I agree that’s possible. I just don’t know. I think it’s possible they did it on principle. And I think it’s possible they did it game the system. I add that while obviously gaming the system as a means to avoid learning is bad, there is some value as @Medievalist notes in having developers who can demonstrate strategic thinking including social engineering which is important to programming. Basically, demonstrating a useful skill but to achieve a probably bad end, like a kid that demonstrates intelligence by pulling obnoxious pranks.
I apologize if I’m one of the people who misinterpreted what you said. I just don’t feel like this was a black and white issue and while I don’t necessarily think you think that either, it did feel like you thought those of us who were mildly impressed were siding with the students. Again, sorry if that impression was wrong, but that’s how it felt. Also, to be clear, I’m not defending the glib commenters who repeatedly argued with you about the value of a curve when you’d already made it clear you didn’t even take that position. There’s been a fair amount of comments and replies in this thread by people who clearly didn’t read through it first.
What evidence do you have that they came to him and talk about their concerns? I didn’t see any in the article. Maybe they grumbled, but students always grumble. We can’t fix shit if they can’t tell us what isn’t working for them. The fact that most students refuse to give any meaningful feedback on the student evals (maybe this guy had better evals with some feedback, but that’s usually not the case for many people).
And WE do? You honestly think I had any role in the system as it stands or that I can change a god damn thing with the position I have? Because if it were up to me, the system, which is becoming increasingly corporatized at the expense of professors in favor to elite well-connected students would be very different. I assure you that I barely get listened to in my own department, much less at the university or system level. I am almost as low on the totem pole as you can get and still work in academia.
[ETA] NOOOOO come back… it was an unfinished thought!
Some people here think they did study. But we don’t know either way, we just know they didn’t take the exam.
I think you have every right to be upset at what you see as the students behaving badly. I you definitely should be upset at the people not reading your comments and then arguing with strawmen.
Here’s my question, are you upset with those of us who either felt the students did nothing wrong or aren’t sure? I should have asked that first instead of assuming I knew what you meant. That was presumptuous and inconsiderate of me.
People can believe the students are clever for pulling this off - it’s an opinion and perfectly valid. But it means that they’re still buying into the adversarial narrative of college. That’s what I think, and it’s clearly not a popular opinion. Fair enough. But I also suspect that if these were students in a non-STEM field, there wouldn’t be as much applause about it. Maybe I’m wrong on that.
I’ll have to think about that. It’s been a fair while since I was in college and I may be imposing my experince on a changed environment. It wasn’t especially adversarial at the colleges I went to, but even then, that’s only three institutions out of thousands. Anyway, as a career teacher and academic, I trust your judgement on it more than mine. It is sad that it’s adversarial.
No, I think you’re dead to right there. Part of why I’m not sure what the climate of this boycott was is not only that it’s a STEM class, but a field where this sort of thinking, albeit not this specific behavior, is actually encouraged. But again, I just don’t know.
Also, thank you for being willing to engage. Bowing out would be our loss. I share Melz’s appreciation for your experience and your passion for teaching, and I’d hope others do as well.
Good points, all. But the emphasis, the importance of being able to game a rule structure vastly outweighs the importance of knowing the ins and outs of a specific code (rule) environment.
Some of the schools are churning out expert coders who can generate thousands of lines of java - and that’s what they do, because they can’t figure out how to achieve the same end by changing three lines of server configuration. They’re stuck in the Java box (often a box of pain, for those who have to support their constructs). Other schools graduate kids who I can teach a new language in a single lesson (totally not kidding) because their teachers taught them to how to use whatever tool is at hand - taught them to learn and organize.
Computer science lies at the intersection of information and engineering; it isn’t like most academic disciplines. It’s all about getting optimal result inside an external set of constraints.
I doubt it can get much worse, and free tuition doesn’t mean colleges will stop being selective. Also, if tuition is free it might remove one reason for considering college as something that needs to deliver a financial return on investment.
I would like to see college free for everyone who truly desires to apply himself/herself to work hard at getting an education, and priced out of reach for everyone who just wants to slack off for four years.
I don’t see where @anon61221983 has taken the side of the lecturer even implicitly. Criticizing the culture that leads the students to consider this a good way of getting their degree is not the same as absolving the lecturer of all fault.
It can be somewhat liberating having no future on your campus. For example, when I was a VAP at Big Ten U. some 30+ years ago, the athletics department was unhappy with a grade I gave to a team member. I told them to bite me. It isn’t something I could have done as an untenured tenure track faculty member, and even after I was a full professor when I’ve butted heads with athletics (and other organizations) I didn’t escape a subsequent headache.
Of course, it doesn’t compensate for having a completely uncertain employment future.
Free college has the potential to liberate us from academic corporatization. As it stands, tuition is such a precious part of our university income that we have to go to lengths to attract, retain, and not offend students that go well beyond what academic considerations merit. Free tuition would also make it easier to simply close classes when they start hitting unreasonable size limits, rather than shoehorn more students in lest they complain about not getting their money’s worth.
I have a much longer post about this somewhere on BB. I think the widespread belief that free tuition would result in students who take their education for granted is grounded in classic American principles that have been wrongheaded since they were first dreamed up by insane Puritans.
I dunno — I was taught to look both ways before crossing the street, and have done so pretty consistently in life. It may be a sign that in general, kids these days lack a lot of common sense previous generations grew up with. It’s not necessarily specific to Hopkins kids, nor did I imply that it was. But to think that these kids are automatically brilliant because they go to Hopkins? It doesn’t work that way.
I only partially agree. Some students might have felt there was value in actually having their knowledge of the material…well…examined. That is the only thing that really bothers me about this particular event, is that is clearly relied on peer pressure, albeit with no actual risk to the student’s immediate GPA. However, there was the possibility that the prof would simply stop using the highest score earned as the highest possible score, and therefore ending the grade inflation for everyone who took the course thereafter. That would have been an, ah, interesting social dynamic. Fortunately the prof sounds pretty cool and just added a clause of zero for zero instead of ending his grade inflation.
I think one could quite reasonably interpret this as a teacher generously adjusting the scale’s limit to the highest earned score (and really calling it a curve is a bit deceptive), and students taking cynical advantage of this to do the least work with some risk of screwing over future students in the balance. But, at least going by the tone of the article, this doesn’t sound like occurred in a particularly adversarial climate, so I remain uncertain.
Either way, the prof sounds like a rock star for how he handled the situation.
Hate to say it, but I totally would’ve scabbed, because I wouldn’t trust every single person to keep their word.
Semi related, this makes me think of that part in Adam Curtis’ “The Trap” where he talks about how the foundation of game theory is based on the worldview of a very mentally unwell man, and not reality, because when the Rand corp secretaries tried the prisoner’s dilemma, they’d consistently choose the “wrong” answer.
