On March 05 2011 11:12 gods_basement wrote: why does this have to be a discussion about great justice? why are you so defiant, that when your superior gives you a rule, that you would "most definitely break it," and if you couldn't get your way, you would go over his head? is this discussion rooted at all in what you actually would do, or are we talking what would be "fair" in a great cosmic sense?
and as far as rules and success all of that jazz, someone MUST fail school. Grades are not "A for effort," they are a way of categorizing your performance compared to others, so that in the future, people(employers) can get an understanding of your academic success and your potential for the future.
and as far as dying alone with your back clean, i associate this sentiment with youth and immaturity. its kind of a comic book-esque noble struggle, but one day you find something thats actually worth fighting for
It has nothing to do with great justice, it isn't about justice in any form. It's simply what I believe in. And yes it is rooted in what I do, I have whenever I felt that I couldn't get a satisfactory awnser gone over the teachers head, did it do much good? For me it did, I got a grade changed from a fail to an "A" due to what I felt was a ridiculous rule and they agreed with me. Have I been completly ignored, indeed I have. Do I go on crusades on a regular basis over the slightest thing? No I don't.
As far as who should fail school, those that can't perform should. Those that are not suited should. There are people that are brilliant at what they do but have a strong compulsion to finish their work, and yes sometimes you have time restraints, but they are never going to be on the minute unless you are into extremly specific work.
As for that part, I was pretty sure he was being ironic/sarcastic so I just spun on that. It was ment to sound like a Che kind of thing. To put your mind at ease I don't actually see myself like that, there is nothing noble in what I do. I do it based on my experiences with the real world and how much they differ from school. We all have our experiences, I got a great one from my education teaching me that the way schools work and the way real world works are vastly different, and that they prefered to teach us the real thing since that's the place where we would actually be.
I am in no way claiming that I am not biased as hell, and that my opinions have nothing to do with any kind of objective universal justice. As for fighting for something, probably but all people fight for something it's in our nature.
Being subject to rules does not free you from the responsiblity to judge their morality. You cannot use "well I did not make the rule" as an excuse to not have to worry about whether or not it is right or wrong. You cannot pretend like this class is some kind of isolated island and that once its rules are established it is free from any connection to the greater principles of right and wrong that exist in the rest of the world and society. Let me offer a different situation: The professor is the dictator of a tyrannical state. Reading newspapers is forbidden. The TA is a police officer. The student is standing next to a newsstand. The police officer pretends to look away, in that moment the student tries to quickly grab a newspaper and hide it under his jacket. However the Police Officer turns his head, goes "aha!", and shoots the student on the spot. Are you going to defend this as right? The student knew the rules, knew the risks.
Perhaps some are going to say this is a completely different situation, but it's not. The difference is in your moral judgement of shooting someone versus failing them on a test. And in your moral judgement of the legitimacy of the professor in both cases. In both cases the student is being harmed. You can say the Professor has the legitimacy to set these rules. You can say that the TA is morally correct to flunk a student. However it is simply nonsense to claim that the "rules are rules" and that you should not be allowed to pass judgement on them.
For what it's worth, I think the professor is completely out of bounds by setting these rules. However there's not much the student can do. If he was going to complain about the system he should've done so before the test began, and if he wasn't going to complain then he can't change his mind once he's gotten caught. In the end though it doesn't really matter. If the professor feels that this method teaches his students something important, then that is the responsiblity of himself and of the institution that pays him money to teach students said lesson. However I agree mostly with Hynda, the goal should be to try and get the most out of every student, not to enforce strict compliance to arbritray deadlines.
Look at game developing. The most succesfull companies (*cough*Blizzard*cough*) are the ones that put creating the highest quality product above and beyond any fidelity to deadlines. Your professor is teaching his students to be 3rd rate developers who rush products out the door to meet a deadline, leading into buggy poorly received products that flop upon release. I, and I believe Hynda to, are saying he should be teaching them to focus on producing products that will be of high standards of quality, even if it means stretching and being flexible with deadlines, so that they will produce products that are succesfull and benefit their company and (depending on the field they're working in) society in general.
I don't know how anyone is arguing for trying to squeeze in marks by cheating. You don't hand in an assignment late expecting a full grade, and you don't take a test thinking of going past the allotted time to squeeze in marks. These rules are there for a good reason. It sucks that it happened but this guy was warned thoroughly about it. The fact that he did it despite the clear warnings is really just stupid. I can't pity his situation at all.
A lot of people seems to have missed the point of the rule.
Whether or not the professor set and abide by such a strict rule because he was "on a power trip" or was a "dictator" is not really important. Nor is discussing whether exams are best for student's learning, as that's a completely different issue. Furthermore, people are discussing the morality of these rules?
