Because technological superiority doesn't drive the market.
I don't agree with this. The video card market is all about benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks. If your card produces better numbers, you are the market leader.
The fact is that most companies can not just simply say "Lets open source our code" without having to take a look at each and every product and make sure that there aren't restrictions on them doing that.
I'd agree that there's potentially problems with this. However, AFAIK, the nVidia drivers are based on the original XFree86 drivers.
If they simply open source it, they shoot themselves in the foot in terms of making that investment back because the competing companies (or local linux hacker) can learn of the methods, produce a similar (perhaps "better") version of the product
I find this hard to swallow. Is it really cheaper to hack at something a competitor wrote for completely different hardware than it is to rewrite it yourself ? It seems this only has merit if the company makes money through licensing its inhouse technology. In any case, they could always use a restrictive license which ties the product to their own hardware. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that companies are scared of change. ( which is why they were also cautious about releasing hardware specs )
Most of the money making models around open source software center on profits through support and services.
or so the mantra goes. But this is a fallacy. Noone appears to be making real profits from support. The real profits come from selling hardware, which is what nVidia do. A video card is a bundle consisting of drivers and hardware. Bad drivers == bad video card ( or so the benchmarks, which drive sales, would have you believe ). The drivers are not sold seperately, they're part of the package which includes the video card.
Red Hat, VA, Caldera, etc can make money.
Of those three, I'd argue that only VA can make good money because they sell hardware. The others are trying to sell tiny little box sets, which isn't very profitable. The theory that "money comes from support" just isn't flying -- Linux users are usually both cheap ( why choose Linux over Solaris ? Cost. ) and self-sufficient, which makes them a bad support market.
NVIDIA, according to certain sources I have, are in a lot more trouble than they appear to be,
As the market leader, they don't appear to be in any trouble. So that's a somewhat vacuous claim.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. The sort of maneuvering going on here is indicative of a shift in corporate strategy as NVIDIA discover that providing support for the freeware operating systems is at best a drain on their programming expertise and resources, and at worst a public relations nightmare as investors shy away from any company involved with "open-source", a dubious business model at best.
Sorry to debunk your fantasy, but this is the opposite of the truth. Who are nVidia losing business to ? All their competitors are moving towards , not away from supporting OpenSource software. So if it's a "public relations nightmare", it's one that they share with all of their competitors. If supporting Linux is proving costly, you'd think they'd release the source to their drivers, and recruit some free labor. Why spend money on developing drivers when someone else can do a better job for free ?
Mark my words, you will see less and less from NVIDIA on Linux as they attempt to sneak back into the lucrative and reputable Windows market.
This comment presupposes that nVidia are no longer "in" the "lucrative Windows market". To which I can only say "ha ha ha ha ha ha"...
When I purchased my video card (TNT), they supported Linux as well as anyone else. They were developing Linux 3D drivers, which was considered unusual. However, they seem to have almost orphaned their drivers, without giving up the source code.
It's worth mentioning that the nVidia cards are all supported, it's just that other cards are overtaking them in the degree of support, because they are shutting the openSource developers out of the game.
That said, suffice it to say that the next card I buy won't be an nVidia.
I thought that a lot of the problem had to do with patents on antialiasing fonts.
The patents only apply to TrueType IIRC. So they could still do it with Type1. The real problems are technical. X has its own font-handling mechanism, and adding grey-scaling to it would require a rework of that.
BTW, you can add TrueTYpe fonts now, you don't need to wait. Redhat 6.x already supports TrueType out of the box, other distributions can support it via xfstt. Download yourself the Microsoft font pack, and your screen should look just fine.
Also, from what others have said, from an ergonomic perspective Antialiasing is quite bad. Well hinted fonts are preferable.
But...What exactly would be involved with doing this? It can't be something as simple as just adding something like freetype (which I believe does support anti-aliasing, and is quite popular) into XFree -- can it?
No. There is a lot more to it than this. Xfsft ( and consequently, all 6.x releases of Redhat ) "add freetype" as does XFree 4. The problem is that X "thinks" that all fonts are monochrome bitmaps. Fixing this problem requires a rewrite of the X font protocol. It's almost impossible to do this without losing some backward compatibility.
I hope this doesn't get moderated down now that I've opened this post at "1".
