
Computer science students successfully boycott class final - DavidChouinard
http://www.jhunewsletter.com/2013/01/31/computer-science-students-successfully-boycott-class-final-76275/#.UR61lSydSjI.twitter
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JoshTriplett
If I've gone to all the trouble to study for an exam anyway, just in case,
then I'd much rather actually _take_ the exam to check my knowledge. The
article tries to paint this result as a case of solidarity and coordination,
rather than slacking and intimidation. "on the day of the exam, all the
students arrived half an hour early and stood outside the doors to make sure
no one went into the exam room"; what is this, a picket line?

I had a few classes that had three exams and a final, and the grading policy
dropped the lowest exam score. Even when I got 100% or more on the first two
exams, and got explicitly told by the professor that the exam was optional and
I didn't need to show up, I still took the last one, because why not check the
knowledge I studied?

Given the intimidation factor, I'd probably end up asking the professor if I
could take the exam outside of the normal class time anonymously, and leave
people to guess based on who isn't in the same class the next term.

~~~
lbrandy
I find your approach distasteful. And that's putting it charitably, to be
honest.

The idea that you would feign solidarity in a social experiment with real
consequences so you could screw fellow students surreptitiously is just as bad
(I would argue worse) than the intimidation you are presuming existed. In
fact, even under the presumption that intimidation occurs, you are admitting
to happily screwing over other students who would have been happy to take the
test, but for the intimidation. So the fellow victims of the "crime" get
punished once by them, and then again, by you.

If you actually want to take a principled stand, you'd have to do something
shocking like.. be honest with everyone with what you intend on doing, and
why.

~~~
jacquesm
As someone who has been bullied in school for actually, you know, trying to
learn and take the tests I find his approach perfectly ok. You don't know what
intimidation is like until you've been on the receiving end of it and a whole
class of people your own age telling you you can't do what you came to school
for can be pretty intimidating.

~~~
lbrandy
> As someone who has been bullied in school for actually, you know, trying to
> learn and take the tests I find his approach perfectly ok. You don't know
> what intimidation is like until you've been on the receiving end of it and a
> whole class of people your own age telling you you can't do what you came to
> school for can be pretty intimidating.

"Wanting to learn and take the test" (let's call it the education principle)
is every bit a principle worth standing for. But so is honesty. There is far
more education going on here than what is on that test. I'd argue if you are
actually willing to surreptitiously screw your fellow classmates, bullies and
bullied alike, for the sake of both "taking the test" and avoiding
intimidation, I'd hope you are self-reflective enough to realize what this
teaches you about yourself.

The way I see it: "the education principle", honesty, and easy. You get to
pick two. And I'm going to criticize any (ostensible -- in the case of the
students themselves) adult who advocates picking the dishonest path. At some
point we put away our childish things and we solve our problems like adults.

~~~
anigbrowl
People who cheerfully exploit mob dynamics to intimidate others don't have a
claim on the honesty of those they attempt to intimidate. That argument
reminds me of bullies who complain when they meet an unexpected defeat that
their intended victim was not 'fighting fair'. The willingness to initiate
force, whether individually or in a group, does not confer any sort of moral
authority whatsoever. Indeed, the physical authority garnered from the
exercise of force is often sought as a substitute for the lack of moral
authority.

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bitcartel
"In a programming course, it’s exceedingly difficult to judge one’s knowledge
of a subject by a written 50 minute exam. It ends up being a test on nit-picky
details and doesn’t accurately determine the good programmers from the great,
or the not so great." -- Student

Whereas of course boycotting an exam reveals so much more about one's
programming knowledge!

~~~
betterunix
There is something more important that the students learned by organizing
themselves this way: that they are not each other's enemies. I am sure a few
students received high marks that they did not deserve as a result, but I
suspect that would have been the case even had the students taken the exam
(judging by what I saw as a TA in my first year of grad school).

The professor now offers students a choice between an exam and a project, and
the students voted for a project. The project is a better way to measure their
aptitude. On the whole, I think this was positive for all involved.

~~~
jacquesm
> that they are not each other's enemies.

