🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10...@ttidca.TTI.COM> holl...@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
>In article <1990Feb28.2...@athena.mit.edu> ers...@athena.mit.edu (Ellen R. Spertus) writes:
>}... to try to keep
>}students from reusing papers, they kept a file of old junior themes ...
>
>}... The teacher told us the department was considering making
>}students turn in the floppy disk they did their work on.  He couldn't
>}understand why the students thought this idea was funny.
>
>Neither can I.  Yes, the students can keep a copy of the disk.  So?
>Nothing kept the students from making copies of their note cards and old
>themes, either.  The point is the department can build a machine readable
>database of papers.  That would make copy detection _much_ easier -- which
>is the whole point.
>
>Sounds more like a stupid student trick to me.
>
ARGH!

Unless this was the computer science department (or a very progressive
English department) I doubt that they were planning to do copy
detection.

I can see it now!  100 disks handed in: several different physical
sizes, several different OS formats (for each size), and several
different file formats (for each OS).  Yeah, there are solutions
to this problem, but none are real elegant.      

The main point of handing in note-cards is not to prevent copying.
Educators (the good ones at least) are trying to make the students
go through a tried-and-true process of writing a research paper,
not to catch cheaters.

I'm sure many students think that the note-card issues is to stop
them from cheating.  They, like all young people, sometimes fail
to see the big picture.  I sure would have thought like them,
but not now.

I found the folklore humorous for two reasons: 1) the educator
got lost in technology and 2) the students thought they were
really going to get away with something.

Handing in disks in lieu of note-cards is silly unless it can
document the research process in some way.  Even if it could,
would the educator be able to read the format?

Handing in disks as machine readable  copies of papers is silly,
too, unless the department is willing and able to handle the
problem of varying formats.          

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