When Digital Textbooks Make College Students Pay to Turn In Their Homework (edsurge.com) 205
Slashdot reader jyosim writes:
A professor at Arizona State U says he was let go from his teaching job in the economics department because he wouldn't embrace assigning homework software that he says "requires students to pay just to turn in homework." His students rushed to his defense on social media, saying that many of their courses now require them to pay for online systems if they want to submit homework. The university says the professor is spreading misinformation and is the villain.
Details of the ASU situation are messy, but the broader issue of homework software is one that students around the country have been complaining about, while textbook companies see them as the future because they eliminate the used textbook market and lead to more sales as more students are forced to buy directly from publishers. Publishers argue their software is sophisticated, expensive to build, and improves student grades because it is integrated with helpful bells and whistles. They want colleges to buy in bulk so all students have access.
Is the move to digital homework systems creating a new kind of digital divide at colleges?
From the article: For professors, one benefit of using digital homework systems is that it can save them time in grading, and it also gives professors analytics on how much each student has accessed and for how long.
But the article also notes that that doesn't always happen. One student just submitted every homework assignment for the semester during the software's free two-week trial period -- skipping all of its related digital reading materials and just doing free research on the internet. "It's right there on Google for free, or you can find videos on how to do it. I'm so tired of spending just pointless money." (Their ultimate grade in the course was an A.) And a few years ago a student told Buzzfeed that instead they just didn't turn in their first homework assignments -- hoping to bring up their grades later when they could afford to pay their system's $100 fee.
The article also points out that student government leaders unearthed a revenue-sharing business relationship between the university and its digital textbook publisher.
Details of the ASU situation are messy, but the broader issue of homework software is one that students around the country have been complaining about, while textbook companies see them as the future because they eliminate the used textbook market and lead to more sales as more students are forced to buy directly from publishers. Publishers argue their software is sophisticated, expensive to build, and improves student grades because it is integrated with helpful bells and whistles. They want colleges to buy in bulk so all students have access.
Is the move to digital homework systems creating a new kind of digital divide at colleges?
From the article: For professors, one benefit of using digital homework systems is that it can save them time in grading, and it also gives professors analytics on how much each student has accessed and for how long.
But the article also notes that that doesn't always happen. One student just submitted every homework assignment for the semester during the software's free two-week trial period -- skipping all of its related digital reading materials and just doing free research on the internet. "It's right there on Google for free, or you can find videos on how to do it. I'm so tired of spending just pointless money." (Their ultimate grade in the course was an A.) And a few years ago a student told Buzzfeed that instead they just didn't turn in their first homework assignments -- hoping to bring up their grades later when they could afford to pay their system's $100 fee.
The article also points out that student government leaders unearthed a revenue-sharing business relationship between the university and its digital textbook publisher.
The new feudalism (Score:5, Insightful)
You're charged money...to be taxed.
You pay to turn in homework and study materials you already pay tuition for.
You go the the hospital and get billed for the room three times over in various ways.
There is something fundamentally wrong with our system.
Re:The new feudalism (Score:5, Funny)
Why can't they just fund the turning-in of homework assignments with ad-revenue? :D :D :D
Lol, I'm j/k if that's what starts happening, it's not my fault :D
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"Thank you Mario! But our grade is in another castle!"
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Yes, I can see this being very popular to the athletic department. Coach hits one button and the whole team's assignments would be sent at once...for the whole semester like mentioned above.
Re:The new feudalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it's not making enough money!
Some are expecting sarcasm tags here, but the truth of the matter is: That is how people think. If it doesn't benefit them to their satisfaction immediately, it's not enough. Doesn't matter what the consequences of reaching that goal is.
The US for generations has said "Companies have no responsibility except to their own shareholders." The US continues to say that, and wonders why societal outrage articles like TFA, ones about the price of epipens being jacked up, amongst others keep popping up. Answer: The US doesn't actually care about it's fellow citizens. The citizens give the luxury of empathy to themselves only and to their fellow citizens nothing but apathy. Of course with "Nobody cares!" being the current societal norm you're going to have problems like these. The real question is why do you think enough of them are going to suddenly care to change that fact?
Note: I agree with you. There absolutely is something fundamentally wrong with our system. But short of ripping everyone a new one, I don't see how you or anyone is going to fix that.
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Yeah, it's not making enough money!
