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In this Discussion
- _vk July 2014
- amnon July 2014
- billautomata July 2014
- Bird July 2014
- Chrisir July 2014
- clankill3r July 2014
- devwil July 2014
- GoToLoop July 2014
- jeffthompson July 2014
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Mods/admins, a plea from an instructor
Hello,
Long-time Processing user here. I'm sorry to say I've rarely used the forum, but I appreciate how active it is. It's gotten me out of some difficult jams, though this is my first post.
I've been teaching Processing in my introductory "Programming for Digital Art" course at the University at Buffalo every semester (including summers) since Fall 2012. I love Processing. I think it's perfect for entry-level, art-oriented programming courses.
Here's what I don't like, though:
User [handle redacted] is a student of mine who had started multiple threads asking users of this forum to do his homework for him, a short time before these assignments were due. (He is in an online, summer version of "Programming for Digital Art"; I had suggested submission dates over the past few months and then a due date the other day, after which students can only get partial credit for work.)
[handle redacted] chose to procrastinate and then not do his own work. Note his anxiousness to get quick responses. This is because the due date for the assignments (assigned and asked to be completed long ago) was coming up, and fast.
Frankly, I'm disappointed that certain users were somehow unaware or unconcerned with the fact that—in certain threads—he was obviously working on a homework assignment... people simply wrote his code for him, explaining little or nothing about what was going on.
If you know anything about educating, you know that simply giving your student the answer is NOT effective teaching.
Please remove these threads from the forum so my assignments aren't completely compromised. I like to think I've designed some good exercises for students to work through, and if people can quickly and easily Google the code they need to complete the assignment, they won't learn anything.
Answers
I help some1 as much as he/she helps to be helped out!
Although I indeed tried helping out @drucker600 many times, those were only tidbits.
B/c he didn't provide much and didn't post much about his updated progressions.
So I had no idea whether he had understood it or not!
You can check his discussion list below:
http://forum.processing.org/two/profile/discussions/13316/drucker600
Thanks for your plea!
Here is my personal response to it. I would be interested to hear how others feel as well.
People posting home work assignments, without doing anything themselves, are a nuisance to the forum as well. I agree with you that letting somebody else do all the work, is not helpful for learning. This kind of behavior ("can the forum do my homework for me?") probably bugs me and other forum users as much as you. Users will get and have been verbally blasted on the forum if such a thing is suspected. I myself have posted many times the line "HOME WORK ALERT!" to warn of these practices.
I think your student's threads are not the most obvious 'home work threads'. As GoToLoop said, at times these were just tidbits. Perhaps for you it was obvious, but not for anyone unfamiliar with your assignments. I have seen much more glaring examples. So I can understand how forum user were not always aware of this practice.
What you must also understand is that at the core this is a forum intended for helping people with Processing code. Many people here invest their time and share their knowledge to create a vibrant and helpful community, which is one of the greatest assets of Processing. So their inclination in this setting is to help.
I do not share your disappointment. Yes, there should be some vigilance with regard to "doing people's homework". We do what we can. But fundamentally, it's not OUR job to make sure of that. Doing the work themselves is of course first and foremost, the student's own responsibility. Making sure students don't copy paste other people's work is YOUR job. If you find that your students have done this, you should take it up with them and not blame the forum.
I have always wondered where the teachers were in this equation, when there were blatantly obvious cases of homework on the forum, sometimes by multiple students (where the forum would say: "check your classmate's thread"). In all these years, you are the first teacher that I know has come forward to comment on this issue. So I honestly commend you for being on this forum to make sure your students are keeping within the boundaries of "getting help" instead of "getting the work done".
So all in all, I understand your frustration about this issue. I share it to some extent. But I think the responsibility ultimately does not lie with the forum users and I personally would never be in favor of deleting threads where forum users have shared their knowledge.
As a teacher who uses Processing a lot, both for teaching and my own work, this does strike a chord. That said, I think my response has more to do with the assignments than with the students. (Of course, this is all without knowing the assignments @devwil is talking about – this is more of a general comment about teaching creative coding.)
If we create complex assignments that force students to come up with their own ideas, the forum will be useless for "do my homework for me" posts. The forum can then be used for "I'm trying to make this weird thing but I'm stuck" questions, which I've certainly asked plenty of. If we create assignments like "write a recursive function to draw a fractal", then yes the student learns how to do that, but they're really not making critical, engaging work.
