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Nice one! I heard/read a similar story where in some math exams the teachers provided “faulty” calculators to all students in order to see which students relied to the result of the calculator screen and which of them used their logic and common knowledge to understand when a result is wrong. The calculators didn’t produce errors obvious like 1+1=3 but more like 22/7=3. Nice tactic and highly educational lesson :-)

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You might as well ask them to do the exam on a cliffs edge, or with a gun pointed at them. Fucking with students during an event that can have huge long term consequences for their future is shamefully cruel, if you ask me.

The shamefully cruel part is that some random exam can have long term consequences.

Well, I don't agree with messing with people in stressful situations, but at this point we are better controlling the consequences of those exams.

You need to measure learning, you can't make exams trivial. If the consequences are that large, they will always be problematic.

Frankly, even a working calculator can induce the same problem. My school allowed calculators with a “solve” function to be used on calculus tests, and a staggering number of people would directly transcribe whatever output it gave, regardless of how nonsensical. “NaN” was a favorite.

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