Some are expecting sarcasm tags here, but the truth of the matter is: That is how people think. If it doesn't benefit them to their satisfaction immediately, it's not enough. Doesn't matter what the consequences of reaching that goal is.
That is the thing that kills capitalism: Short-term greed, complete ignorance as to long-term effects.
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if shares were evenly distributed among the population
Fucking commie.
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At university absolutely no one should give a fuck if you do your homework or not
Nobody does, as long as you don't give a fuck about your grades or whether or not you flunk out.
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There is something fundamentally wrong with our system.
These systems all suffer from captured "accreditation" agencies, which are granted monopolies by the government(s).
Several colleges want to build medical schools but the AMA (an organization run by surgeons and anesthesiologists) do not want the supply of physicians to increase to the point that salaries start to level out.
So people face long waits for medical care, and salaries stay high.
Any government-granted monopoly is a thumb on the scale of the fr
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Re:The new feudalism (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. Completely.
It is, in my opinion, the proper role of an active citizen to promote the advancement of their fellow citizens. This means, among many things, that if someone comes to me expressing a desire to learn, I won't be charging them a penny. My time is theirs.
Should you want a work created for you, I'm happy to do it for a standard fee.
I'm also aware that promoting others is not necessarily going to get one anywhere personally, but that would be to miss the point entirely. We are all stuck on this rock together, as it stands. Some of you, I like. Some of you, I don't. But that doesn't change my basic belief that a more educated humanity stands to fare better in the long run. Charging for it is a bit short-sighted.
For anyone saying, "Well, that's wonderful and idealistic and all, but how do I do that?"
Well, you go and get some friends, and you teach each other what you know, and you spread the word to other people. You publish, and probably pay good money out of your own pocket, to provide that information to others. You hold hackathons and share tools. Maybe you pay a little attention to where your elected leaders stand on important educational policies and donate to the ones you find appropriate. Perhaps, though not for everyone, you run for an office of some sort.
Stuff like that. It's not hard to be engaged. It's just easy to think of excuses not to do it. Don't do that.
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The college book and publishing markets, dominated by the Brits, saw digital publishing ruining their profits, and got wise. Soaking students became a huge part of the US academic system, themselves facing cutoffs from state governments with vastly-underfunded pension plans, and declining tax revenues.
The facts of the costs of educations are real, but the sovereignty of universities makes them immune from many of the pains of the real world, and so, siphoning money from students-- lots of them coming from U
FOSS Solutions. (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason these schools have this BS is the same reason we still use ClearCase and IBM Jazz. "Corporate" believes the marketing team more than their own users.
Running a school sized IT system sounds like a damned good learning experience for students.
Re:FOSS Solutions. (Score:5, Insightful)
No IT system is needed other than an email server or hosting.
Grades should only be composed of term papers and exams. Weekly homework assignments can be distributed via PDF emails and be purely optional, as an exam review aid. In fact, answers should be distributed the following week after they're discussed at optional office hours.
College students are adults and should be treated as such, not given participation points for working through learning exercises (which they should be doing on their own).
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People who can turn up on time, have the given work ready. Can show they are ready to talk about topics they are learning.
Thats the different between people who cant keep time, cant have work ready each week. People who cant/wont study/never learned to study.
Who cant talk about the work given each week.
Who did not have the set work
Re:FOSS Solutions. (Score:4, Insightful)
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The purpose of a class is to teach students the material. Whether they actually show up is irrelevant as long as they can pass the exams and turn in papers/projects on time a few times during the term. If they can successfully study for the exams and turn in the projects on time, they have the time-management skills required.
There is a pretty strong argument that part of any good class is to recognize the place where the students are starting from. We have long recognized that swimming classes shouldn't really just dump the students into the deep end to start. It makes sense to try to design course content and activities to promote behaviour that is thought to encourage learning. Ideally, the program is helping the students to learn and embrace effective work/study practices.
Of course, this can become very challenging when the
Re:FOSS Solutions. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would think that how they do on their exams would tell all of that. If someone can do none of the homework, yet maintains a good grade, they obviously managed their time and their learning process just fine.
OTOH, if they do all of the homework and study religiously but flunk, they obviously didn't do enough.
Re:FOSS Solutions. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yet other better students could find the time to turn up as required and found the time to do the set work.
They could talk about the work given and could show they understand new topics.
Every week and some could ask question that showed an ability to learn more.