Yeah, I am with you. I got a TNT because it was one of the better cards to use with Linux. I suggest you try to get a refund directly from nVidia if for no other reason than to send a loud message to them that they just lost a customer. I got my TNT(1) because at the time, it was one of the better Linux cards ( the Matrox drivers were still in their infancy ) and Matrox didn't have decent OpenGL Windows drivers. Oh, how the tables have turned !
Nowadays, nVidia's drivers are stagnating because they don't have the time or inclination to put the same amount of development muscle into their Linux drivers as the OpenSource developers. Meanwhile, Matrox have developed decent Windows drivers, and the OpenSource drivers are making steady progress. There is no question in my mind that my next card will not be one of nVidia's. The only question is , should I
Grab an ``old'' Voodoo 2 on top of what I have
Get a Voodoo 3
Go with Matrox
I think I'll wait till the G400 price-drops a little then go with that.
BTW, I don't know what you mean about "better benchmarks". Benchmarks are largely a function of the drivers, and nVidia where miles in front for some time because they had better Windows drivers. Any benchmark under Linux would show the Matrox card to be superior, and even under Windows, Matrox's drivers have got substantially better ( there's a recent benchmark showing the G400 putting up a fair fight against the TNT2 )
I'd imagine that you'd have a hard time getting all ``geeks'' to agree on (1), (2) and (4). (1) would have broad enough support in the OpenSource community that an ``OpenSource lobby'' would probably support them. I am not clear on what you mean by (4) ( something that's not open or published is not really a standard ).
(2) is moderately problematic, because if you get rid of all restrictions on fair use, then copying and redistributing an entire copyrighted work would be fair use. Perhaps this is not precisely what you meant.
This is precisely the problem. Geeks are not a homogeneous group, and there are a lot of issues that they don't agree on. The problem is, I doubt you'd ever see them as a voting bloc. You're not going to get a democrat geek voting republican ( or vice versa ) over a few tech issues. Moreover, there is a lot of contention about many of these so-called ``geek issues.'' For example, not all geeks are opposed to copyright. Not all geeks want``open everything''.
Before you even talk about a ``geek lobby'', you need to decide what this lobby stands for. There are clearly some issues ( say, gun-control; republican-or-democrat-or-other ) where there'll never be agreement. Perhaps it's possible to create some kind of manifesto and/or policy platform, but drawing widespread support for it, even among geeks, could prove difficult.
Re:Cheating is not an issue.
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If the exam is open web, the issue is whether the students can find and answer questions accurately (and perhaps coherently).
That's great if the exam is about using search engines. But unless the course is intended to serve as an introduction to using a web browser, it seems inappropriate.
There are different ways of getting an answer, in the end it is results that matter in the real world.
In the real world, you don't work under exam conditions. Ifr your goal is to "simulate the real world", a homework assignment ( where students could use any means including the web to do research ) would be a better means of this assesment than this exam..
You fail to address my main objection -- that it does not adequately serve the purpose of a traditional exam ( namely that you know that you are evaluating the student and not someone else ) or a written assignment ( which provides a more in depth educational experience )
To me, this whole thing just smacks of "technology for the sake of technology". I don't see how it offers any tangible advantage over more traditional methods of assesment.
As I said, tests shouldn't be about what you know, but about what you understand.
Oddly enough, the people who "understand" usually "know" as well. Knowing is necessary, but insufficient.
Knowing stuff is just regurgitating facts,
Not always. I "know" my physics formulae years after I've taken physics, because I understand the concepts. It can be "regurgitating the facts". It can also be a by-product of comprehension ( not to mention doing ones homework ). In math ( where I work ), the students who do a lot of problems will not only obtain the "knowledge", but they'll also obtain comprehension and application skills. Exams should not be just about what you know -- they should test comprehension and application. And a well written exam will do this.
The way you talk, you make it sound as though there exist students that "understand the concepts" but somehow don't know anything. During my years as a TA, I've found this to be false. It's simply impossible to understand a topic if you don't know the fundamentals.
The Web would be used, in this case, for gathering facts, not gathering opinions.
The idea of pursuing research in an exam setting is just absurd. No-one conducts any meaningful research in such a setting. This kind of exam is just as easy to cheat on as a homework assignment, but fails to offer the educational benefits of an in-depth project.
hey are there to teach things like critical thinking, research and writing skills,
You will never be able to teach research or deep problem solving skills in an exam. Exams are primarily to test basic competency, comprehension, and application of the knowledge as taught in class.
