Does everyone in the world but me know about Cramster.com? Basically it’s a website that includes as many answers to textbook homework problems as they can possibly put together. As far as I can tell it works on a Wiki system, where members submit the various solutions, although there are apparently also “expert” solutions. Odd-numbered solutions are available for free, but you have to pay to see the even numbers. Nothing there for my GR book, although there were some for Jackson’s E+M book, and plenty for Halliday/Resnick etc.
Not really sure what to think about sites like this. Part of me (a big part, actually) couldn’t care less about whether students do their homework, and for that matter thinks that grading is a complete waste of time. What matters is whether or not the students have learned the material, not how they perform on some formalized exercises. If they get perfect grades but don’t learn anything, ultimately they’re the ones who will suffer; even if they get into a better grad school thereby, they’ll just find that their fellow students are much better prepared than they are.
But then there is the whole “fairness” thing, which sadly does matter. There is a set of rewards — like good jobs and/or grad-school admissions — that we base on grades, and they should go to the most deserving students. So, unpleasant as it might be, we have to evaluate them somehow. But in this brave new world, it would probably be wise to make up original problems rather than using the ones from the back of the book.
But if they’re not doing the homework they’ll fail their exams. And I don’t know about where you are, but here exams are >60% of the grade. So getting a perfect homework score might help, but if you’re not also working your ass off to learn the material you’ll fail.
I think this website seems like a good resource for students. Not because it allows them to “cheat” on their homework, but because it is almost like a complete solutions guide. For example, I’m still in high school but I’m taking several AP courses. For those courses, there is only 1 solution guide for the whole class and that is kept with the teacher. So if I want to do some practice at home, right now I’m limited to only half the questions (they have answers in the back). But now with this website, I can try almost all of the problems and check my answer instantly. And if I am lost on some problem, I don’t have to go after school to see the teacher (and wait in a line-up). Instead I can quickly look up a solution to the odd questions (for free) to point my mind in the right direction.
I do agree that some will misuse the website, but then some will use it in a positive way. It is up to the student to decide for himself.
I think your post is very interesting. I too, agree that grades are very trivial and provide little insight for those “rewards” that appear in every persons life path (grad school, scholarships, top jobs). While I was never one to really care about doing my homework in undergrad, I find it funny when most students have answers to problem sets that are assigned, while others dont. In addition, many professors have been found to recycle test questions that certain privledged individuals are entitled to some way or the other. I find it comedic considering I recently graduated form a nationally recognized school with plenty of companies looking at GPA as an indicator of how well one can really learn and adapt.
One of my favorite math professors would give a quiz at the beginning of every class, except exam days. He would randomly select one problem from the homework, and change the numbers enough to make the answer different. (Literally randomly, he used the rand() function on an excel spreadsheet). He never graded homework or took attendance. And to pass his class you needed to know how to do the homework, not just what the answer was.
Sooner or later, the student will come up against a problem for which there are no prerecorded answers… at which point the student has the opportunity to do some original research. The real question is, how does the student react to that situation? There are countless numbers of students who jumped flawlessly through every hoop that was placed in front of them, and yet failed completely when the hoops were taken away and they were asked to do something original.
It’s also important for professors to take the time to invent original problems for their students for which no prerecorded answers exist – but in the end, if the student doesn’t have the motivation, all the teachers in the world won’t be able to help her make any real progress. However, for the motivated but stumped student, a ‘worked example’ can be a great help.
It’d also be nice if the world really was a pure meritocracy, but as everyone knows, nepotism and cronyism are also present in abundance.
More solutions here 🙂
I’ve the impression that US students waste too much time on compulsary homework problems that they have to submit for grading. I work for several homework help companies and almost all of our customers are US students 🙂
If you are a student who is really studying hard, then there are some disadvantages to a system where you have to submit homework for grading:
a) It costs extra time to write up the solutions to the problems.
b) Because the homework will be graded you will spend extra time checking for small errors (e.g. sign errors, typos) instead of studying more.
c) Also because of the grading, the Professor cannot make the homework problems too challenging. This means that most students are spending too much time on problems that are too easy.
