I teach a course in which all exams require the use of Sage. I do this only in an upper-level course, with at most 20 students. The exams always have two parts. In the in-class part, I ask them to use Sage for the computations and write the solutions on paper with an explanation of the method of solution, including what they did by hand and what they did on Sage. Then, they have to append a printed copy of their worksheet pointing to where the computations for each problem are.The in-class questions never require much programming, I leave that for the take-home part.
I don't find any problem with cheating. Our lab is big enough to have the students sit away from each other. My exams are with open books and notes, so I am not concerned with them finding things on the internet. We have software that allows the instructor to see what is on each student's screen, but I never actually used it with this group. I sit behind the students and walk around the room to make sure they are not IMing. Since they know I can see any published worksheet, they would not attempt it. To tell the truth, the students that usually take this course are well known to me, so I basically trust them. Another idea a colleague gave me is to make part of the exam a "group test". I am not ready to do that, but I will experiment this semester with a "lab" in which I give them only one problem and they have to give me the best solution they can come up with in 65 minutes. The approach with lower-level classes with larger number of students would have to be very different. On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 12:54 AM, dimpase <dimp...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear all, > > I'll be teaching an "Experimental mathematics" undergraduate class > next year (it's likely to have up to 200 people taking it), and > I am trying to collect information on ways to conduct exams for > courses involving computer algebra on computer. > In my school this is unheard of (in CS courses they still make people > write code on paper!) > > And links, experiences, procedures for such exams? > > Thanks a lot in advance. > Dmitrii Pasechnik > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-edu" group. > To post to this group, send email to sage-edu@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > sage-edu+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to sage-edu@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-edu+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en.