For some courses, this is sufficient, because the courses are designed to simply provide the student with basic competency in the subject matter ( for example, college algebra ). In other courses, especially higher level courses, this is certainly not sufficient, and a greater emphasis on alternative methods of assesment ( oral exams, group work, written assignments, take home exams ) are more appropriate.
You say that emphasis should be placed on research -- and I agree with you. Indeed, upper level courses typically do place more emphasis on this. But exams are not the place to do research.
Re:More money = better grade at the end?
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Again, I put it to you that you've never been poor. When I went through college, I had $30- Australian spending money a week which was to cover everything except food and accomodation. Depending on what kind of social activity you participate in, going out could cost anywhere from $0- to infinity.
I'd agree that most people spend more than $14- a week on their social activity. However, it's certainly true that not everyone can afford $14- a week on top of what they're already spending ( especially if it's an up-front cost )
On exams, it's pretty hard to cheat and actually benefit from cheating. I've rarely seen students who cheated and did well as a result of cheating.
people used to make the same arguments about what calculator use would do to math exams.
They're not a problem -- sometimes it is appropriate to allow calculators, sometimes it isn't. I've observed that a lot of people use calculators to perform very simple calculations though. They are too often used as a crutch. Curiously enough, the people that use calculators to evaluate 2+2 rarely display superior problem solving skills.
in a couple of years, i think it will be impossible to prevent people from bring a computer to exams anyway.
You could make the same argument about calculators today. But you can simply ask that noone brings calculators, internet appliances, superpowered cellphones, or whatever into the exam.
What is tested in schools now is mostly the ability of a student to retain knowledge
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong...
You are also required to be able to apply understand and your knowledge. I teach at a university, and even at the college algebra level, students are expected to understand how to apply their formulae to the dreaded "word problems". They need to know how a formula applies, and how to solve the equations in question.
What if, instead of being tested on how much the brain can retain, we are tested on how fast the brain can use all of it's available resources to find the information it needs to complete a given problem. That tests creativity, adaptability and resourcefulness rather than just memorization
Great ! Now tell us how to test these things within the constraints of a two hour exam. Forcing the students to learn to use excite doesn't cut it.
Now that we are entering the information age
It's buzzword time...
the information itself becomes less important than its meaning with respect to the information associated with it.
The internet is no substitute for basic competency. Suppose my supervisor asks me what the monotone convergence theorem is. It's graduate school material, and it would take at least an hour to answer it using the internet, 5 minutes to find it in a book, and 10 seconds to recall it from my basic understanding of what it says. What it cmoes down to is this -- you don't want your physicists having to open up a web browser to look up "F = ma".
Re:More money = better grade at the end?
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It's unfair, but at the same time, why is it important to know how to do everything by hand if you know how to make a machine do it for you?
Once we have real AI, people will ask "why should I need to think" ? The point is that these skills are essential . Integration involves more problem solving than it does memorization. These skills are essential to solve problems you encounter later on, many of which are too general for a calculator to solve.
you don't have to spend hours memorizing regular expression syntax
No, you don't because you can memorize most of what you need in a few minutes ( or after writing one or two programs ).
because you have your "Perl in a Nutshell" book on the desk, and you'll memorize eventually by doing anyway
Just owning the book won't help you memorize. You need to use the book. The students who do their homework will learn the basic syntax as a by product.
I think the ability to find information is going to become much more important than being able to memorize it.
This is important, and you evaluate these skills with research projects and take home exams, you don't evaluate these skills in class.
There's far too much out there to be able to know it all, and the people who will excel are the people who know where to find information they need in short order.
However, the people who lack basic competency and don't do their homework ( which is what the exams test for ) will not excel at anything.
However I think this is an inherent fault of technology and its associated cost;
At least within the US, a used desktop is cheap , or even free.
Re:More money = better grade at the end?
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If they've got $25 to spend on beer each week ( 1k per year ), then they're not poor IMO.
BTW, a desktop is a much smarter investment for a poor student. For less than $500- you can get a decent PC. Laptops are somewhat more costly.
I don't see how you'd need to quote some random webkook to write an essay on Hamlet, but that's JMHO. Moreover, I don't agree with the idea of "learning" or "searching for information" during an exam. You should already know the fundamentals, and also know what you don't know ( for example, physical constants, function tables ) and bring what you don't know to the exam with you. ( If it's appropriate ). To me, this web thing strikes me as a case of technology for its own sake.
Assuming these tests are supposed to be some sort of test of your use in the real world.