I imagine sites like Stack Overflow get a lot more of these kind of reductive, comp sci assignment questions. What makes the P5 forum great is that it includes a lot of really interesting questions from the position of artists and designers writing code, many for the first time.
I would also add that we should also be careful to be kind when answering questions, even those suspected of being homework. I've seen too many snotty replies on the forum and especially the GitHub issues. As @amnon said, this is a community.
Well, being a student myself, the only ones that suffer from this issue...are the students. Because they have learned nothing and even if they pass the exams (which is unlikely), they will get trouble in the working world. And if their motivation on solving problems is so low...they should consider doing something different...like gardening (Which can also be very funny :) )
As @jeffthompson says it, it's not specifically a problem related to the Processing forum or community. Teachers from every discipline face the question of their students solving their assignments with a "quick" search on Internet. Think of all these teachers blaming Wikipedia.
As teachers, we have to take this into the education equation. It would be wrong to try to suppress every message or answer related to some work assignment done somewhere. It's a lost battle. Let's create other assignments, other forms of exercises that teach our students how to make sense of all this freely available information. Let's create work conditions that challenge these practices instead of trying to ban them.
It's also a matter of assessment. No copy/paste submission can survive a few well-placed questions. Personally I think any kind of project homework without a moment of personal defense/presentation is an open opportunity for minimaxing like this... And if the student understands enough to pass this elementary level of scrutiny, I guess the goal was achieved.
The solution to this issue is a simple one: unless the student can post some substantial bit of code showing his or her effort in solving the problem, then I ignore the thread.
My expectation, and I've been both an instructor and a professional programmer for 20+ years, is that the student shows some level of comprehension by producing code and/or comments that are relevant to the problem domain. For the most part, it's easy enough to spot those for whom a Processing project is also a scholastic one.
I was interested in this topic so I looked at the posts for drucker600 and discovered that I had posted several comments and code on one of his discussions.
At first glance it was not obvious to me that it was homework or that it was part of a formal assessment. It could quite easily be someone learning to program from a book and doing the end-of-chapter exercises. This is even more true since drucker600 started each post with some code which the forum reader would assume was his own work that he wanted help with.
In introductory programming courses it is tempting to base the assessment solely on producing some code to solve some hypothetical problem because it simplifies the marking. The problem at the beginners level is that the problem is so basic that there is only one real answer so when a student seeks peer support (e.g. from classmates or from a forum like this one) it is difficult to help without giving the solution.
Although Processing is based on Java, the nature of the Processing 'language' means that this forum is the most likely place for your students to seek help. In your circumstances I would visit the forum regularly to see if it is being abused by your students and posting suitable comments when it occurs.
It is unrealistic to expect a student at any level (but more so beginners) to complete a programming assessment without seeking help, be from a book, another student or from a forum such as this, but there are strategies a tutor can adopt to minimise the risk of plagiarism.
Make the assignment relevant - I notice that this student was studying an introductory "Programming for Digital Art" course but the topic I answered was about creating a FamousPerson class. :-/ Why not ask the students to design a class (perhaps related to a hobby) that needed an array as an attribute and show how elements in the array maybe changed and displayed using the dot operator. That way the solution for one student would not be the same for a second student.
Reduce the time between setting the assignment and the submission date. If it is a 'large' assignment then define a number of deliverables with staged submission dates for each part. Make it possible to fail the overall assessment if the student has failed to meet the interim deadlines.
Recognise the fact that all students are going to seek help either from a peer, book, internet resource (e.g. WikiPedia) or online forum (after all it is done by professionals ;) ). Get the student to document his sources, stating what he sought, what he found out and how he used it in his program. Make this a prominent part of the assignment and that it goes towards the overall mark.
These suggestions are not meant to be taken as criticism but are strategies I have found useful in the past.
Frankly, I'm disappointed that certain users were somehow unaware or unconcerned with the fact that—in certain threads—he was obviously working on a homework assignment... people simply wrote his code for him, explaining little or nothing about what was going on.This is where this all breaks down. People outside of your class don't care about your class. If someone is motivated to help others, let them... praise them!
I also have real issues with you outing the student by name.
