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427 points JumpCrisscross | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | 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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golergka ◴[] No.41906190[source]
I never understood why americans do their exams with multi-option tests. Even if you don't cheat, these tests don't actually test knowledge, just memoization.

For me a proper exam is when you get a topic, spend 30 minutes in a classroom preparing, and then sit down with an examiner to tell him about this topic and answer all the follow-up questions.

We don't do multi-option tests at software interviews, and for a good reason. Why do them in a uni?

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1. jasperry ◴[] No.41908137[source]
A big reason is that it's quicker and more objective to grade, making the heavy workload of teachers a little easier to shoulder.

I don't completely agree that multiple-choice questions can't test real knowledge. It is possible to write multiple-choice questions that require deep thinking and problem solving to select the correct answer (modulo a 25% chance of getting it right with a guess.)

It's true that MC questions can't evaluate the problem-solving process. You can't see how the student thought or worked through the problem unless you have them write things out. But again, that's a tradeoff with the time it takes to evaluate the students' responses.