Judge rules against full room scan during remote university exams

[KingsGambit]

Well then they're clearly resourceful and could probably find it in the real world if they need to. I guess I just don't understand the obsession with forced memorization to pass a test, especially the more we understand neurodivergency among people.

There's a difference between using tools to suss out the answers and having somebody else parrot them to you.

[Sparko]

My son's friend is a computer programmer. He was quite surprised to discover upon entering the industry itself that half the time you're doing what his school would call "cheating": googling and going onto various sites that compile code in various programming languages, finding the code you need and then copying and tweaking it for whatever you wanted to do.

That's 80% of troubleshooting too. The other 20% is knowing enough to deduce what you are looking for. Things change way too fast in the computer IT world to know everything.

[Juvenal]

My son's friend is a computer programmer. He was quite surprised to discover upon entering the industry itself that half the time you're doing what his school would call "cheating": googling and going onto various sites that compile code in various programming languages, finding the code you need and then copying and tweaking it for whatever you wanted to do.

Github is my friend, too.

Well then they're clearly resourceful and could probably find it in the real world if they need to. I guess I just don't understand the obsession with forced memorization to pass a test, especially the more we understand neurodivergency among people.

There needs to be baseline information that's immediately available. No math student should have to "look up" the order of operations. Calculus students have to be able to integrate and take derivatives of polynomials without thinking. Physics students have to know Maxwell's laws.

In math, it's not so much the raw facts like the value of e that are important, but the methods used to find them ...


e^x = 1 + x + x^2 / 2! + x^3 / 3! + x^4 / 4! + ...

e^1 = 1 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/6 + 1/24 + ...

[Sparko]

Well then they're clearly resourceful and could probably find it in the real world if they need to. I guess I just don't understand the obsession with forced memorization to pass a test, especially the more we understand neurodivergency among people.

Now I am worrying that when I had open heart surgery my doctor was googling what to do while he was working on me.

[Mountain Man]

Yeah knowing how to find the information is more important than memorizing it. I work in IT and I use google to find answers to problems all the time. No way I could know everything.

As the old IT joke goes, "I don't actually know more than you, I'm just better at searching the Internet."

[rogue06]

Too often, "other resources" is a friend who's whiz enough to give them the answers. I once caught a student Skyping his screen during a final exam, and that was on campus, with me wandering the room. When they're on their phones, it's like the whole world vanishes. I was literally directly behind him, two feet away, for over a minute before I said anything ... because it took that long to pull my jaw back off the floor.

In the 90s I worked at a bookstore while I drove a limo at night for an exclusive clientele. I busted shoplifters all the time.

One of my favorites was a teen sitting in a chair with a large cookbook open in his lap. As I walked by I made sure my keychain was jingling as I looked down and saw he had a DVD in his lap as well. I kept walking, grabbed the keys to silence them and did a buttonhook turn immediately behind him so I was standing there looking down at him.

He kept looking around to see if anyone was watching, and after about a minute, he finally broke into the case which caused me to issue a loud "ahem."

The reaction was priceless and not one I could repeat here.

The funny thing is that several of his friends had tried to signal him about my presence behind him but he was so intent on looking for any employees that he missed them.

[rogue06]

Now I am worrying that when I had open heart surgery my doctor was googling what to do while he was working on me.

He was old school. They had a nurse holding the textbook open for him to reference as needed.

[CivilDiscourse]

As the old IT joke goes, "I don't actually know more than you, I'm just better at searching the Internet."

knowing the correct google fu for your job is a very important skill.

The old addage goes "I don't need to know everything, I need to know where to find it"

[rogue06]

knowing the correct google fu for your job is a very important skill.

The old addage goes "I don't need to know everything, I need to know where to find it"

Essentially the gist of Henry Ford's quote except he said he just needed to hire the folks who do.

Surround yourself with people that know more than you. One does not need to be able to do it all – one does need to know how to get the task at hand accomplished.