doing the homework. I'm sure some (many)
: students simply hand in the solutions acquired on the internet as their own
: work.
It's hard to get someone to analyze your data for you, but, regardless, I trust my
students as they do me.
: Recently I spoke with a high school teacher who would not accept a report
: from one of her students because it was copied, word-for-word, from the
: internet. The student objected and the parents brought pressure on the
: principal. To make a long story short, the principal instructed the teacher
: to give the student credit for the work, the credit was for 'effort' in what
: was an obvious case of plagerism.
Here, the student might be expelled.
: How can you give credit to someone for 'out of class test taking'?
It must be my particular set of circumstances (the program, the students).
: Enjoy the Holiday Season
You, too!
