Hacker News Reader

Comment by mekoka | Hacker News Reader

So, does this mean I can register an account on Math StackExchange and ask for help with an alias, which is possibly a fellow student's actual name and that person will be penalized for my cheating?

View on HN

You could, someone actually commented there, asking the prof:

>"how do you know who posted the question? In this forum anyone can post under any name...".

The prof replied (as an answer, not a comment):

>"Anyone stupid enough to cheat is stupid enough to use their own name."

http://math.stackexchange.com/a/257156/23944

Since it will most likely be deleted by the mods very soon (merely because its not a mathematical answer), here is the screenshot

http://i.imgur.com/TtqHG.png

So, to be fair, we don't know if the prof is using his real name or it's just a friend of the OP trying to pull a prank. We'll probably never know.

Does this prof seriously think only stupid people cheat?

Maybe he thinks that only stupid people cheat stupidly.

Well it's a professor, so he probably really does think only stupid people cheat.

>"Anyone stupid enough to cheat is stupid enough to use their own name."

Darn. You'd think if there's anyone who could be trusted to not affirm the consequent, it would be a math professor.

Yep, but we can't know if it's really him, it could be a fellow student as far as we know...

In this case that's a premise, not an argument, i.e. not a fallacy.

As with the recording industry, the teaching industry's business model needs to change. Grading students on homework that can easily be googled is no longer an acceptable means of assessing work and aptitude.

I heard a cool piece on NPR the other day, talking about the benefits some schools and students are seeing by implementing flip teaching. Essentially, the hour long lectures are presented as a podcast/video/whatever and are to be viewed at home. This allows the students (and parents for that matter) to take as much time as needed, rewind, etc.

Then at class, the students do their homework, with the teacher helping and grading the work.

I'm really intrigued by this, and think there is a future for this method, given how technology has progressed.

That is really cool. I hope it gets enough adoption we can see if it really helps.

I sent this to a friend who's deputy head at a school in the UK about 18 months ago and they're now using it to great effect in a few subjects: http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...

That's actually more-or-less the "traditional" british and american method of teaching (at least at the college level); historically, one was expected to show up in class having already studied the material to be discussed and prepared with questions to ask about points that were unclear.

I'm not sure at what point it got "flipped" around to the current state where students expect to learn the material in lecture and then study their notes, but attempting to flip it back seems like a good idea.

Many teachers agree, unfortunately they do not set policy in regards to what is taught and how to assess that teaching.

"the teaching industry's business model needs to change. Grading students on homework that can easily be googled is no longer an acceptable means of assessing work and aptitude"

Do you think assignments are designed this way because of an "industry business model"?

This would barely even make sense if you were discussing private/charter schools.

You're thinking of "business model" too narrowly. Think of my use of the term as being metaphorical if that helps.

Very good question, you have a point. This comes down to the whole question of "ip = person" obviously you cant, there is no definitive link.

But at the same time does it mean its open season on cheating via the internet? There has to be some middle ground. How to go about that, i have no idea.

At least when I was in school, you had the right to a hearing for any alleged violation of the rules.

Just a thought - may be the student_id is the question itself? As in all students got different, unique questions, and therefore the prof can easily identify the person by looking at the question?

I'm guessing you've never had to create a final exam. The mere thought of creating unique questions for each student is enough to make me hibernate all winter.

I had an engineering professor who programmatically created unique exams (random numbers + randomly shuffled types of questions). It actually made his job a lot easier because grading was done via scantron. What I didn't like is there was no partial credit from showing your work.

I've had exams where the question was essentially the same, except that everyone had unique parameters.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com