So, I think it would be better if the students were given more difficult problems which they don’t need to submit for grading. The exam would then also be more challenging. Students should be told at the start of the course that without doing a lot of the difficult homework problems they have zero chance of passing the exam.
Just my two cents as a student finishing an undergraduate physics degree. I agree that grading is (at best) a waste of time. I’ve spent my time trying to understand the physics, not making sure I could solve formal problems by rote. I was lucky that the professors in physics program at my school (Yeshiva University) tended to test that knowledge.
However, when I took the physics GRE, I did poorly. But I still think I’m better prepared for grad school and a career in physics as a thinking physics student, rather than a trained monkey.
(I got into grad school, but was rejected from the “good” ones.)
Without homework, how can students learn? By passive listening only? And without some kind of feedback — call it grading or what you will — how will students know whether they are learning?
George
I’m all in favor of assigning useful homework, and then providing feedback. (Generally I assign more than average, and then grade fairly leniently.) But if they don’t want to do it, that’s their choice. Or it would be, in a utopia.
A couple comments:
1) As a former student, no employer has ever checked my grades. My average performance as a student hasn’t mattered as much as my demeanor and alma mater (yes, I’ve been given jobs for being an alumnus of a particular University)
2) As a former graduate student, I hated grading papers, and found it useless. The good students would do the work regardless, and ask questions when necessary. The bad students wouldn’t care, or would try to game the system.
I always liked having a schedule of what we would be studying, problems that would enlighten the study course, and two or three tests to keep me on my toes.
I had the pleasure of being taught by Dr. Donald Clayton (yes the one that wrote “Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis”). He was so excellent. Everytime im in a physics class doing robotic type homework (which I could careless about) I feel like im being cheated. For his class, he would come up with these problems that no one had any idea how to solve, and we would have to figure out what we knew about the problem, what a solution would depend on, and figure out some way of putting all these things together to represent the system mathematically, and THEN solve it. It completely took away any advantage held by the “i have no life and my only goal in life is to get a 100 on every assignment” people, and it was an excellent way of testing whether or not we understood the material and could apply it to completely different problems. Needless to say, we learned more than just the material — we learned to think on our feet.
I have been known to answer questions on the Cramster. I don’t see it any differently then correcting or enhancing an entry on the Wikipedia.
Eons ago, when I was a graduate student and was learning EM from Jackson, I had difficulty with several of the exercise questions. I struggled with some, TA had no clue (he probably knew less than I did) and the professor was too busy to help.
And then, I got plugged in to the Chinese graduate student group and guess what, they had a Chinese book with solution to most of the Jackson problems. I had such a great time going through that solution book and I think I increased the depth of my understanding of EM from that book. I didn’t know a word of Chinese, but I didn’t need to; most of the equations were there and I could follow what they were trying to do. In fact, my recollection is that I found several errors in the solutions.
Not sure if any of you remember or not, but there was a book or solutions for physics graduate study entrance exam from Chicago. The solutions were so elegant and beautiful that it was a sheer joy to explore that book. Again, I think I learned more from that book then I did from any Quantum Mechanics text book.
When I was teaching, I would spend more time on doing the solutions of the quiz or exam problems in the class. Because the students had thought about those problems and if they didn’t do them right, seeing the solution unfold within the context of what they have learned was very educational.
If it was up to me, I would provide a “hint book” for all the exercise questions for all the text books that I ever used for teaching.
Coming back to Cramster, more power to sites like these and the fact that a student is seeking to find the right answer is good enough for me.
Over the span of a semester, using a site like Cramster or using any other approved or non approved, ethical or nonethical study aid makes no practical difference in terms of the grades. Most educators are smart enough to include quizzes, closed book exams, open book exams and other interaction to appropriately gauge the grade level for each student.
If one is focused on whether the students are learning or not, I think the sites like these have overall positive impact.
Interesting discussion that goes along with “Elephant not in the Room” on Inside Higher Ed http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/01/absent
I’d say it makes matters neither worse nor better. It still depends on whether the students are willing to learn something, if they have an ‘instruction sheet’ to find the solution for the homework problem or not. Even before Cramster it was possible to do that, if you knew what to do in a library. At least that was the case when I was a student – most of the homework could be found in one book or the other.