You can solve this yourself by assigning homework that requires more than just a code submission. The code is the easy part. Being able to explain why you did what, and why you feel that was the best course of action is what you should actually be teaching.
Nice sentiment and in most cases I would agree, but I would not be happy helping someone commit plagiarism or in some other way cheat in an assessment.
You have a point there, even if the student was found to be guilty of some academic misdemeanour his identity is confidential and would not be made known outside the academic institution, at least in the UK. Fortunately the student's true identity is not known, even to the forum administrators
This is not as easy as it seems and although I made some suggestions they are all very time consuming and depending on the number of students may not be a practical alternative, particularly at introductory programming level where student's are struggling with the syntax never mind the semantics.
If you are commited to teaching then you work hard at providing an enviroment where students can learn. In fact there is great pleasure in watching students develop their knowledge and skills, knowing that you contributed to it. If you are not involved in teaching then it is difficult to understand the dissappointment, frustration and yes, anger when you find a student cheating.
Even if you are not involved in teaching I bet you would be angry if someone gained an unfair advantage over you through cheating.
I appreciate folks' sympathy in this situation, but there are also some really unfounded and unwelcome assumptions in this thread.
@amnon, thanks for your understanding and, judging from your description, your vigilance in ensuring that people actually learn this stuff, and not simply copy it.
"Making sure students don't copy paste other people's work is YOUR job. If you find that your students have done this, you should take it up with them and not blame the forum."
I do make sure that students don't copy/paste work (that's what I've done here), and I think it's fair to both confront the student and ask the forum to remove solutions that will make it easy for future students to submit working code without writing it themselves or understanding the concepts behind it.
@jeffthompson, it's true that the assignments in question are very dry, and that students are bound to submit similar code sometimes. The course I'm teaching this summer is running in a shorter time than a typical semester. As such, I have time for fewer coding assignments than during the fall or spring, and—unlike in a normal-length semester—they're all pretty dry until the final project (in which students are allowed to do virtually anything, within reason... it usually ends up being a simple videogame). The coding assignments leading up to the final project—whether it's a summer course or not—are exercises meant to demand certain technical skills of my students so that they're equipped to code well independently, and—while the drier don't allow for a ton of expression—I do like to think that they're designed so that solutions can't be Googled especially easily.
@kizaph is exactly right.
@Jeugo, "Think of all these teachers blaming Wikipedia." Our situation isn't analogous to students relying on Wikipedia for research (and Wikipedia is often a decent starting point, honestly). This would be far more analogous to a student copy/pasting a Wikipedia article and submitting it as a summary of an assigned topic (but even that isn't a spot-on comparison).
Ultimately, if I can Google a non-trivial (and uncited) portion of a student's submission and find it character-for-character online, that's plagiarism. Regardless of intentions, this forum enabled plagiarism.
The one exercise was about learning how to define classes, and the forum basically completely wrote the class for my student, with virtually no elucidation on how/why it worked. That's not good for the student!
@quark I'm going to make an assumption of my own, here: that you are not a teacher.
"The problem at the beginners level is that the problem is so basic that there is only one real answer so when a student seeks peer support (e.g. from classmates or from a forum like this one) it is difficult to help without giving the solution."
Untrue. Or, at least, the difficulty is not so insurmountable that giving the student the answer outright is defensible. What you do is explain to them what they need to do, in language they can understand (language which was hopefully developed with more basic assignments earlier). Giving them the code they need to solve the problem, with little or no commentary, is still language they don't understand. They learn nothing.
"It is unrealistic to expect a student at any level (but more so beginners) to complete a programming assessment without seeking help, be from a book, another student or from a forum such as this, but there are strategies a tutor can adopt to minimise the risk of plagiarism."
There were pages in Reas and Fry's excellent book that my student was supposed to have read quite a while ago, and I expect my students to primarily use their book, their intelligence, and myself as their resources. The student in question did not ask me for help. Googling (or even forum-posting) for pointers in the right direction isn't necessarily unacceptable in and of itself, but there's a line between reference and plagiarism that was crossed. The actions of certain forum users is partly to blame for that. That's why I posted instead of only flagging the threads.
"Why not ask the students to design a class (perhaps related to a hobby) that needed an array as an attribute and show how elements in the array maybe changed and displayed using the dot operator. That way the solution for one student would not be the same for a second student."