In the real world, you don't start a project, and turn in the solution to your box 2 hours later. Exams are designed to test basic knowledge of and competency with the subject matter. They are not designed to test research skills, or skills at solving hard problems, in fact they are woefully inadequate at this.
Obviously, if you lack basic knowledge are woefully incompetent with your subject matter, you will not be of any use in "the real world".
Personally, if I'm running some sort of company that makes use in organic chemistry, I'm not going to care about any of my employess organic chemistry skill or knowledge,
I'd certainly hope they had some skill and/or knowledge. Obviously, it's not the only criterion, but surely, there's a minimum acceptable level ? As a mathematician, I have great problem solving skills, but I'm not much use as an organic chemist, because I don't know anything about chemistry.
Sure, asking for help is OK. Research projects ( which often involve or even require collaboration ) are a good idea. But an exam is not a research project.
so I think all that should matter in university classes is the ability to solve the problems in question
Yes, but how do you measure this accurately ? What if the student pays a tutor to solve the problems ? In this case, the student hasn't solved the problems, a tutor has. And the method the student has used ( paying a tutor to do it ) is not going to be a very succesful strategy in the work place.
There is certainly a place for collaboration, where students work with other students and jointly solve problems ( ie not one person doing the problem for someone else ).
Like it or not, if you're in a university class, you're not doing it for acadaemic purposes anymore.
The fact that grades have become so important makes it all the more important to make sure that the assesment mechanism is fair.
Yeah this will surely solve those last two problems you noted. Once I can take an exam home there is no way the instructor can stop me from cheating. And surely this also gives me a greater opportunity to learn the material during the exam.
My point exactly ! These "take home exams" perform the same function as homework assignments, they are not really exams in the traditional sense, and shouldn't be used as a direct substitute for traditional exams. Either you do want students to be able to do their own in depth research for the assesment in question, or you don't.
If you do want the student to be able to do some real research and information gathering, then a take home exam gives the students the opportunity to adress more in-depth questions. ( BTW, I'm studying PhD in math. I agree that you can't put hard proofs on exams. Even qualifying exam questions are usually of the "follow-your-nose" variety. ) There is no advantage to having an exam for this kind of thing.
On the other hand, if you don't want in depth research or very tough questions to be a part of the assesment, there is no advantage of offering unrestricted web access.
The standard deviation is a fairly intuitive beast. You shouldn't memorise it, you should understand it. First up, you need to to understand the variance. Variance just average deviation ( squared to get rid of +/- issues ) divided by n-1 ( You don't want it to be n because it shouldn't be defined unless your data set has two or more elements. )
As for calculating it, I'd say it's pointless to compute a complex example by hand. A data set with 2-4 points, all integers, where the mean is also an integer seems more like fair game.
BTW, I have not taken any stats course since 1992. I can't remember anything from back then, I can only derive.
I don't think anyone's claiming that data is physical.
Simply put, when you make a copy, the original entity is neither damaged or destroyed.
That's a fairly short sighted viewpoint. The problem is this -- how should the costs of producing intellectual work be distributed ? And copyright provides a way of sharing the said costs. It basically dictates that everyone who uses a copy pays an equal share ( though the copyright holder may choose to exercise some discretion here ). This seems reasonably fair. There is competition to constrain prices. It is true that copying is easy but creating the intellectual work is hard, and the question is how should the cost of creating such work be distributed ? And copyright provides a fairly good answer. Copyright does not prevent other models from coexisting, and no other model has truiumphed over the copyright model. This would suggest that copyright is superior to other models.
We should be allowed open access to the unrestricted copying and redistribution as long as the originals are unchanged, undamaged whatever and that all subsequent copies keep their integrity. Published or in the wild data should be immanently shareable,
Well that's a nice idea. Let's just make everything free. The problem is that it fails to answer tough questions such as -- what financial incentive is there to create intellectual work under your proposal ? If there really is a better way, why is it that the copyright model dominates ?
I'm not a big fan of the DMCA, but on the other hand, I don't see copyright as a "thing of the past". You certainly haven't provided any evidence that there's "comething of the future" to replace it.
I am not clear on what they hope to achieve. I have some objections:
I don't believe that you can adequately test research skills within the constraints of an exam. Written exams are really only suited to testing basic knowledge/competency. This kind of thing needs to be tested in longer take-home exams or homework assignments. I would also dispute the quality of a lot of material on the web. Rather than quoting academic journals, you'll have people citing "some guy on da web".
