What? I had LOTS of take home exams where the professors didn't care if we worked together or not. Typically if you allow a student to take something home he's going to go on the internet to find answers. What's the difference between that and working together on it.

The exams that were issued take home weren't exactly multiple choice. The point of a take home is to give better, more well thought out answers. It's one thing if a professor says "Do not help each other" but NOWHERE in any article about this have I seen that being stated.

I'm all for integrity and there were many opportunities to cheat and I didn't. Just not worth it in the end to be honest. I'd rather have a b average than an A and not know what the hell I was doing.

That's why you see a shift in businesses these days. They aren't so much concerned with GPA as they are with what you know right then and there. Every tech job I've apped for has tossed me some form of problem to be solved or a test of my on hand knowledge and problem solving technique.

I'll wait until I see more information about this issue before I form an opinion.

5/1/2007 11:41:26 AM

Quote :

"I don't know if this was said already or not... but IT WAS A TAKE HOME EXAM!!! "

I had a take home exam at State (it had to be take home, as we had to use f***ing FORTRAN to run our analysis) where my Heat Transfer teacher failed me and two other guys after the other two made the exact same mistake as I did on the program. Their cheating was sitting next to me at 1 in the morning in a computer lab the night before it was due (which if non-engineering students don't realize, is pretty standard to see half your class in the same computer lab the night before a project is due) and they asked for some help on how to do it and saw what I had. It's 1am, one of them was a buddy of mine, so I didn't really care at the time. I thought I had the most right to complain as no one gave anything to me, although of course a professor can't see that. After the professor gave us all failing grades, we went and talked to him for about 30 minutes pleading our case (it's a take home, we all wrote our own programs, everyone does it, etc.) and he then gave us one of two choices: to accept our F or we can take it up with the Dean of MAE and risk expulsion from the class. I took the F and walked out of his office pissed. At least I still made an A in the class.

[Edited on May 1, 2007 at 4:30 PM. Reason : .]

5/1/2007 4:26:07 PM

you can't give or receive help. that's pretty standard.

as for the take-home exam part. i've had a couple of take home exams, simply because in these classes trying to get a reasonable test in 3 hours at a desk is silly. (they were computationally intensive classes). of course none in the class even thought of talking to anyone else about the questions. except maybe to complain about it vaguely.

5/1/2007 6:39:38 PM

i've had take home exams and such where you were not allowed to collaborate, and others where you were...

then again how much different is it than getting a writing assignment checked over for proofreading?

5/2/2007 12:28:21 PM