Because beginners need more direction than that, especially for a concept as difficult as classes. When I was starting out, I had no idea how classes worked (for a long time) because I couldn't find a lucid explanation of why or how you would use them. When learning the basics of programming, it's hard enough to figure out "how" without needing to invent "what".
Similarly, while my course is "Programming for Digital Art", it is my strong opinion that the "programming" must come before the "digital art" can happen with any efficacy. As I mention earlier in this post, I ask my students to do relatively dry, problem-solving coding assignments before I ask them to do expressive coding assignments. This is because they will undoubtedly encounter problems in their first major project of their own vision, and they need to have had basic practice in solving them.
"Reduce the time between setting the assignment and the submission date. If it is a 'large' assignment then define a number of deliverables with staged submission dates for each part. Make it possible to fail the overall assessment if the student has failed to meet the interim deadlines."
There were stated submission dates before the ultimate due date. The assignments in question were meant to be submitted weeks before this student came to this forum, to allow time for feedback and corrections before points would be lost. I regularly implored my students not to put off these assignments. They're adults in college: how they handle their responsibilities as a student is on them.
"Get the student to document his sources, stating what he sought, what he found out and how he used it in his program. Make this a prominent part of the assignment and that it goes towards the overall mark."
My syllabus (which all students agree to in writing) states that any code taken from any outside source needs to be A) cited and B) cleared with me (so I know that they're not just copy/pasting their entire submission). This student took neither of these steps, even after there was a clear opportunity to be forthcoming with that information (which I won't go into).
Regardless, copy/pasting code does not teach people how it works or what thought process went behind it. Learning to code is learning to think in a fundamentally new way, and copying code is only a legitimate way of learning if you're already able to think in that new way (and read the code line-by-line for understanding).
@billautomata
"If someone is motivated to help others, let them... praise them!"
But they're not helping, even if they think they are. That's the point.
Actually typing out code for beginners is pretty much only useful in two situations: 1) when they've made a simple typographical error or 2) when you've done all you can to "lead the horse to water" (which typically involves a lot of effort and familiarity with the student) and they don't seem like they'll be able to "drink" on their own. In this second case, it can make some sense to just show them how to do some part of it and then check for understanding. This second part is so important, though. You have to explain and/or have them explain what's going on, and the forum wasn't doing that. That's why I criticized the behavior of some users.
I mean, the forum doesn't need to care about the quality or integrity of my course to care about being truly helpful to beginners.
As I said in my original post, I've been teaching Processing to beginners every semester since Fall 2012. By now, I've taken a ton of students from zero to a working knowledge of Processing. The feedback I get from my students is always overwhelmingly positive, and my (unexpected) success as an instructor is probably my proudest achievement.
I don't say this to stroke or defend my own ego. I'm not interested in that. I say this because I assure you that I know what I'm doing as an instructor. I have legitimate credentials here, and not everybody else on this forum does. So please don't assume that you know better than me and I'm the one who made the mistakes in this situation, and please don't make assumptions about details of the course that you aren't familiar with. It's completely rude and disrespectful.
All I'm asking is for the offending threads to be deleted (you're not burning the Library of Alexandria, here) and for people to be more mindful of their own teaching methods in the forum. Make sure that the person asking for help comes away from the thread learning something more than "oh, now this works."
This community is amazing or what? ^:)^
Well sorry for the guy who doesn't learn. He's who looses...
I'm against deleting the posts.
The posts in question are not clearly homework. Usually homework is super respected in the forum.
I totally agree that disclosing the identity was wrong and rude.
And... well, it's a free country, this forum, mostly inhabited by polite people. But any one can do whatever wants. You can't depend on a bunch of anonymous people to be safe in your class...
I'm against deleting posts and censorship in general! [-( Besides opening a catastrophic precedence for the forum, I believe no 1 here wants to become some kinda student police investigator! [-X
I treat any1 here as a free human being. I'll never ask whether some1 happens to be bound/slave to a contract from some institution and/or individual! >:/
I'm not a student, not anymore at least. I play with Processing like the fantastic and powerful toy it is. I started programming Basic on an Atari 30 years ago. I've had no real "formal" training in programming. I have to say that I'm a hack when it comes to the real knowledge of understanding code. A lot of my learning has occurred from finding examples, good working examples, and picking them apart. I have found it very helpful on this forum when someone (you people above this post, for the most part) have just given me code to learn from. That part does count. I don't advocate for procrastinating, plagerism, or laziness, but those are some traits that have made for great thinkers. (and artists).
