Oh, another thing I do: I have questions in which I tell the students: "you can only use this and this Sage commands in your solution". This way, I can give them problems that can be solved in Sage with a single command, but I still want them to do part of it by hand. A simple example would be: "Find all solutions of the equation ax=b in Z/mZ. You are only allowed to use basic arithmetic with integers and the xgcd command for this problem."
On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Luiz Felipe Martins <luizfelipe.mart...@gmail.com> wrote: > 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.
