Three MIT students can now talk, but not because of their right to free speech. For the past 10 days, the trio has been restrained by a judge’s order from describing their now-celebrated exposure of a flaw in the Boston transit system’s fare card. Yesterday a U.S. District Court judge in Boston lifted the gag order because he did not believe the students had violated a federal law against transmitting malicious computer software, CNET reports. Many had expected the matter to be decided along First Amendment interpretations, but instead the decision turned on the issue of what counted as “transmission” of software and what did not.
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12 Responses to Judge Frees the Tongues of MIT Subway Hackers
nivek - May 14, 2012 at 10:13 am
i’ve always been frustrated by the fact that students immediately discard the geometric interpretation of the integral and see algebraic solutions instead (your example of sqrt{9-x^2}). i know that’s a function of how math gets taught K-12, but discouraging nonetheless. i often quote Yoda: “you must unlearn what you have learned.”
Robert Talbert - May 14, 2012 at 12:33 pm
+1. As I mentioned to the students in the debrief session, the entire Assessment 1 can be done with no knowledge of algebraic antidifferentiation techniques whatsoever. That kind of got their attention. In general I think the loss of geometry in the math curriculum is a real problem, but that’s another blog post.
crossing_bridges - May 14, 2012 at 8:49 pm
I like your idea of shorter, more frequent, collaborative and independent assessments. As for forming groups, it is an excellent idea to plan in advance. Once groups are formed for various reasons, modalities, strengths, or commonalities, you can have every student write the names of their group partners on their own “Daily Appointment” calendar. The teacher just needs to say, “Meet with your 5:00 appointment.” This saves a lot of time for grouping, and can be used for the class over its entire course. https://gretchennorland.wikispaces.com/Learning+Styles+Inventory+and+Activities (see Daily Appointment calendar on the list.) I know this a middle school technique, but I have used it on my college classes.
wlgoffe - May 15, 2012 at 8:51 am
Very interesting. In the limit (uh), I could imagine twice weekly assessments replacing exams. Any thought to doing that? More frequent use would employ the “testing effect” (where questions help one retain information). This might particularly be true if they were cumulative. Or, put another way, what do the midterm and final do that assessments don’t do?
Also, how do you mix the conceptual questions with clickers and the procedural questions with WeBWorK? Does one type of question come first, or do you mix their order?
dolllar - May 15, 2012 at 12:13 pm
I’ve traditionally started classes in stat with a review of where we are, but some students doze through it. This quarter I’ve started each class with a quiz that doesn’t count and that the students correct themselves. Then we go over the answers.
It takes about 20 minutes of an 80 minute class and accomplishes quite a bit: serves as a review; actually increases on-time arrival to class, I guess due to the Pavlovian association of starting with a quiz; nudges students to engage the material; gives me a rough measure of what they know (I collect the quizzes, track the scores, and return them next class); frees me from grading all those quizzes; and gives me an opportunity to introduce new material in a “stealth” fashion. Sometimes I include a group solution component after they’ve tried to answer on their own.
I can spot students who are falling behind by looking at the pattern of their scores. Although the motive to “cheat” in self-grading would appear to be minimal, since the quizzes don’t count, if the student does inflate their self-grade the class’s summative evaluations should catch it.
One problem is some people finish earlier than others, so I try to have something for them to do or an “extra-non-credit” question.
Robert Talbert - May 15, 2012 at 1:11 pm
The midterm and final are first of all entirely individual, so I think they will help correct any sort of lingering “freeloading” effects. Second, the midterm and final are 135 minutes long, so students have a lot of time to work on fairly complex problems. The Assessments by contrast are just 30 minutes long.
As to your second question – the WeBWorK is done entirely outside of class (though sometimes we discuss specific problems if there were issues on those) and the clicker questions are entirely inside. The clicker questions I use mainly to see how well students are acquiring concepts just after they are introduced; the WeBWorK is more like traditional homework where they go home and work out details on a few exercises.
dvakil - May 15, 2012 at 1:14 pm
I like this idea of part-individual and part-group exams and tried something similar in my astronomy and physics classes with some success. Once I had students complete the entire test individually, then repeat the entire test in a group after submitting their individual portions. Most of the group scores were 10% better than the best individual, which substantiates the claim that working together helped everyone, even the best students. I also didn’t observe much freeloading.
One problem I worry about, though, is how you handle students who need accommodations? Some students need to take tests in a reduced-distraction environment or they need extra time. How could you make the collaborative portion accessible to them?
Robert Talbert - May 15, 2012 at 3:31 pm
That’s an excellent question that I admit I didn’t think about when making this plan up. I suppose I would work that out on a case-by-case basis. Some students just might want to forego the group portion altogether if they get accomodations, and that’s fine by me. Some might be OK with 10 minutes of group work, then they leave and head off to another place to do the individual portion (with accomodations). I can’t think of anything better than that. Anybody else want to chime in on this?
mallwalker52 - May 15, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I might be more concerned about the accommodations if the group portion were graded. However, some might argue that it may be graded in the sense that the group portion is repeated in the individual portion.