I feel that most of the "super-users" here on this forum are very respectful of teachers and avoid giving away homework answers, when possible.
This is actually a pretty big problem on this forum. It's one of my pet peeves here: many of the most active users here tend to post full-code solutions more often than they go through the process of problem solving with the OP.
And that defeats the whole purpose of the homework in the first place: the homework isn't really teaching the syntax, it's about the process of working through the problem, breaking it down into smaller steps, then tackling each of those small steps one at a time and finally combining them into the full solution. That's a very difficult thing to teach, and giving out full solutions short-circuits the whole lesson. Even if the OP goes through the code with a fine-toothed comb (and most won't), the act of problem solving has been stolen from them.
I wish there was some "official policy" about giving out full code solutions, and I wish that policy was enforced. But sadly, many of the full code solutions are from the moderators themselves, which is a shame. Without being too melodramatic, Processing isn't going to be a great option for educators if the official Processing forum has a bunch of people willing to do your homework for you.
It is impossible in a forum discussion to know all the background details to the posting so it is difficult not to make assumptions. As I stated above I never intended my suggestions to be seen as criticism of what you did but as possible strategies to help avoid student plagiarism. None of these strategies are new and some might not suitable in your situation.
I see you fell into your own trap...
I have taught computer programming for over 14 years. The students have ranged from 16 to over 60 in age and from absolute beginners to third year undergraduate students. I have also supervised and graded final year undergraduates in their major projects. I have designed numerous assignments using a variety of assessment regimes and I had hoped to share some of the strategies that I found useful but now I wish I hadn't bothered.
I abhor plagiarism and on several occasions I have instigated disciplinary proceedings against student offenders.
Yes I made some assumptions, I assumed that drucker600 was not trying to cheat on an assessment and I am assuming you are who you claim to be ;). As I said we all make assumptions I'll try not be offended by yours.
After all it is well known that assume means "making an ASS of yoU and ME". :)
I haven't fully read the whole thread yet, but I want to react to the first message.
First, if you search a bit the forums on
assignment, for example (from the main site, you get results from the older forums), you will see we regularly state that we avoid to give ready-made programs to obvious assignment questions. We prefer to guide the student so they find themselves the solutions. We often ask to see initial code before helping...For the record, students are more or less subtle. Some just paste the assignment and ask for a program, sometime even urging to do it fast, as their work is due tomorrow... :-)
Others can be more clever and it can be harder to find out it is for an assignment. Except when several users ask for the same kind of program! ;-)
And others are just honest, trying hard to get something done, just asking for some help.
As said, we warn users not to feed the lazies with pre-made code. It is relatively well followed now. A user can't resist a little challenge, but now post the code in obfuscated mode... :-)
We won't delete the threads.
In the previous forum, people could delete their own threads. We fought against that, restoring the threads. Here, it is not even possible, only the moderators can do it. And we don't delete threads that had answers that required some work, for respect of those having helped.
Beside, thread deletion would do the exact reverse of what you want: students can get help before a moderator spot the thread, so if we delete it, we would just hide evidence of the cheating. Here again, search can help you, actually, as those cheating might give exactly the code they got, if they are not savvy enough to alter it significantly...
In short, we are always willing to help honest students working hard to get things done, and encourage the others to try something. We don't penalize the former category to discourage the latter (and that would be ineffective, anyway).
If there was a policy towards not giving full code solutions, this forum would run the risk of becoming preachy. This forum is a living reference and, as such, holds the value of actually giving good, working answers. I'm sure this forum is touted as a reference by any instructor teaching on the subject of coding with Processing. I also think it is rude for an instructor to call out a student onto the carpet in a public forum. Is it cheating for a student to search the forum and find code that basically fulfills their assignment? If a student poses a question about a specific assignment, is that any different than consulting with a study group? I'm not talking about just copying code, but there are a lot of resources, such as OpenProcessing, which are just examples of code. Actually posing a question and fielding the replies is a form of learning. I don't think this forum should be pinged negatively for being a dynamic resource. Half of programming is taking working code and putting it together with other code and making it into something. There are no finished programs. How far is going too far when a student asks for help? That, as far as I am concerned, is entirely up to the instructor.
