[res0nat0r]

You may cheat all you want on your homework, but if calculus tests are like they were when I was in college, taking your exam with no notes or calculator, if you've only cut and pasted from Wolfram Alpha all semester is going to lead you to getting an F in the course.

[makmanalp]

This - I think part of the issue is to stop homework from becoming busywork for grades. If everyone has the understanding that this is supposed to nail down and self-test understanding of material taught in class, then there's no reason students should "cheat". To this end, I like the approach of mentioning repeatedly that homeworks are for the students' own good, then give a test early on to make students quickly understand they'll do badly without practice, and then announce after the test that you'll drop the scores, but just DO YOUR DAMN HOMEWORK! :-)

[posterboy]

Don't announce it, or it will work only for one or two years.

[watbe]

Agreed. This headline makes it sound like they're cheating in exams, but this is take-home assignments we're talking about. If wolfram alpha wasn't available, they'd be asking friends or posting in maths forums. Wolfram alpha is simply more efficient at this job but all take-home assignments have this problem inherently.

Students just need to be aware that they should learn from solutions provided by wolfram alpha (there's nothing wrong with that), otherwise they're going to flunk the closed-book exams anyway.

[ntsplnkv2]

Exactly: Why is homework considered something that can be "cheated" on anyway? The whole purpose is to get practice and learn the material.

Just make the tests challenging-the ones who actually did their homework will pass. The ones who didn't won't.

Wolfram Alpha helped me many times-sometimes you're simply stuck on a problem and no one is there to help. But like anything, you can use it to cheat and not do work, or you can use it to help you learn more.

[chongli]

I'm well aware of this. I'm going from the Ontario high school curriculum where homework is 70% of the grade to University of Waterloo math faculty where assignments are 10% and the midterm and final combine for the other 90%. Wolfram Alpha should be used for nothing other than a sanity check afterwards.

[Chardok]

Too right; it may help being able to just provide the answers, but homework made up a small percentage compared to the actual exams, which of course were done without any notes and were simple enough not to need a calculator.

It may be difficult trying to teach these kids how to perform the math itself when they can show the homework, but ultimately they are failing themselves when it comes down to needing a fundamental understanding on the process itself.

This reminds me more of teachers scoffing at calculators being a crutch. It comes down to the students' willingness to learn, not how to thwart cheating on homework.

[throwawayjava]

> it may help being able to just provide the answers, but homework made up a small percentage compared to the actual exams...

One of the easiest ways to inflate grades without explicitly lowering standards is to decrease the proportion of the final grade that depends on the midterm and final. Cut out the midterm for "more instruction time" and leave a 20% final. Homework is now worth an absurd 80% of the grade... that's no good. Throw in a project, participation, or auto-graded "e-labs" with infinite attempts. Suddenly it's really difficult to get anything less than a B unless you really just don't give a crap. But also kinda difficult to actually learn because So. Much. Busy. Work. And, on top of everything else, we're punishing the one student who's not cheating.

Any time I see a lower division syllabus where closed-book exams are worth less than 40% of the grade, I'm instantly suspicious.

> but ultimately they are failing themselves when it comes down to needing a fundamental understanding on the process itself.

Yup.

> It comes down to the students' willingness to learn, not how to thwart cheating on homework.

In fact, you can leverage the calculator or WA to teach the material at greater depth. No longer need lots of practice with trig identities or u substitution? Great. Maybe we can write a few proofs instead, or use the time to work through a large case study.

[jandrese]

My impression is that the article is about highschool students, where homework tends to be on the order of 75% of your grade simply because you get so much of it.

If someone were really serious about abusing the service they could pull out a C in the class even with hard failures of the tests.

[_jal]

> where homework tends to be on the order of 75% of your grade

I think I found the problem.

[jandrese]

It's hard to balance when you have an hour of homework assigned every day, but only get tested about once a month. So you have 20 hours of homework vs. a 30 minute test.

The difference in magnitude ends up being too much. Either each homework assignment is worth almost nothing or they outweigh tests.

[nilkn]

I was a math major in college only a few years ago, and lower-level courses tended to concentrate most of the grade in exams for this reason. The exams were always pencil-and-paper only, with no resources of any kind allowed. In upper-level classes, the trend often shifted, with most or even all of the grade coming from problem sets. Some classes didn't even have exams. But this is because the material had become entirely proof-based. Referencing books was not only allowed but encouraged.

[sp332]

But it might seem like good time management to have Wolfram Alpha do your homework sometimes. That means it's going to take longer for a teacher to notice that you're not getting a concept well, and that means a lot more painful surprise-F's on tests.

[criddell]

That could be painful for the teacher too. If kids don't do well on tests, then teachers can fail their evaluations. It seems like it would be an incentive to use the flipped model where exercises are worked though in class and students learn lessons at night via video and reading.

[JadeNB]

> That means it's going to take longer for a teacher to notice that you're not getting a concept well, and that means a lot more painful surprise-F's on tests.

I'm not sure how much to read into this, so forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the tone; but calling an F after not doing any of the work oneself a "surprise F" seems a lot like calling it a "surprise loss" when one hasn't shown up for any of the team practices. (If you were just observing that students are surprised by such F's, no matter how often it's pointed out to them, and no matter how often they've met such outcomes before, then I am forced reluctantly to agree.)

[polpo]

I learned this pretty quickly - I used Mathematica a bit too much for help on calculus homework and wound up paying dearly during the first few exams.

[2OEH8eoCRo]

Grumble grumble back in my day grumble grumble

[qubex]

Grumble grumble integration by exhaustion grumble grumble Napier bones grumble grumble

[nerdponx]

Can confirm.

Source: did this, got a C in freshman calc.