Students should know the material fairly well before taking the exam. They should not need to learn it during the exam. Hence the text book plus notes should be more than adequate for this kind of thing.
As has already been pointed out, this makes cheating almost impossible to stop. Perhaps the only advantage of exams as a means of assesment is that it makes cheating fairly difficult. With this initiative, you possibly blow your only advantage. In conclusion, perhaps they should scrap this in favour of take-home exams or assignments.
Some people will say this is cheating, but I disagree. A fellow before me pointed out that universities to not teach people to memorize information so much as they teach people how to use it.
It may not be cheating, but it certainly makes cheating easier. Here's my main objection -- the students should basically know everything prior to the exam, and with the help of a cheat-sheet, they should have all the information they need. They shouldn't need dig around to answer the questions. Moreover, research is not the kind of thing that should be performed in an exam room ( IMHO )
Re: Computers are not environmentally friendly
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... though laptops are somewhat better than desktops because they have no CRT. One of the problems with computers is the high "churn" rate, and this in itself creates an awful lot of hazardous waste.
This school appears to have realized that the real skill is in being able to find and sort through information you're looking for, not memorise a specific set of "facts."
A lot of Universities ( and even some high schools ) allow you to take small "cheat-sheets" into class to de-emphasise the memory work. You're probably going to see more of this type of thing when you go to university.
However there is a case to be made for actually knowing enough to be able to answer questions without looking at your notes every two seconds. You'll find that if you use your books/notes as a crutch during an open book/open note exam, you will choke. Exams are not about "finding" infrmation "you're looking for". You should already basically know it, and use your references as a memory jolt. "Finding" information is a lengthy process that is better tested by a research project/assignment as opposed to an exam.
But truth is, Internet is here and what can you do about it.
At the very least, you can close loopholes that make cheating in exams possible ( or easy ). One of the advantages of open-book, is at least the prof knows what sources the students have available to them.
As for converting binaries by hand, etc, what is wrong with basic numeracy ? Seriously, the people that can't add two and two without a calculator shouldn't be in a university to begin with.
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I don't agree with this. The video card market is all about benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks. If your card produces better numbers, you are the market leader.
The fact is that most companies can not just simply say "Lets open source our code" without having to take a look at each and every product and make sure that there aren't restrictions on them doing that.
I'd agree that there's potentially problems with this. However, AFAIK, the nVidia drivers are based on the original XFree86 drivers.
If they simply open source it, they shoot themselves in the foot in terms of making that investment back because the competing companies (or local linux hacker) can learn of the methods, produce a similar (perhaps "better") version of the product
I find this hard to swallow. Is it really cheaper to hack at something a competitor wrote for completely different hardware than it is to rewrite it yourself ? It seems this only has merit if the company makes money through licensing its inhouse technology. In any case, they could always use a restrictive license which ties the product to their own hardware. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that companies are scared of change. ( which is why they were also cautious about releasing hardware specs )
Most of the money making models around open source software center on profits through support and services.
or so the mantra goes. But this is a fallacy. Noone appears to be making real profits from support. The real profits come from selling hardware, which is what nVidia do. A video card is a bundle consisting of drivers and hardware. Bad drivers == bad video card ( or so the benchmarks, which drive sales, would have you believe ). The drivers are not sold seperately, they're part of the package which includes the video card.
Red Hat, VA, Caldera, etc can make money.
Of those three, I'd argue that only VA can make good money because they sell hardware. The others are trying to sell tiny little box sets, which isn't very profitable. The theory that "money comes from support" just isn't flying -- Linux users are usually both cheap ( why choose Linux over Solaris ? Cost. ) and self-sufficient, which makes them a bad support market.
As the market leader, they don't appear to be in any trouble. So that's a somewhat vacuous claim.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. The sort of maneuvering going on here is indicative of a shift in corporate strategy as NVIDIA discover that providing support for the freeware operating systems is at best a drain on their programming expertise and resources, and at worst a public relations nightmare as investors shy away from any company involved with "open-source", a dubious business model at best.
Sorry to debunk your fantasy, but this is the opposite of the truth. Who are nVidia losing business to ? All their competitors are moving towards , not away from supporting OpenSource software. So if it's a "public relations nightmare", it's one that they share with all of their competitors. If supporting Linux is proving costly, you'd think they'd release the source to their drivers, and recruit some free labor. Why spend money on developing drivers when someone else can do a better job for free ?
