[NSWI004] Regarding Project Activity Points

[Petr Tuma]

Hello,

> thank you for taking the time to write your answer. Although you 
> haven't addressed my other issues, it was interesting and useful for 
> understanding your motivations.

I did not write that explicitly, but regarding your first two points, I believe the system is set so that essentially you do not have to worry and you will collect enough activity points without tweaking your standard work practices (unless, of course, you commit only once per assignment and squeeze all your code on a single line :-).

> I guess the main difference between our perspectives is that you care
> lot more about making sure no one cheats than I do (probably 
> understandably). My basic viewpoint is that: 1) vast majority of 
> students are well-meaning and responsible, 2) they can be trusted 
> with how they approach their learning and how they schedule their 
> school work, 3) grading and overall course structure should be 
> designed around them.

I'm fine with (1). For (2), I think this particular course, and this particular year, is different enough from past experience that even fairly experienced students can mismanage their schedules and end up being surprised. As for (3), I think that is actually what we do. The activity points represent a trivial threshold that typical students should be able to meet and exceed without even thinking about it. At the same time, they allow us to recognize outliers with relatively little effort, and we can then decide individually what to do.

> Also, I feel the need to state that I don't really care very much 
> about this, personally, and I would appreciate if we could get rid
> of the mentality that one can only question something because they
> have some ulterior personal reasons.

You suggest I care a lot more than you about making sure no one cheats. Well, for one thing, it is my job and not yours, so I guess it is not all that surprising that I do care a lot more :-). That said, however, I view things a bit differently:

- I'm not hell bent on preventing cheating. But what I would like to have is an environment where people who do not cheat do not feel stupid about their decision to remain honest. You say you do not care much about our activity points. Now imagine you spend one day every week for the rest of the semester working hard on your assignments, and at the end of the semester, you meet a colleague who spent that same time relaxing, but got the same grade as you did because his team was not as responsible as you imagined they should be in managing team work, and we did nothing. Would you feel fine with that ?

- I mentioned I'm not hell bent on preventing cheating, but that deserves an explanation. I think cheating is a tactic that people may decide to employ when they feel they are facing an otherwise impossible task or when they perceive the rules as not fair. Which is why we try quite hard to make sure our students understand this one point: nobody has to cheat to pass this course, and in fact cheating will just make that person miss useful knowledge or experience.

Also, I do not think you or any of the other students has suspect motives for asking about the rules. Asking is fine, and it does help us tune the course (or at the very least tune our explanations - which is a bit of a balancing act, because although some people love discussions, other would prefer short instructions and focus on their work instead). (In fact, we might be reaching the point where this discussion is no longer useful for the other list members.)

> Leaving that aside, my idea is that a system that requires team work
> and at the same time only rewards individual coding doesn't seem
> great.

That is a bit of a simplistic view. First, as I tried to explain in my other mail, the activity points are set to be quite a low barrier, serving to detect extreme anomalies rather than anything else. Next, we do not have a system that "only rewards individual coding". We have a system that rewards clean, well tested and well integrated code, which is generally easier to deliver in a well functioning team than individually (possible exceptions notwithstanding). And we have activity points and knowledge points to help us differentiate between team members in grading, which we simply have to do because we have to grade individuals.

Petr