I’ve had a whole bunch of classmates in physics who made it through the exercises but eventually dropped out when it came to their BS exams. It’s admittedly kind of stupid they didn’t realize earlier it wouldn’t work out.
In maths the situation was completely different. Most of the homework exercises were indeed made up by the Profs, really hard to solve and could not be found anywhere. In addition, even if you found the solution, it wouldn’t help unless you could explain the derivation. The result was (I believe still is), that students realize very early if maths isn’t for them. The drop-out rate is dramatically high in the first semester, it often exceeds 50%. It’s kind of scary to sit in the lectures and each week there are less people around. But anyhow, when you look at the BS and compare to physics, the survivor rate is about the same.
Best,
B.
Well, as a former physics grad student contemplating re-entering physics after a 13-year hiatus, solved problems are a boon. I am doing a self-study review of all of my undergrad work in physics and mathematics in prep for re-applying to grad school; these ‘solved problems’ will help me immensely, provided that they are accurate. I don’t need Halliday & Resnik as much as I need solved problem sets for the more advanced texts.
Why is the text in your ‘Comments’ box jumping around as I type it?
Even if the grade is 60% exams, if everyone does poorly the exams since everyone is coping homework, teachers sometimes will curve the scores.
However, I bet you couldn’t get serious research done if you didn’t really know physics very well. That would stop you from progressing up the ladder.
I studied at a University school where solving homework problems was voluntary, not compulsory. They were not graded. I used to solve all problem sets they gave me, and then look for more in textbooks, because I knew I needed the training for the exam. Exams were pretty difficult, but not too much.
Now I teach at a place where homework is mandatory, and must be graded. I find myself having to press students to actually hand in the homework…
What’s ironic is that we try so hard to teach students about the scientific method, the need for controls, the danger of spurious precision, etc. — and then we flout all of it with our ridiculous system of grading. What does a “B+” mean, exactly?
I’ve always thought the root of the problem lies in the strange assumption that the same people teaching students also have to be evaluating them. If one has to evaluate students, why not use a standardized test? And if one doesn’t like the existing tests, why not devise new ones? At least that way the scores would have some semblance of a statistical interpretation (“this student scored two standard deviations above the mean of this population on this test”), as opposed to the current situation (“this student induced some particular professor to give her a B+, either by doing what constituted B+ work in that professor’s mind, or cribbing answers from Cramster.com, or possibly something else — who knows?”).
I almost literally NEVER studied in college and literally never in high school (I went for Psych/Poli Sci, minor in med and law) Except for my psych and poli sci classes i never studied period. And would cheat on my papers in the rest. Why? I didn’t care about the mandotory minimium they set upon us to graduate, but i DID care about what i stated so I want to gobble up all the information. And since i never did any late night cramming, I’d get a B or B- and the ones who did got A’s. It’s important to note cramming gets it into your short term memory makes it into SHORT TERM, but not the long term. But when we get to Psych 400 I sure as hell remembered more then they did. Fact is most people don’t study right. The grading system we have right now punishes those who cram the night before and get 98’s (I have done it a few times). And if someone wants to cheat in college, there loss. There are paying to attend that school, if they want to screw themselves over, let them.
Even more amazing: many of those “for instructors only” solution manuals can be quickly downloaded as PDF’s using Bittorrent
Because standardized tests are, almost by definition, extremely rigid, and my gut feeling is that they tend to put severe restrictions both on what students learn and what teachers teach. I’ve always thought that teachers evaluate their own students because only the teacher knows exactly what it is she’s trying to get across. If you prescribe a standardized evaluation, you are also prescribing a standardized curriculum and a standardized teaching method — neither of which are necessarily good things. Yes, a standardized curriculum is important in the sense that professors at level C should be confident that their students have a graps on certain core concepts from levels A and B, but I think a standardized evaluation tends to push the curriculum much too far towards absolute uniformity… and intellectual diversity is probably just as important in science as a firm grasp of the basics.
