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427 points JumpCrisscross | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.609s | source
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skhunted ◴[] No.41904004[source]
I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating.

The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class. The only solution I see is the Higher Learning Commission mandating this for all classes.

But even requiring in person proctored exams is not the full solution. Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. And that work is increasingly cheating. It’s a clusterfuck. I have calculus students who don’t know how to work with fractions. If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

K-12 needs to be changed as well.

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1. thesuitonym ◴[] No.41904934[source]
> Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass.

This is because 100-200 level math courses are not about teaching anything, but about filtering out students who can't do the work. Once you get past that level students have already formed bad habits and so still only do what it takes to pass. I don't know how to fix it, I don't know if it CAN be fixed.

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2. skhunted ◴[] No.41905053[source]
This is because 100-200 level math courses are not about teaching anything, but about filtering out students who can't do the work.

This is 100% incorrect.

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3. michaelt ◴[] No.41905919[source]
Have you ever heard of "weed-out courses" ?

Admittedly, they are about teaching things. For example, teaching Laplace transforms to mechanical engineers. It certainly isn't true to say the "courses are not about teaching anything".

But if 20% of the class should decide to change majors to business? Well, there's been some filtering out of students too.