Here's something that's immoral: a student that continues to write when the exam time is up, when everyone else has stopped. This student is taking advantage of the fact that the professor does not penalize him for having an advantage over other people. How would you feel is the kid next to you get an extra 5 minutes for every exam, or extra week to work on his assignments for no penalty?
The rules that were set up and abided to in this case were able to stop this kind of behaviour. The kid in this case wasn't even finishing the last sentence on an essay question - he was filling in bubbles for a multiple choice, so it's not even like he was rounding off what he was doing. The rules did their job and I personally applaud the examiners for doing what they did.
Now, there might be a legitimate discussion on whether the penalty was too severe. Personally I do not think so, as I consider writing after the time is up cheating just the same way as bringing in unauthorized materials - they both give advantages to a particular student over others, and should be punished accordingly.
There's nothing immoral about his decision to keep writing. In this situation the only possible victim here is the student. Rules are rules they don't mean anything with regards to morality... also the choice to break the rules is available to every student there is no unfair advantage, if a student takes the risk and executes accordingly he will be rewarded as is the case of all things in life. Rules may serve a function but breaking rules by itself is not inherently immoral. As for the professor it seems he likes to prepare his students for the real world by being strict as possible which is fine.
I completely do not udnerstand how the argument of "working to their highest potential" even matters.
I for one have had professors of all types, both strict and relatively more lenient. Regardless, you cannot really apply in the context of an exam that it is meant for students to reach their full potential. This world is naturally filled with deadlines. Without them nothing would be ever set and objectives would never be completely reached. We set deadlines to ensure their completion.
An exam to some extent is a harsher form of a deadline. You know you must study for an exam up to the exam time. You only have a certain amount of time to work to your highest potential. You are allotted a reasonable time (considering everyone has the same time). Exams are not something to make it so that we can reach an ideal potential, because we can all reach some ideal potential when given time. Exams are meant to test your ability to learn and apply the material as efficiently as possible (thats the whole point of a test). There are some things that deadlines must be kept, just like there are moments in life where you have to produce results. If you cannot produce results in the given time, then you simply are not at a level where others can do so. This has how the university has weeded out the weak for a long time now.
This isn't to say that I don't feel bad for the guy. However, in a world of rules, and a university meant to put students under pressure, the best produce the greatest results in their given time while the weaker ones dont. If he cannot finish an exam in the alloted time, he simply does not have the capabilities to be a higher end student and should be catagorized as such. The professor is just using the rule to ensure fairness and weed out the weak students, which by all means is the way to go.
On March 05 2011 10:29 Gak2 wrote: what I hated most was when the prof would say "pencils down" and I'd put my pencil down for fear of losing marks, and the guy beside me blatantly kept writing up until his exam was collected and wouldn't get penalized at all
Just wanted to say that I agree with this. The feeling sucks when you know you could have fixed something but you didn't stop in fear of not wanting to get failed (like in my example)
To answer some general questions I saw while skimming replies: This is a fourth year university class. TA = Teacher's Assistant. They mark assignments and administer exams. There are three of them, all of which have probably enforced this policy between the two (so far) tests. The professor in question is actually conducting a study on the quality standards of university classes- so he's super strict, but very helpful as a professor. He has a policy in which he will answer all questions within 24 hours, not a bad guy by any means. There are about 150 people in the class, and it is curved. That means that the average is around a B/B+ (3.2/4.0) and it goes from there. I'm pretty sure he will be failed. Looking at the first test, there were 5/150 students who received 0-5% on the exam. The rest of the distribution follows a reasonable bell curve. All the students enrolled in the class attended. The exam was multiple choice with 5 choices, so 0-5% means 0-1 /20 questions correct. My assumption is that anybody in this range of marks was likely disqualified for one reason or another. This is an engineering class. By the code of ethics of the school and the code of ethics of our provincial engineering board, we MUST uphold ethical standards. I think that the rule is a bit harsh, but having a quantifiable border on rules is much better than a wishy-washy grey area. What upsets me is the fact that this student, in full knowledge of the rules, cheated. That is undeniable, whether the rules set in place are realistic or not.
And I kind of see Hynda's point. I've always felt that written examinations are one of the worst ways to measure one's intelligence. However, it's logistically impossible to do virtually anything else.
lol I just thought the story was anecdotal with the TA head-fake, but looks like we got some good discussion about it.
On March 05 2011 09:10 SpicyCrab wrote: I really don't see how a "trap" like this is going to further the goal of educating this student.
Will he have learned any more as a result of this? Will he understand the material better? Will any one in the class understand it better as a result of this?
I suppose the logic of this is that it needs to be 100% fair for every one! Nobody should get an extra two seconds!
It seems to me that this kind of thing is just... backwards.
i don't know what you mean. there's no pedagogical technique that's relevant in the context of dealing with a cheating student. school is a business that will break down if cheaters aren't actively pursued and punished. if the goal is to teach him it's the right course of action to first teach him to not cheat.
more importantly say this guy uses that extra time to get a better mark than someone else who stopped on time, who otherwise would have gotten a better mark. what if both of them applied to the same grad school and with one spot left, it came down to who had the better grade, well then that's just bullshit. we can be idealists and talk about the best way to teach someone, but let's get real.