In a couple of years, when we achieve the Singularity, all of this will be a moot point anyway. At that point, all of you will be able to share in my knowledge as a fine art major dropout turned aerospace machine programmer. And it will all be via telepathy, from the Source. Those are my credentials. And I know what I'm doing.
I digress.
Yes. This is the same as copying text from wikipedia to write a research paper.
Yes. Saying "how do I do my homework" and then receiving a full code solution is the same as getting somebody else to do your homework for you. That is cheating.
Examples are completely different than the full, personalized code solutions found on this forum. If people simply posted examples, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Even if that were true, we aren't talking about people combining code from multiple sources. We're talking about people saying "this is my homework" and somebody else coming along and doing it for them. Even if it's accidental, it's still cheating, and it's still robbing students of the real lesson of working through a problem.
Actually, I read the posts by drucker600, and I did not see a single statement that what he was working on was homework. Nor did I see anything that justifies jumping on people for posting questions and providing help. It is the teacher's responsibility to decide what is out of bounds for the student and then to communicate that to the student. If feel that helpful people are being charged with unethical behavior and that isn't warranted.
Well, I can't say I've become less disappointed in this forum.
Looks like I'm throwing out two of my tried-and-true Processing assignments. They had legitimately helped many, many students to learn a variety of vital Java/Processing techniques, but now they're each just another exercise in Google/copy/pasting for credit in a programming course.
"...we don't delete threads that had answers that required some work, for respect of those having helped."
Here's how I understand this sentiment (which doesn't seem to be held by just one person here): this community would rather protect the trivial work of capable programmers who are terrible, amateur teachers than protect the work that goes into the assignments designed by professional educators.
I think that's ridiculous. You don't have to agree, and I'm sure many of you won't.
And if your disagreement is that the code given isn't trivial work, then you're giving yourself/others far too much credit. These are basic assignments that are challenging for newbies but no-brainers for people who know what they're doing... which may actually explain the lack of thought that went into a number of users' "teaching" methods.
If more effort and consideration went into educating beginners (alongside/instead-of providing code), I'd take more seriously the assertion that the plagiarism-enablers here are truly hardworking and generous in their actions.
For the edification of those who care about it, here are the dead giveaways that someone is a student asking about homework:
Come on. It's not that hard to see.
Simply giving students code with no elucidation on how/why it works (which absolutely happened on this forum, in the threads created by my student) is bad (toxic, even) teaching, whether the "student" is in high school, college, a workshop, or simply a state of curiosity about how to use Processing. This is my strongly-held opinion. I've been clear about it.
And it's clear to me that enough users of this forum disagree with that teaching philosophy that I'm probably going to explicitly discourage future students from using this forum as a resource.
At this point, I simply do not trust this community to do less harm than good when students ask for help. Judging from the comments in this and my student's threads, I'm convinced that this is—overall—a counterproductive environment that unapologetically enables plagiarism and severely hinders beginners' potential for actually learning how to code.
I believe in actually giving people the skills they need to succeed with these kinds of tools, not giving them quick (and pedagogically lazy) fixes that promote absolutely no further comprehension.
@KevinWorkman, thanks for your understanding. Obviously there are people like you here who understand the importance of the issue, but it literally just takes one post from a careless user to totally ruin a student's chance at truly learning something. You can't completely prevent these kinds of things, but if the community won't act to discourage it... well... that's unfortunate.
Barring a complete failure of discipline and a lack of concern for my well-being, I'm not going to be viewing this thread again.
I've removed my student's username from the original post since it seems like nobody's going to delete his threads anyway, and I understand concerns over his privacy. I've flagged other posts that use his handle, as well. I'll just say that my initial thought was that it was the only viable index for the offending threads, and that the username he chose on a public forum wasn't sensitive information.
Why are you implying some kind of unethical action on anyone's part? Specifically, those attempting to help someone asking for help? No one that I have ever encountered on this forum has deliberately done homework for anyone. No one is encouraging that behavior.
@devwil I find your statements insulting and disrespectful of those wanting to help. You make assumptions of others and chastise others for doing the same. You are acting selfishly and seem to be making this commotion to stroke your own ego. Maybe if more knowledgeable instructors of Processing, such as yourself, took the time to be active, contributing members of the forum, then it could an even richer source of information. But as you said, you rarely use it. That is a shame and it is shameful that you bother insulting those who do. Those are my assumptions.