If only. Highschool was - to put it mildly - a sequence of bullies trying to
get away with the absolute minimum and being enemy to quite a few of the other
students. Never quite enough that they could muster a response. I've never
seen such enmity in adults in any workplace as I've seen in schools.

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betterunix
"Boycott" is the wrong word here. The students certainly _organized_
themselves, but they were not _boycotting_ \-- they were taking advantage of a
grading policy that creates an optimal strategy for the students if they work
together and cooperate.

What these students learned by working together like this is almost certainly
more important to their intellectual growth than the exam itself. The
professor for the class seems to recognize that, which is also a good thing.

~~~
tolmasky
It seems that they were preventing other students from going in as well (at
least that was the implication with the guarding of doors). So perhaps they
actually learned to get what you want through coercion.

~~~
GhotiFish
That, in my opinion, tarnished their achievement. I agree with the sentiment
of what was done, but the execution was poor. It would of being a far greater
achievement if they didn't enforce the choice.

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tokenadult
Previous submission of canonical URL (1 comment):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217463>

Previous submission of same story with good reporting from different source
(no comments):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217066>

The professor has changed his grading policy, as noted in the submission I saw
earlier from the other source.

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stcredzero
Wait a moment, if all grades are relative to the highest, then aren't all
grades a fraction using the highest grade as the denominator?

The reason this situation seems unusual: The prof's grading system has a
division by zero bug.

~~~
littledot5566
That's why is the highest grade were to be 0, everyone would get infinite
marks that caps at 100.

~~~
stcredzero
How about just put exception handling around the whole thing, then assign 100
to everyone if there's a DivideByZeroException?

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oskarth
Impressive feat. Too bad the class wasn't in Game Theory, that would've been
even more isomorphic than the Harvard Intro to Congress class incident.

EDIT: Isomorphic used in the sense of the event ("boycott", cheating) being
similar in form/geist to the class taken. I'm sure there's a better word for
it.

~~~
mrdmnd
I'm not sure you know what isomorphic means.

~~~
alex-g
There's a story about a student (in group theory) being asked "Are G and H
isomorphic?" and replying "G is isomorphic, but H isn't".

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minimaxir
Game theory says that no one cheating and deciding to take the final would be
the obvious outcome because the students have no _incentive_ to cheat the
system. If they skip the test, they get 100. If they take the test, they get
up to 100. No advantage from taking the test.

Now, if the maximum score for everyone skipping the test was lower than 100,
then things would be interesting.

~~~
cperciva
Everybody skipping the exam is a Nash equilibrium, but assuming perfectly
rational behaviour (and that everybody has a utility function which depends
solely on final exam grade) is dangerous.

This is, of course, why students turned up and waited outside to see if they
needed to write the exam rather than just assuming that other students would
all do the "obvious" thing.

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gwright
I had a 10th grade bio teacher who always gave 50 question multiple choice
exams (i.e. 2 points per question).

She always offered a 'shoot the moon' option. If you could get _every_
question wrong you would get 100 for the exam instead of 0. Of course if you
got one question correct, you would end up with just a 2 for the exam.

As I recall there were several successful attempts during the year.

~~~
bmcfeeley
Are you from Northern NJ? My 10th grade Bio teacher did the same!

~~~
gwright
Nope, but nearby in southwest CT.

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rprospero
I remember some friends of mine who did the same thing, except that one kid
managed to sneak in and take the exam. Everyone hated him, but his class rank
skyrocketed.

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VexXtreme
I find that the social bullies and self appointed dictators in social groups
often try bully people into submission by shaming them for not complying with
"what is good for the group". Such cowards are often hiding behind the well
being of "the people" and try to make non-comformists look bad. Because if you
aren't doing what is good for "the people", you somehow must be evil.

Well guess what, you don't owe people shit and they don't owe you shit. You
are not responsible for other people unless you are in charge of them, working
for the common goal or unless they're your family members. Your classmates are
none of these things and you owe them absolutely nothing.

It's funny the way bullies will often be the first to betray the group and how
it's suddenly "every man for himself" when shit hits the fan.

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scott_s
I don't feel this is really a "boycott" - it's not like they're objecting to
him, the course, the university or the rules itself. They're just collectively
exercising a loophole. I wanted to call it "conspiracy," but that implies
secrecy, when the whole organization was very much in the open. Perhaps
"openly collude."

Anyway, I like the reaction from the professor and the head of the CS
department. It's nice to read about people reacting reasonably and seeing the
forest.