Mark my words, you will see less and less from NVIDIA on Linux as they attempt to sneak back into the lucrative and reputable Windows market.
This comment presupposes that nVidia are no longer "in" the "lucrative Windows market". To which I can only say "ha ha ha ha ha ha" ...
It's worth mentioning that the nVidia cards are all supported, it's just that other cards are overtaking them in the degree of support, because they are shutting the openSource developers out of the game.
That said, suffice it to say that the next card I buy won't be an nVidia.
The patents only apply to TrueType IIRC. So they could still do it with Type1. The real problems are technical. X has its own font-handling mechanism, and adding grey-scaling to it would require a rework of that.
BTW, you can add TrueTYpe fonts now, you don't need to wait. Redhat 6.x already supports TrueType out of the box, other distributions can support it via xfstt. Download yourself the Microsoft font pack, and your screen should look just fine.
Also, from what others have said, from an ergonomic perspective Antialiasing is quite bad. Well hinted fonts are preferable.
No. There is a lot more to it than this. Xfsft ( and consequently, all 6.x releases of Redhat ) "add freetype" as does XFree 4. The problem is that X "thinks" that all fonts are monochrome bitmaps. Fixing this problem requires a rewrite of the X font protocol. It's almost impossible to do this without losing some backward compatibility.
Yeah, I am with you. I got a TNT because it was one of the better cards to use with Linux. I suggest you try to get a refund directly from nVidia if for no other reason than to send a loud message to them that they just lost a customer. I got my TNT(1) because at the time, it was one of the better Linux cards ( the Matrox drivers were still in their infancy ) and Matrox didn't have decent OpenGL Windows drivers. Oh, how the tables have turned !
Nowadays, nVidia's drivers are stagnating because they don't have the time or inclination to put the same amount of development muscle into their Linux drivers as the OpenSource developers. Meanwhile, Matrox have developed decent Windows drivers, and the OpenSource drivers are making steady progress. There is no question in my mind that my next card will not be one of nVidia's. The only question is , should I
- Grab an ``old'' Voodoo 2 on top of what I have
- Get a Voodoo 3
- Go with Matrox
I think I'll wait till the G400 price-drops a little then go with that.BTW, I don't know what you mean about "better benchmarks". Benchmarks are largely a function of the drivers, and nVidia where miles in front for some time because they had better Windows drivers. Any benchmark under Linux would show the Matrox card to be superior, and even under Windows, Matrox's drivers have got substantially better ( there's a recent benchmark showing the G400 putting up a fair fight against the TNT2 )
(2) is moderately problematic, because if you get rid of all restrictions on fair use, then copying and redistributing an entire copyrighted work would be fair use. Perhaps this is not precisely what you meant.
Before you even talk about a ``geek lobby'', you need to decide what this lobby stands for. There are clearly some issues ( say, gun-control; republican-or-democrat-or-other ) where there'll never be agreement. Perhaps it's possible to create some kind of manifesto and/or policy platform, but drawing widespread support for it, even among geeks, could prove difficult.
That's great if the exam is about using search engines. But unless the course is intended to serve as an introduction to using a web browser, it seems inappropriate.
There are different ways of getting an answer, in the end it is results that matter in the real world.
In the real world, you don't work under exam conditions. Ifr your goal is to "simulate the real world", a homework assignment ( where students could use any means including the web to do research ) would be a better means of this assesment than this exam..
You fail to address my main objection -- that it does not adequately serve the purpose of a traditional exam ( namely that you know that you are evaluating the student and not someone else ) or a written assignment ( which provides a more in depth educational experience )
To me, this whole thing just smacks of "technology for the sake of technology". I don't see how it offers any tangible advantage over more traditional methods of assesment.
Oddly enough, the people who "understand" usually "know" as well. Knowing is necessary, but insufficient.
Knowing stuff is just regurgitating facts,
Not always. I "know" my physics formulae years after I've taken physics, because I understand the concepts. It can be "regurgitating the facts". It can also be a by-product of comprehension ( not to mention doing ones homework ). In math ( where I work ), the students who do a lot of problems will not only obtain the "knowledge", but they'll also obtain comprehension and application skills. Exams should not be just about what you know -- they should test comprehension and application. And a well written exam will do this.
The way you talk, you make it sound as though there exist students that "understand the concepts" but somehow don't know anything. During my years as a TA, I've found this to be false. It's simply impossible to understand a topic if you don't know the fundamentals.