:-h ...
I'm a moderator on a couple Java forums and pretty active on StackOverflow.
The kinds of full-code solutions that are posted on this forum would NOT be tolerated elsewhere on the internet, where the focus is education instead of a race to post a full code solution to trivial problems, which, sadly, is what this forum turns into much of the time.
People keep saying stuff like "he never said it was homework" and "it's not our responsibility to make sure it's homework". Yes it is. If you actually want to help people instead of just send them packing with the code you've whipped up (again, to mostly trivial problems), then it's your responsibility to walk the poster through the process of solving the problem. You have to help them break the problem down into smaller steps, consult the documentation, google the correct keywords, etc. That's the actual lesson of the homework.
Even if a question isn't homework, the process of working through a problem is one that every programmer must master, so providing full code solutions robs people of practicing that particular skill. That isn't helping.
If you actually want to help, then please stop providing full code solutions.
If you just want to, I don't know, show off your l33t hacking skills, then by all means, continue doing people's homework for them and watch as Processing is abandoned by educators.
As for my part, I'm going to start flagging full code solutions as inappropriate posts. I doubt this will do much, as some of the worst offenders are actually moderators here, but hopefully a few of them can listen to reason and turn this forum around.
Well, I will make it my policy, when I post a question, to state that I am not a student and I welcome full code solutions. If that is inappropriate, then this forum will cease to be much use to me. I often copy the complete code I find here and paste it into the IDE. When I do that, I learn quite a bit. If this forum is geared strickly to students, then that is news to me.
devwil:
I checked this for myself and I used them mixed. I did as a student for both school projects and projects on my own and I still use both words now i'm graduated. And i asked a shitload of questions here:
This is my email activity, the red marked are notifications on reply's on topics I opened on the processing forum.
I must admit I often asked things to fast, and sometimes I still do (it's my trick to became good in a short amount of time). But I think if you like programming it doesn't matter if answers come up to easy. Yes some hard thinking is better for the purpose of learning. But if someone likes programming he will do the right steps to get better. What really helped me along the way is asking stupid things, you often get more then one solution back.
Also I often asked questions about something I solved: http://forum.processing.org/one/topic/how-would-you-write-this-code.html
Also the topics of @drucker600 are not really harm full I think, it could have been me a few years ago. If he like's programming it will come good with him some day, if he doesn't then be glad he is taking a bad approach. I call it natural selection. I don't think we need programmers with some little skill but not really liking what they do but doing it cause it could give them a job.
"The project is too rudimentary to possibly be a professional one."
That's the case of roughly 90 % of projects here. Nearly everybody re-do a pong game or similar. Including people self-learning, just wanting to explore something new, etc.
Most of the Processing audience is made of amateurs, passionate hobbyists, etc. And, well, some students.
"The user talks about "needing" to achieve [x, y, and z]. Neither "wanting" to achieve it for their own curiosity and personal development as a programmer, nor "wanting" to achieve it as a means to an end in a personal project that they allude to... but they "need" to accomplish a seemingly arbitrary programming task."
Indeed, it can be a strong hint, including urges to give a quick answer... Although lot of people don't master English, or as clankill3r said, poorly state their request.
As we stated, we urge people not to spoon feed requests for homework. But we cannot control what other people do, and if we start deleting answers because they break some arbitrary rule about assignments, it would be on the verge of arbitrary censorship. Already lot of people doesn't even read the stickies about the forum (choosing categories, formatting, etc.).
I don't feel your course is ruined because there is some solution on the Net. Particularly now that you are aware of these solutions: you are now able to catch cheaters not able to understand the solution and making gross changes (if any) to mask the copy.
Perhaps you can introduce some subtle changes, that would need real understanding of the found code to follow. Etc.
I don't think the language of the question really matters here. It's not our job to decide whether something is homework, it's our job to help people LEARN how to program, whether the question is homework or not. You don't teach people how to program by giving them a full solution, just like you don't help people learn math by doing their math homework for them.
And to the people saying that it's not a big deal, you now have, due to the actions (or inaction) of users on this forum, a student who is about to get a failing grade or worse because of academic dishonesty. More generally, you have students coming here to get full code solutions, which actually hinders their learning process. If that's not a big deal, I'm not sure why any of us are here. Again, I guess to show off your stupendous programming skills by doing people's homework for them?
