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Re: [Phys-l] not our majors now!



You guys missed the "Hong Kong Press" era. When I was grading core graduate physics courses in grad school, I had several students vociferously argue with me that my request to "fill in the steps" was rediculous since "It is obvious..."

My supervising porfessor watched in amusement as I kept sending the students away to fill in the steps. Finally, he asked me: "You know why he is so confident in arguing with you, don't you?" "No, I replied" to which he said..."Hong Kong Press..."

Way back in the 60's and 70's, Hong Kong ignored international copyright and produced solution manuals. Because of the interest in technology as an escape from poverty, solution manuals existed for nearly every graduate physics text in existence. Sure it was illegal to import them, but how many customs officials actually read the Chinese solution manuals to discern if they are pirated editions?

After that I was livid about the "head in the sand" attitude of Physics faculty. They pretended it didn't exist. When I got a copy of the solution manual to Jackson's E&M and ran it under their noses, their retort was that the solution manuals had mistakes in them...and that the students weren't really learning.

I was not (and am still not) amused. Most graduate physics courses have a large component of very difficult homework. Regardless how it counts in the grades, the exams are exceedingly similar to those homework problems.

Students who get the solutions from *anywhere* will do better than students who never see the solution. That's a no brainer, even for an osterich.

Years later, I asked a colleague how he prevented scholastic dishonesty in his classes. He said: "Figure out every possible way they might cheat (cheat sheets, solution manuals, etc) then make those part of the acceptable ways of succeeding in the course." Engage the students in defeating their own lopsided way of succeeding over their classmates. For example, *let* them have a cheat sheet, give them print outs of equations, place your old sets of HW in the library so everybody has access to them, not just the "former UG students" or the students who are in a research lab with grad students ahead of them. In other words, Level the playing field for everybody, or accept that you are part of the good old boy, fraternity cheating cabal. Most of all, don't be an osterich and deny your complicity with the insiders. Trying to "keep the honest people honest" only works to promote the dishonest advantage.

Karl

Quoting "Rauber, Joel" <Joel.Rauber@SDSTATE.EDU>:

Krishna said in part:

| Even worse. I went to Google, typed in physics homework
| solutions. Third
| hit:
|
| http://www.solutionarchive.org/

I forgot that site!

I would implore all instructors to either not post solutions on line or
at least password protect them and then remove them when the course is
over. This won't totally solve the problem by any means, as students
can download and then post themselves, but it would help.

Later Krishna stated:

"I feel that this must always have been a problem. Fraternities are the
most common example, but plenty of student groups have solution files of
homeworks and exams."

I think the ease with which the internet allows you to access the whole
world's solution files makes the problem incomparably different, as you
say, an order or magnitude greater.

Yea, when I was at school the fraternities had files, but there weren't
too many with upper division physics courses in them!
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