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Preventing Networked Gizmo Use During Exams?
bcrowell writes "I'm a college physics professor. My students all want to use calculators during exams, and some of them whose native language isn't English also want to use electronic dictionaries. I had a Korean student who was upset and dropped the course when I told her she couldn't use her iPod during an exam — she said she used it as a dictionary. It gets tough for me to distinguish networked devices (iPhone? iTouch?) from non-networked ones (calculator? electronic dictionary? iPod?). I give open-notes exams, so it's not memory that's an issue, it's networking. Currently our classrooms have poor wireless receptivity (no Wi-Fi, possible cell, depending on your carrier), but as of spring 2011 we will have Wi-Fi everywhere. What's the best way to handle this? I'd prefer not to make them all buy the same overpriced graphing calculator. I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less-adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one."
You can make WiFi unusable, however. Or you could alter the classroom so RF cannot enter through the walls or ceiling. And turn off the wireless AP in the room during exam time.
I suppose convincing the university to alter the classroom in this manner could be difficult, but they could also see the value in having some exam rooms that are essentially faraday cages
I was just on the other side of this situation a few years ago as a student. I worried that some other students were getting unfair advantages because of their devices. I would recommend getting some generic cheap calculators for the exam or doing away with the need for calculators at all. Consider the physics GRE doesn't allow calculators. As for translation devices it is only fair to let students use them, but you may want to work with some university accessibility office to find appropriate devices and restrict the rest. Of course you have to lay all of this out on the first day of class and remind students repeatedly before the exams.
When I took undergraduate physics, there were no calculators allowed... there were no numbers on the exams. Problems were like "If you throw a rock horizontally off a bridge at (v) m/s and it hits the ground after (t) seconds, how far away from the base of the bridge did the rock hit the ground, and how tall is the bridge?" And then the student has to understand that this problem requires the use of the projectile motion equations, and they to know what the question is actually asking and solve for it:
w = v t
h = g t^2
One particularly sadistic (but awesome) professor asked a question like this "Suppose you're stuck in the middle of a frozen pond with a perfectly smooth (frictionless) surface. Propose a way to escape the pond." My (correctly marked) proposal was throw away a shoe. Of course, I could show equations for conservation of momentum, but the point was to see if students understood what it meant to be a frictionless surface and to simply be aware of conservation of momentum.
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Absolutely. I attended a technical college that ran the exams on an Honor System. Most exams were open-book. Professors were not allowed in the classroom once the exam began. The exams were not about how much you could memorize, but how much you understood.
For any student who needs something that is not allowed for other students, they have to go talk to their schools Americans with disabilities rep. Otherwise they are giving that student an unfair advantage.
How do you know the one girl doesn't speak good enough English for your test? Perhaps she speaks/reads great English, but only tells you she doesnt to get access to a device that the other students arnt allowed to.
Note: This assumes the case in question is in the US.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I see your point, but there's a wide gap between accommodating disabilities and accommodating those who have chosen to come to an institution where classes are taught and examined in English.
I'm very much aware and in favour of the fact that our society is multicultural, but I also think the person making the choice (be that moving to a particular country, attending a particular educational institution, whatever) should be the one to make the effort. It's a standard that I consider fair, and one I am more than willing to apply to myself.
> Well, I am not sure that this is the right approach
Der... ya think?
Jamming cellular signals is a federal crime.
What a jackass.
Before you spout off obscenities, first you should understand this depends on what country you're in. Also that in the US, the legalities are not clear as the applicable law was written in 1934 and no real precedent or clarification has been set in the courts yet. In fact, the FCC has not prosecuted a single instance of localized cell-phone jamming. One interpretation is that its perfectly legal if the jamming doesn't extend beyond your private property.
That reminds me my CS grad school. There was a large percentage of Indian students and I found that regardless if they were good or bad (obviously there were both kinds) their defining characteristic was that they stuck together. When they were TA's (quite common) there were some weird things going on that the Professors were oblivious of. For example, I had a homework that involved storing some flight data on a db2 database, then a gui front-end that allowed you to select from/to locations and gave you the flight sequence that would make your trip. The specification gave 2-3 queries that you should test your solution on. Well, I got 95% for an error that was sort of cosmetic, i.e. not part of the algorithm used. I did not like it and I wondered how the TA graded the rest of the class. As luck would have it, he was one of the students that did not know what "your home directory is world readable by default" means and I got the spreadsheet with the results. Most of the Indians had 100%. I found one girl of those 100% who both had her home dir readable, and had her homework in there. To my amazement her homework involved a gui with HARDCODED results for the 2-3 "test queries"! No sql queries, nothing!
An even better story took place a year after I graduated. An Indian guy was trying to cheat during the midterm and the professor warned him. He tried to cheat at the final again and the professor told him "you are getting an F, I already warned you". So the guy responds "but what about all the guys that submitted the same project?". Haha, the professor looked at the projects which were graded by his Indian TA and half of them (belonging to the Indian students) were the same! It had never occurred to the Professors what was going on. Well, the students got away with just an F (well it could screw their funding though).
Again, I am not saying that Indians are bad, they have more or less the same variety as Americans, Europeans etc, the problem is that by sticking together so much and considering that "natural", you really have a hard time weeding out the good from the bad.
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