> Do not look at other students’ homework files and do not work with other students. At all.
This is a horrific policy. We work better with other people.
When I studied computer science, other students came to me for help. I helped them. We discussed problems together. I saw their code. They saw mine. No one copied: we shared approaches and style and thinking. I shared how I solved things. They learned my thinking. By explaining, I understood what I knew better. Sometimes I learned from them: an idea I wouldn’t have had alone, a new direction. All of us were better off. This was across multiple people.
It was in no way discouraged and so long as you wrote your work — while asking others for help was fine — you were okay.
Humans learn through teaching. We learn through discussion. We learn through interaction. Solitude — ‘do not work with other students. At all’ — is the exact opposite of a healthy learning environment.
I don’t care what their artificial intelligence policy is. I cannot state strongly enough how much I revolt against their human intelligence policy.
As for the lecturer’s warnings in slides: that reads like a trap.
It's important to note that the students are encouraged to interact with the many teaching assistants that we have available. And, while that slide is somewhat harsh in how it states it, the larger lecture discussion surrounding it makes it clear that students are permitted to discuss assignments in a general way. When you get into implementation details, that's where the academic integrity problem arises.
For people that haven't spent time teaching lower-level programming courses, policies like this may seem overly harsh. But, remember, they're not solving particularly advanced problems at this stage. Instead they're mastering fundamentals. An analogy I like to use is learning to play the piano. If someone else is doing it for you, you're not going to develop the skill.
The main reason for the policy is that many students are not able to walk the line between leading someone to a solution and giving them a solution. The teaching staff know how to do this. When students help each other in situations like this, many times they end up just providing code or allowing someone to look at their code (ultimately copying it), etc.
I appreciate your reply, and thankyou. It did strike me as harsh, yes, and I was rather horrified when I wrote the parent comment. But I think I was also responding to the tone of the article, which struck me as almost setting traps - that kind of emphasis on the student being responsible for understanding something broad yet not saying what it is specifically in the broad material they need to look out for, for example.
Yet I also understand your view -- students providing and copying code yet not learning and doing work themselves. I completely get that needs to be found. Yet, reading the article I felt truly scared for the students who might get caught up in this yet I don't think would have actually done anything wrong.
> Yet I also understand your view -- students providing and copying code yet not learning and doing work themselves. I completely get that needs to be found. Yet, reading the article I felt truly scared for the students who might get caught up in this yet I don't think would have actually done anything wrong.
I get that, and I think that is partly what drove a lot of the initial turmoil when this started. But, the important thing to recognize (and this could have been better emphasized for sure) is that it's really easy to tell whether someone caught up in this is cheating. A 5 minute discussion is all it takes. And, yeah, maybe some could BS their way through a discussion like that if they had a heads up, but at that point 1) they've now learned at least some of the material and 2) you're not going to catch everyone anyway. Processes like this are somewhat like a police officer catching people speeding. The enforcement alone discourages the behavior, to a degree, and you're never going to catch everyone.
vintagedave · · focus · HN ↗
This is a horrific policy. We work better with other people.
When I studied computer science, other students came to me for help. I helped them. We discussed problems together. I saw their code. They saw mine. No one copied: we shared approaches and style and thinking. I shared how I solved things. They learned my thinking. By explaining, I understood what I knew better. Sometimes I learned from them: an idea I wouldn’t have had alone, a new direction. All of us were better off. This was across multiple people.
It was in no way discouraged and so long as you wrote your work — while asking others for help was fine — you were okay.
Humans learn through teaching. We learn through discussion. We learn through interaction. Solitude — ‘do not work with other students. At all’ — is the exact opposite of a healthy learning environment.
I don’t care what their artificial intelligence policy is. I cannot state strongly enough how much I revolt against their human intelligence policy.
As for the lecturer’s warnings in slides: that reads like a trap.
luke0016 · · focus · HN ↗
For people that haven't spent time teaching lower-level programming courses, policies like this may seem overly harsh. But, remember, they're not solving particularly advanced problems at this stage. Instead they're mastering fundamentals. An analogy I like to use is learning to play the piano. If someone else is doing it for you, you're not going to develop the skill.
The main reason for the policy is that many students are not able to walk the line between leading someone to a solution and giving them a solution. The teaching staff know how to do this. When students help each other in situations like this, many times they end up just providing code or allowing someone to look at their code (ultimately copying it), etc.
vintagedave · · focus · HN ↗
Yet I also understand your view -- students providing and copying code yet not learning and doing work themselves. I completely get that needs to be found. Yet, reading the article I felt truly scared for the students who might get caught up in this yet I don't think would have actually done anything wrong.
luke0016 · · focus · HN ↗
I get that, and I think that is partly what drove a lot of the initial turmoil when this started. But, the important thing to recognize (and this could have been better emphasized for sure) is that it's really easy to tell whether someone caught up in this is cheating. A 5 minute discussion is all it takes. And, yeah, maybe some could BS their way through a discussion like that if they had a heads up, but at that point 1) they've now learned at least some of the material and 2) you're not going to catch everyone anyway. Processes like this are somewhat like a police officer catching people speeding. The enforcement alone discourages the behavior, to a degree, and you're never going to catch everyone.