When I TA, I always tell my students that if they hand in their assignments one minute late (by uoft standard, that's actually about 11 minutes late), they will receive a 50% reduction in their grades. So, when someone hands in their work late, I will always make a note on that and say it's 50% reduction. In reality, I only write that they lost 50% - I record their grades as if it was handed in on time.
The point of the 'rule' is to make sure the students hand in their work on time, not to make someone's life miserable. This is why I don't actually penalize people who are occasionally late.
In high schools it's becoming very difficult for teachers to enforce rules and prevent cheating. If you see a student cheating you better have video evidence, notarized statements from three witnesses, and a successful polygraph before you attempt to penalize the student. Otherwise, the parent will be down your throat, you will be abandoned by your superiors, and you will end up looking like the asshole. Even if you do manage to make your case successfully the kid will get a slap on the wrist as everyone's hands are tied.
This is of course trickling into college/university. Lots of kids think they can do whatever they want, even in a college class. Some professors are very up front about their rules and expectations. These rules and expectations should be approved by the institution, in general. If they are, then students must follow them... even if it means getting a 0 when you bubble after the 'stop time.'
There was a thread recently where a majority of tl users pointed out that they are okay with cheating on academic tests/etc. This is in a community of higher-than-average academic performers (or so I'd believe).
If you want to make the claim 'strictly timed tests are a poor measurement tool in education' then you definitely can. However, you chose to go to an institution which is obviously 'okay' with strictly timed tests. If you think the way that institution is doing things is stupid then go somewhere else. Now the problem of course is that most college classes have strictly timed tests. This is a VALID complaint but also not really relevant to the specific case in the OP.
I have a couple of students who can't seem to perform well on timed tests. Things that they understood a moment ago they can't seem to demonstrate on a test question... and they get it wrong. Most likely their vocational aspirations do not include "taking timed written tests on this topic" so it's not the most fair way to compare them to their classmate whose brain works differently such that they generally do well on tests... at least as well as they did in activities while learning the material. Actually it's pretty freaking amazing how much difficulty some students have with tests. This along with other weaknesses students show depending on circumstances lead me to a daily mental thought of "OMG I DIDN'T KNOW SUCH STUPIDITY COULD EXIST IN THE UNIVERSE" but it's really just the nature of the beast I guess.
Moral of the story: If a hard-ass professor tells you not to bubble after time is up, DO NOT BUBBLE AFTER TIME IS UP. If he says he is going to fail you, assume he will fail you. If you don't like his pedagogy... well.... what percentage of college professors have good pedagogy? If the professor's biggest fault is that he won't accommodate people that don't follow his instructions, you are actually in pretty good shape in the grand scheme of things.
Let's face it, society works because of rules. If every one felt like this guy EVERYONE would keep writing beyond the time limit. He's basically taking advantage of the fact that others are following the rules.
In Canada we've had a huge problem with cheating in Universities. You can imagine how something like this must have started. One student cheated. Others began to think why should the student that cheated get such an unfair advantage especially when such actions can be rewarded after graduation in the form of jobs and status. That's when it becomes a big problem.
But anyways, it reminds me of a time when one of my profs was handing out a test, he explicitly said, "Do not start until I tell you to" He saw some dude starting on the test when he got it, and then failed him on the spot.
People who start early/finish late always pisses me off, since ideally test conditions are supposed to be the same for everyone. But when people do that, visibly in front of your faces, you definitely feel cheated.
I mean you could be like, how does this relate to education or anything? Maybe not, but on the other hand, he is cheating other students out of their respective times. Perhaps it's not so much a lesson about time management as much as don't freakin cheat others.
In any case, the professor set the rules before hand. If the rules are that arbitrary, or stupid, then you take it up with the professor before the test is set. Otherwise, you implicitly agree to the rules that he has set, and thus any penalty given shouldn't come as a surprise or seen as harsh.
As a side note, I feel like most professors are pretty good about setting a correct test length. Even for the long tests, it wasn't about how FAST you were thinking, but rather how WELL you understood the material. If you weren't comfortable with the material, then of course you were going to take a longer time, and do worse. Most of the solutions for any test weren't particularly long or take a lot of calculations to do, but rather just figuring out the correct approach, in which being comfortable with the material helps a lot more than just thinking fast. Although I do agree that written tests aren't exactly the best way to assess someone's knowledge, it's not like they aren't so terrible that they don't either.
It isn't mere 'rounding out' or completing an answer when he had 3-4 notifications at that point that time was up. The kid quite obviously measured risk to reward, and thought the chances were good for him.
EPT