The Web would be used, in this case, for gathering facts, not gathering opinions.
The idea of pursuing research in an exam setting is just absurd. No-one conducts any meaningful research in such a setting. This kind of exam is just as easy to cheat on as a homework assignment, but fails to offer the educational benefits of an in-depth project.
hey are there to teach things like critical thinking, research and writing skills,
You will never be able to teach research or deep problem solving skills in an exam. Exams are primarily to test basic competency, comprehension, and application of the knowledge as taught in class.
For some courses, this is sufficient, because the courses are designed to simply provide the student with basic competency in the subject matter ( for example, college algebra ). In other courses, especially higher level courses, this is certainly not sufficient, and a greater emphasis on alternative methods of assesment ( oral exams, group work, written assignments, take home exams ) are more appropriate.
You say that emphasis should be placed on research -- and I agree with you. Indeed, upper level courses typically do place more emphasis on this. But exams are not the place to do research.
I'd agree that most people spend more than $14- a week on their social activity. However, it's certainly true that not everyone can afford $14- a week on top of what they're already spending ( especially if it's an up-front cost )
On exams, it's pretty hard to cheat and actually benefit from cheating. I've rarely seen students who cheated and did well as a result of cheating.
people used to make the same arguments about what calculator use would do to math exams.
They're not a problem -- sometimes it is appropriate to allow calculators, sometimes it isn't. I've observed that a lot of people use calculators to perform very simple calculations though. They are too often used as a crutch. Curiously enough, the people that use calculators to evaluate 2+2 rarely display superior problem solving skills.
in a couple of years, i think it will be impossible to prevent people from bring a computer to exams anyway.
You could make the same argument about calculators today. But you can simply ask that noone brings calculators, internet appliances, superpowered cellphones, or whatever into the exam.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong ...
You are also required to be able to apply understand and your knowledge. I teach at a university, and even at the college algebra level, students are expected to understand how to apply their formulae to the dreaded "word problems". They need to know how a formula applies, and how to solve the equations in question.
What if, instead of being tested on how much the brain can retain, we are tested on how fast the brain can use all of it's available resources to find the information it needs to complete a given problem. That tests creativity, adaptability and resourcefulness rather than just memorization
Great ! Now tell us how to test these things within the constraints of a two hour exam. Forcing the students to learn to use excite doesn't cut it.
Now that we are entering the information age
It's buzzword time ...
the information itself becomes less important than its meaning with respect to the information associated with it.
The internet is no substitute for basic competency. Suppose my supervisor asks me what the monotone convergence theorem is. It's graduate school material, and it would take at least an hour to answer it using the internet, 5 minutes to find it in a book, and 10 seconds to recall it from my basic understanding of what it says. What it cmoes down to is this -- you don't want your physicists having to open up a web browser to look up "F = ma".
Once we have real AI, people will ask "why should I need to think" ? The point is that these skills are essential . Integration involves more problem solving than it does memorization. These skills are essential to solve problems you encounter later on, many of which are too general for a calculator to solve.
you don't have to spend hours memorizing regular expression syntax
No, you don't because you can memorize most of what you need in a few minutes ( or after writing one or two programs ).
because you have your "Perl in a Nutshell" book on the desk, and you'll memorize eventually by doing anyway
Just owning the book won't help you memorize. You need to use the book. The students who do their homework will learn the basic syntax as a by product.
I think the ability to find information is going to become much more important than being able to memorize it.
This is important, and you evaluate these skills with research projects and take home exams, you don't evaluate these skills in class.
There's far too much out there to be able to know it all, and the people who will excel are the people who know where to find information they need in short order.
However, the people who lack basic competency and don't do their homework ( which is what the exams test for ) will not excel at anything.
However I think this is an inherent fault of technology and its associated cost;
At least within the US, a used desktop is cheap , or even free.
BTW, a desktop is a much smarter investment for a poor student. For less than $500- you can get a decent PC. Laptops are somewhat more costly.
In the real world, you don't start a project, and turn in the solution to your box 2 hours later. Exams are designed to test basic knowledge of and competency with the subject matter. They are not designed to test research skills, or skills at solving hard problems, in fact they are woefully inadequate at this.
Obviously, if you lack basic knowledge are woefully incompetent with your subject matter, you will not be of any use in "the real world".