~~~
eplanit
They cleverly "gamed" the system. I say clever, but I wonder if they would
have actually learned programming better by studying and taking the exam.

~~~
scott_s
_"Also, since students didn’t know for sure until exam time if the boycott
would be successful, they had to study for it anyway, which is a main benefit
of exams,” Selinski wrote._

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master_lincoln
That makes the point of grading a student's result senseless. I don't even
mean the 'boycott' but that Froehlich adapts the grades to the highest
received. That would mean if everyone is lazy/stupid they'll all be evaluated
better than they are. So why have a grading system in the first place if it
doesn't enable you to compare results indepently.

(btw I would vote for a grade free teaching system anyways)

~~~
lhnn
To me, it's a check against a teacher making an obscenely hard test that even
the smartest students can't pass. The logic would be that if the best and
brightest can only get a 60, then the exam should be curved.

This assumes that the best and brightest are actually really smart and
knowledgeable.

~~~
scott_s
It's not obvious until you try to create a test yourself that creating a fair
test is _hard_. Particularly for an intro course, since it's material that you
know so well that you barely think about it consciously anymore. I took the
same approach, and I was cognizant of the fact that some of my students came
in with prior programming experience.

------
brador
Wait, so if you were the one student who did take the exam you would get 100%
and everyone else gets 0?

------
Macsenour
In my Intro to Computers class we had guest speakers. One speaker/professor
was in charge of statistics. Many of the first year CS students left the
class. He stopped the 10th one asking where he thought he was going? The
student said he had better things to do.

This enraged the professor who went on a loud rant about how this really is
important and we were awful for not paying attention. He then stormed out.

A week later the usual class professor emailed all of saying we had to study
the topic on our own since half the class had walked out.

I emailed her and the rest of the class that if any of his topic were on the
test I would make sure they both were fired at least reprimanded.

By the offended professors own words, half the class was still there and
interested in the topic. Basically, he walked out on us.

His topic was not on the final.

~~~
just2n
Sounds like the professor was crappy.

I'd have said "very well then, have a nice day." Then, at the end of the
class, I'd pass around a piece of paper and tell everyone left to write their
name on it. We'll call it the "I'm not a douchebag exam." Everyone present
would get a 100, everyone else would get a 0.

And then I'd still have that content on the "real" exam.

~~~
Macsenour
The next class session someone suggested that we should have signed a paper
proving we were there after he left.

Hindsight.

------
russell
My son had a required CS course at UC Berkeley taught by a professor who didnt
want to deal with undergraduates. To discourage them he graded his exams more
or less as follows: 5 points for getting an answer completely correct, no
errors at all; -5 points for any error in the answer, no matter how trivial; 0
points for not answering. Not answering any question was probably a B, but
there was such an uproar from the students that the class was turned into
pass/fail. My son opted to take it the following semester from a different
prof.

~~~
pacaro
Mathematics at Cambridge is graded in a similar (but far more complicated)
interesting way[1]

(This is a simplification) - Questions are graded out of 20 and can also be
awarded a quality grade. Answers scoring 15 or more are awarded an _alpha_ ,
those between 10 - 14 inclusive a _beta_. Alphas and Betas are extremely
heavily weighted - the score for the top students is 30 _alpha_ \+ 5 _beta_ \+
raw score, so a single question scoring 15 is potentially worth 45, quality is
much more important than quality, the pass/fail line is 2 _alpha_ \+ 1 _beta_

[1] <http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/schedules.pdf>

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hakaaaaak
And he is not changing his grading system for next year? Next year the
students ought to try not even going to class.

The positive reinforcement and acceptance of publicity could be compared to
the media making a big deal out of Columbine. Whenever bad behavior is made
into a spectacle, it will be copied. I will be completely surprised if we
don't see more of these events in the coming years, not just because it is
possible, but because JH is being fucking stupid by publicizing this.

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tarahmarie
I should have graded my political science classes this way; would have saved
me an awful lot of red ink.

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joezhou
this is glorious!