And to the people who say deleting full solutions would be some kind of censorship, I mean... come on. There's a big difference between censorship and moderating an online community. I'll quote Jeff Atwood here: "if you are unwilling to moderate your online community, you don't deserve to have an online community."
Every other programming forum I'm on would delete full code solutions and probably the original question as well, with a message to the user about asking better questions. This forum is the only place I've seen where full code solutions seem to be encouraged.
I wish that was the case. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say.
sorry, if this is correct, this is due to the student's attitude, not the due to the forum...
As long as I agree with the idea to help people and not to do their homework for them, I think sometimes full code is very teaching. I'm a senior beginner :P and most of what I know I got here. A lot of times, it was full working codes, that i dug into, come back asking what i didn't got... And after all I learned a lot. I think, again, it is more related to the student attitude.
Well, this isn't my job, it is yours? I'm most here to learn, but often i can try to help with trivial problems... But I feel no obligation with teaching others. Again, I aways avoid doing homework for others. And I even try to encourage good learning practices (well the ones i believe are good...), but this is different of being responsible for that. I have 3 kids, teach them is my job... Here I'm trying to learn and also help others.
Note that basically we all agree here...
peace and learning for all.
If a student gets another student to do his homework for him, both students are at fault. Here we have a teacher politely asking us to not do his students' homework for them, and most of the responses so far have been "too bad".
I assume that most of the people here have a goal of helping people learn how to program. If that's not the case, then I guess we've found the crux of the problem.
Kevin, it's probably my english that isn't enough for me to express my self properly. Let me try again.
I'm against doing others homework. I'm just saying that the person most harmed is the cheater him self and that, if someone accidentally do this, they can't be blamed for losses by the student or the teacher. And I feel that people around and the forum, are all discouraging towards doing other's homework.
By "this isn't my job" I meant that I don't feel responsible for avoiding people to cheat. I just don't collaborate with it. If one spent some time looking at my posts, I believe that's is going to be clear.
As I said before, my first goal here is to learn, but of course, whenever I try to answer someone, I'm trying to help people to learn Processing. The posts I like more are the ones that I don't know the answer :)
Also, you (and some others) are one of the posters that I always look at every post or answer, cause there is always some to learn there.
cheers
vk
I have followed this discussion with interest and I find myself in agreement with many of the things that @KevinWorkman has said.
I only responded to one of the student's posts but on revisiting the post I am horrified to realise that it was obviously an assignment - the tasks were numbered 1 1a etc. - don't know how I missed it but I did.
So I have taken the decision to remove the content from all my comments and I would be in favour of deleting this post permanently.
@devwil stated that
So it was not unacceptable for the forum members to respond to the students question because as far as they knew it was 'cleared by the tutor' and he would 'cite his sources' before submission.
It was wrong that I gave a full code answer. This made it difficult for the student because he either submitted my answer as his own i.e. plagiarism or cited me for all his code so there was nothing for him to get credit for.
I will be more careful in future.
Many of us are self-learners. Sometimes we post things that appear to be homework because we are doing our own self-assigned "homework". I'm especially thankful that nobody cross examined my posts to find out if I'm looking for homework answers. That would make for a pretty rough culture around here.
Thank you to all who are in favor of not deleting posts and who are simply willing to be helpful. The internet makes classroom learning both easier and more difficult on many levels. Its much more realistic to adapt a teaching style than the other way around.
The irony is that Processing was inspired by a classroom project with John Maeda. However, it wouldn't even exist as it does today without helpful online communities.
Good discussion here...
It was time to bring this up, so thank you
Also, I blame myself to be too quick with full codes
I advise the admins to remove the student's name and the code in drucker900's threads....
I won't remove either mine nor any1 else's! :-L
I only remove SPAM and repeated threads & posts! :P
Actually it is drucker600 ;)
@Chrsir Although I am happy about deleting the content from my own comments (where I consider it appropriate) I would not be happy deleting the content from other peoples comments. There is no reason why you can't delete your own from drucker600's threads. :)>-
As I said previously his identity is still secret, also we are unlikely to see posts from him again, at least not as drucker600 ;))
thanks for the feedback!
;-)
I removed my codes now.