Chris, I'm not sure that I understand your argument. How about this scenario, which is what I do: Students are assigned problems, without solutions. They are given some time to work them out and turn them in. Then they are given the solutions, most of which I go over in class.

This does not require posting solutions ahead of time, or in a public place, it still allows the "autonomous" student to do the work on his or her own (although constrained by a particular time-frame), and it permits the student to see the solutions in the end.

  -Paul


Christian Hofer wrote:
Dear Hamilton,

I think we just have a different framing of the problem. You are confronted with the laziness of students and want to teach them something anyway. By that you are forced to disrespect the autonomy of students who are intrinsically motivated (e.g. by giving bonus points on exercises).

I on the other hand am a great fan of the old German university system, which they are currently about to abolish in the so-called "Bologna Process". The idea is to just treat students as if they were autonomous. Most students fail in the exams in their first year, because they are not used to solving exercises when nobody forces them to do it (s.th. they should of course already have learned in school). Those students that don't recover don't belong to university. But most students learn from this negative experience, that they have to work on their own. And that is more important to learn on university than the details of a certain programming paradigm...

It's nice that you offer me your exercises with solutions. But I am afraid that does not really help me, because I want to do (and am actually doing) the exercises in the books that I read (because that is the way to get a better understanding). Thus what I would need are the solutions to those exercises.

Regards,
Chris

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