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[Phys-L] cramster.com et. al. thread



Leigh asked for it.
=20
I just looked at the site, they charge $10 per month? And so far the=
re
seems to be a limited number of textbooks in the site.
=20
I had an experience this semester that surprised me, but in retrospec=
t
should not have. It was an early HW assignment and I was grading it =
and
grew quite suspicious when I noticed about 50% of the class getting t=
he
two triple dot problems exactly correct (or all having the same mista=
ke
in one of the problems.) As most of you know, it can be very very ve=
ry
obvious when students are copying solution manuals. Well under that
suspicion, I checked the solution manual and noticed that essentially
every one of these students was copying verbatim the solution manual.
This includes copying the error in the manual, copying the really odd
method of solution that the solution manual use included notation and
methods that were not in the text book or covered in lecture!
=20
For me the most surprising thing was that it was half my class. It
didn't take me too long (though longer than I want to admit) to look =
at
e-bay and I was totally amazed by the number of solution manuals
available for purchase on-line.
=20
We as instructors need to be aware that these resources are out there
and are being used. I'm in sympathy with Leigh's comment about
unethical before; but the genie truly is out of the bottle I believe =
and
we will need to adjust our teaching methods in recognition of the new
reality.
=20
Needless, to say this fact ruins a lot of the pedagogical value of
assigning homework. What I've decided to do for this semester was th=
e
following: (I'm glad I recognized this early in the semester.)
=20
a) I downgraded the weighting of the HW in the course grade.
b) I use a combination of Web Assign and handwritten problems for
homework. I'm now choosing web assign problems from other textbooks
that aren't the course book (this is easy to do for introductory
physics) and always have the flag set that keeps the text name and
problem # from being displayed.
c) For handwritten problems I am now writing my own. (Stealing from
other books mostly, but rewriting them.) Its a pain, takes time, but=
is
necessary for students to get benefit from trying to solve the proble=
ms.
=20
For me it is a miserable situation, as I think it may force me to go =
to
some teaching practices that are less than optimal.
=20

________________________=20
Joel Rauber=20
Department of Physics - SDSU=20

Joel.Rauber@sdstate.edu=20
605-688-4293=20

=20
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