As a practical example, consider the professor who lets his class decide whether to cover groups or differential equations in the last unit of the class. In a standardized testing environment, he would not have that option.
Perhaps one way to combat cheating would be to “atomize” homework assignments, in other words break down problems into smaller chunks which must each be answered separately.
That would lend itself more to subjects such as science and maths where aswers tend to be cut-and-dried, in the form of equations and numeric values; but with ingenuity I’m sure it could also be used with a wider class of fact-based subjects such as history and geography.
The idea behind this is that however the solutions are obtained, i.e. whether from the student’s recollection, or their notes or a textbook, or by paying to see a solution at cramster.com, the very effort of having to retrieve and write/type the answer explicitly would impress it on the student’s mind and, one hopes, with all questions collectively, on their understanding.
I’d concede there may be a few disadvantages. One would be where the wording of a question, depends on the answer to a previous question. Also, a homework assignment in this style would perhaps appear more mechanical and with less scope for originality, more like a multiple choice problem set. But there would be other compensating advantages, such as homework in this style being perhaps easier to mark (even if there are more questions).
Cheers
John R Ramsden
P.S. Sean, I’m not posting as Annette today 😉
Chris (#10): But those grades mattered for getting into grad school, yes?
I’ve thought about this problem probably for all ten years that I’ve been teaching high school physics. When I started, I had a set of weekly assignments cribbed from some distance learning materials, so they couldn’t be found in the textbook. But marking 2 30+ class sets of those quickly got to be too much, and I dropped the idea, switching to more quizzes instead, which were faster to mark, and simply recommending problem sets from the textbook.
Unfortunately, high school students in my experience won’t do anything if there’s not at least some grading reward for it. Over the past few years I’ve re-instituted the weekly assignments for marks, but now students mark their own assignments in class as I go over the answer key.
There are always those who copy from one another to just get the marks, as well as those even lazier who try to copy the answers from the key and claim full marks (though they are quite easy to catch; they don’t seem to understand not to copy my idiosyncratic notations). With 18+ assignments worth a total of 10% over an 18 week course, neither really bother me sufficiently to exert myself to put a stop to it. Instead, I simply comfort myself with the understanding that those who don’t at least try the work will do very poorly on the tests and quizzes (where they have to do it all right in front of me), which together make up 70% of the mark. I’m a firm believer in the “give them enough rope” school of teaching these days. The sooner they figure out the connection between attempting the work on their own and their test scores, the better off they’ll be.
Even those good students, who for whatever reason can’t get an occasional assignment completed, don’t suffer unduly as they are not heavily weighted.
Since bringing the assignments back, I’ve seen a 5% increase in overall student averages against provincial standards.
The best part, of course, is that now I don’t have a heavy bag of marking to lug around with me. Now if only I could do something about those labs…
I think there’s an assumption here that these physics textbook problems are, in some way, “rote” problems. When I took GR (using Prof. Carroll’s book, actually, and Ray d’Inverno’s, from Andy Strominger), I definitely didn’t do any of the problems myself until the final exam. I was always in a too-large-for-efficiency group sitting in a dining hall from after dinner to after lunch essentially waiting for the other people to solve the problems, since I did not understand what was going on until I had copied the solutions. I think that this was actually horrible for my learning, and I should have read the textbooks and done the problems myself. But all of these problems were difficult problems. In my calculus class in high school, we were given a set of basic tools — this type of integral, that type of integral — and told to apply it several times, each with different numbers. At that point, copying all of the answers is cheating, since these were “rote” problems with the specific goal of making the student good at solving those particular kinds of problems — a very useful thing if that student is going to do anything with calculus again. I can imagine someone who had copied homework in calculus class having much difficulty in fluid dynamics with the integrals found there many years later, since that rote learning would be completely forgotten. On the other hand, for a specialized and complicated subject like general relativity, the emphasis is (I think) not on being able to DO something but on being able to UNDERSTAND something, and there, copying “rote” problems, like computing every entry in some three-dimensional tensor, is fine, whereas copying the much more difficult proofs about light-like trajectories around a spinning charged black hole may give momentary understanding but not the truer understanding of the entire problem.