Personally, if I'm running some sort of company that makes use in organic chemistry, I'm not going to care about any of my employess organic chemistry skill or knowledge,
I'd certainly hope they had some skill and/or knowledge. Obviously, it's not the only criterion, but surely, there's a minimum acceptable level ? As a mathematician, I have great problem solving skills, but I'm not much use as an organic chemist, because I don't know anything about chemistry.
Sure, asking for help is OK. Research projects ( which often involve or even require collaboration ) are a good idea. But an exam is not a research project.
so I think all that should matter in university classes is the ability to solve the problems in question
Yes, but how do you measure this accurately ? What if the student pays a tutor to solve the problems ? In this case, the student hasn't solved the problems, a tutor has. And the method the student has used ( paying a tutor to do it ) is not going to be a very succesful strategy in the work place.
There is certainly a place for collaboration, where students work with other students and jointly solve problems ( ie not one person doing the problem for someone else ).
Like it or not, if you're in a university class, you're not doing it for acadaemic purposes anymore.
The fact that grades have become so important makes it all the more important to make sure that the assesment mechanism is fair.
My point exactly ! These "take home exams" perform the same function as homework assignments, they are not really exams in the traditional sense, and shouldn't be used as a direct substitute for traditional exams. Either you do want students to be able to do their own in depth research for the assesment in question, or you don't.
If you do want the student to be able to do some real research and information gathering, then a take home exam gives the students the opportunity to adress more in-depth questions. ( BTW, I'm studying PhD in math. I agree that you can't put hard proofs on exams. Even qualifying exam questions are usually of the "follow-your-nose" variety. ) There is no advantage to having an exam for this kind of thing.
On the other hand, if you don't want in depth research or very tough questions to be a part of the assesment, there is no advantage of offering unrestricted web access.
As for calculating it, I'd say it's pointless to compute a complex example by hand. A data set with 2-4 points, all integers, where the mean is also an integer seems more like fair game.
BTW, I have not taken any stats course since 1992. I can't remember anything from back then, I can only derive.
I don't think anyone's claiming that data is physical.
Simply put, when you make a copy, the original entity is neither damaged or destroyed.
That's a fairly short sighted viewpoint. The problem is this -- how should the costs of producing intellectual work be distributed ? And copyright provides a way of sharing the said costs. It basically dictates that everyone who uses a copy pays an equal share ( though the copyright holder may choose to exercise some discretion here ). This seems reasonably fair. There is competition to constrain prices. It is true that copying is easy but creating the intellectual work is hard, and the question is how should the cost of creating such work be distributed ? And copyright provides a fairly good answer. Copyright does not prevent other models from coexisting, and no other model has truiumphed over the copyright model. This would suggest that copyright is superior to other models.
We should be allowed open access to the unrestricted copying and redistribution as long as the originals are unchanged, undamaged whatever and that all subsequent copies keep their integrity. Published or in the wild data should be immanently shareable,
Well that's a nice idea. Let's just make everything free. The problem is that it fails to answer tough questions such as -- what financial incentive is there to create intellectual work under your proposal ? If there really is a better way, why is it that the copyright model dominates ?
I'm not a big fan of the DMCA, but on the other hand, I don't see copyright as a "thing of the past". You certainly haven't provided any evidence that there's "comething of the future" to replace it.
It may not be cheating, but it certainly makes cheating easier. Here's my main objection -- the students should basically know everything prior to the exam, and with the help of a cheat-sheet, they should have all the information they need. They shouldn't need dig around to answer the questions. Moreover, research is not the kind of thing that should be performed in an exam room ( IMHO )
A lot of Universities ( and even some high schools ) allow you to take small "cheat-sheets" into class to de-emphasise the memory work. You're probably going to see more of this type of thing when you go to university.
However there is a case to be made for actually knowing enough to be able to answer questions without looking at your notes every two seconds. You'll find that if you use your books/notes as a crutch during an open book/open note exam, you will choke. Exams are not about "finding" infrmation "you're looking for". You should already basically know it, and use your references as a memory jolt. "Finding" information is a lengthy process that is better tested by a research project/assignment as opposed to an exam.
At the very least, you can close loopholes that make cheating in exams possible ( or easy ). One of the advantages of open-book, is at least the prof knows what sources the students have available to them.
As for converting binaries by hand, etc, what is wrong with basic numeracy ? Seriously, the people that can't add two and two without a calculator shouldn't be in a university to begin with.