But let me also point out these facts:
– Most of my students who get accommodations don’t have to take the test at the same time as the rest of the class. For example, if the class starts at 8AM, the student might not start taking the exam until 2PM later in the day. Isn’t this an additional advantage for this student? The student gets extra time to study for the exam. The student gets to sleep in before taking the exam. This is definitely not fair to the other students. When I asked about this policy at my college, it was explained to me that if a student gets extra time for an exam (e.g., 3 hours instead of 2 hours), the 3 hours must be scheduled at a time when the student can take the exam for 3 hours without missing another class. Although I understand the reasoning, I am not sympathetic to the fact that the student has extra time to study and can take the exam later in the day at his or her own leisure.
– One of my students this semester was allowed to use a computer on an exam this semester when the rest of my students were only allowed to use a graphing calculator. I didn’t know this until after the student took the test using the computer. The testing center at my college did not tell me that this student would need accommodations since he was unable to use a graphing calculator. And they did not tell me that his accommodation to replace the graphing calculator would be a computer. I wouldn’t have minded if the student used the graphing calculator emulator with supervision on the computer, but had full access to everything on the computer as far as I can tell. He ended up getting the highest grade in my class on the departmental final exam, and I can only imagine that it was due in part to his unfair use of the computer on the exam. However, there is nothing I can do about this now since it is not this student’s fault that the testing center allowed the student to use the computer without my knowledge.
So, my point is this: From where I’m standing from, the students who are getting accommodations are already getting an unfair advantage. If the ‘group portion’ were graded, of course I would try to make sure there was some alternative for the student. But since it’s not being graded, I don’t think that the students taking the exam in class are getting anymore of an advantage than students taking the test with accommodations in a testing center. It’s a different type of advantage, but nonetheless, it’s still an advantage.
mitchkeller - May 17, 2012 at 12:56 pm
It appears that your disability services (or whatever they’re called locally) office isn’t doing a great job of communicating with you. A few thoughts:
- Ask the accommodation office about student scheduling rules. I know that at some universities, students receiving extended testing accommodation are given priority registration so that they do not schedule classes back-to-back unless there’s only one section of the courses being offered and they have no option. This always allows that students either start the test earlier than the students taking it in the regular classroom environment (and finish at the same time) or start at the same time and finish later. Where I previously taught, students were required to get my approval for the testing time, so if I felt a proposed time would provide an advantage to the student, I could reject it. In at least one instance, this involved having an early-arriving colleague proctor the exam starting at 0645 since the normal exam time was 0805-0925.
- The computer thing is extremely poor communication between disability services and you. Students should be required to present documentation of their accommodation (not the reasons for them, just what the accommodations are, since the reasons may be protected by HIPAA) to you at the start of the term. At my previous institution, all instructors signed sheets saying they’d reviewed the student’s accommodation, and I kept a copy for my files. Prior to a test, in addition to approving the time, I specified what equipment was or was not allowed, in accordance with the accommodation rules.
I have some difficulties with the accommodations provided to students, generally because some of them get these accommodations because their wealthy parents went doctor shopping until they could get an ADD/ADHD diagnosis. I had one student who got extra time who clearly didn’t need it, as the testing center always marked the envelope with the time he turned in his exams, and it was before the 50 minutes was up. That student earned a solid A in my class. However, there are definitely students with physical impairments who need more time/alternate formats, and there may be other disabilities that make a quiet/nondistracting environment essential. I don’t think it’s fair to broadly paint accommodations as providing students with an unfair advantage, but I can see where you’re coming from given your experiences with them in the past. It might be worth a trip over to meet with the director of the office responsible just to chat about your challenges and ask how you can better understand what they do and how to make it work with your class policies and expectations. Don’t be surprised if they wind up saying that some of what’s been going on is the students gaming the system, claiming you authorized things about which you were never asked!
mitchkeller - May 17, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Be very careful of having them do the group work and then heading off to another place to do the individual bit. That would likely be a FERPA violation (cue Derek Bruff’s FERPA drawing) at most universities, since you’re not allowed to disclose that a student receives accommodations and it would be pretty visible that they were receiving them. Assuming the student’s accommodation is simply extra time and not quiet environment, large print exam, scribe, etc., I would ask the student if they would be willing to take the exam in the classroom and then come back to my office (or a staff member’s office) for their extra time. Basically, you have the student turn in the exam as normal at the end of the exam period and walk out with you, and then give them the additional time. I’ve done this as an extra time thing for unannounced quizzes, since students can’t line up time with the testing center in advance, and it works pretty well. Assuming you can make the scheduling work for something longer, it should work out.
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