That is the good sorting. That set work and the ability to talk to a group is something they can d
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These are the people that make it to the real world unable to actually do anything. Sure they're a great brain in a vat, but if you need anything actually done they're useless. They just memorized something, never applied it other than on a test, and forgot it.
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I would think that how they do on their exams would tell all of that. If someone can do none of the homework, yet maintains a good grade, they obviously managed their time and their learning process just fine.
OTOH, if they do all of the homework and study religiously but flunk, they obviously didn't do enough.
If someone can do none of the homework, yet maintains a good grade, they obviously managed their time and their learning process just fine.
Exams can not discriminate between short term and long term retention. It is quite possible for an intelligent student to get enough data into their mental cache to figure out most things on the exam and then have lost all of it as soon as they finish the course. As someone who often chose to lean on that instead of studiousness, I now regret thinking it was just about passing the test and not getting as good of an education as I could have. As an educator, I have also often seen these students fall behin
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Here's the issue with the online homework: it's generally not difficult or terribly comprehensive. Where a free-form solution is required, it's also sometimes an issue getting the solution to a form where the grading system understands it and grades it correctly. Students can also STILL do it and not learn much -- the questions tend to be trite enough so they can be looked up online.
I'd argue that a well-written exam could be cumulative and test long-term retention. Say you're in the 2nd semester of intr
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Exams can not discriminate between short term and long term retention.
Yes they can. They can even distinguish between dominating a subject and rote memory. You just have to design the exam properly. The last part - the design - is where most exams fail; this is what gives rise to your erroneous claim.
You can't represent all the material of a semester on an exam.
You don't need to. Just like a customs agent doesn't need to go through every single bag in your luggage to prove you're a drug trafficker. They just have to find the cocaine in one bag. Likewise with exams. You don't fail a test with a single wrong answer or lack of knowledge of
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The retention will be tested when they take the next class that has the current class as a pre-requisite. If they memorized and forgot, they'll do poorly in that next class. At that point, they can either put in the needed effort (manage their learning process) to catch up, or they will flunk THAT exam. You can't memorize what you can't even understand.
The best exams allow plenty of time and open books. If they're done right, the book won't help you if you don't fundamentally understand the material, and al
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I studied in Europe and the only grade I ever received from any class was a final exam, which was oral. 100% of my grade hanging on 15 minutes.
Now I teach in the USA, and I have 5 assignments making up my students' grades.
And I get hammered on student reviews for "grading on too few things."
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The reason these schools have this BS is the same reason we still use ClearCase and IBM Jazz. "Corporate" believes the marketing team more than their own users.
Running a school sized IT system sounds like a damned good learning experience for students.
Depends on what the students are willing to pay for the experience. /s
I was an assistant SA at school working up to 40 hours a week.
I learned a lot about operations and managing the other students.
I also worked with instructors installing (and fixing) software for their classes.
That is not how it works (Score:2)
The reason these schools have this BS is the same reason we still use ClearCase and IBM Jazz. "Corporate" believes the marketing team more than their own users.
This is absolutely wrong: you do not understand how the system works. The university IT system is irrelevant: the publisher hosts and runs their own homework system (or is associated with a company that does it for them) which they charge the students to connect to. The university does not host the system nor does it have any control over it: the publisher runs it all. This actually raises privacy concerns in many countries.
Secondly, the decision on which online homework to use is not taken by some cent
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I suspect this is the reason it is not being discussed because, as stated, the story is logically inconsistent.
Killing used textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
This is all about killing the used textbook market that publishers hate.
Killing open source textbooks (Score:2, Interesting)
Good thing open source textbooks are a thing. Microsoft couldn't kill open source. Publishers can't either.
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
https://openstax.org/subjects
https://www.teachthought.com/technology/5-sources-of-open-source-textbooks/
Re: Killing open source textbooks (Score:2)
Same with us. We had the entire Finance, MIS & Accounting groups using material that they made over the years. And updates were discussed in a small teacher & senior student committee. They charged $30 for the print, binder, and "thank you" payment for the volunteers. Any left over funds resulted in a pizza day for the classes. Publishers hated them, but they had tenure and good management support.
The CS & CompE guys made their own homework grading system that was also used by the basic math
Why we need open textbooks (Score:3)
Re:Killing used textbooks (Score:4, Interesting)
Nowadays, a professor could just ask the author to provide them the PDF of the book for distribution in his class.
Also, this may be a bias from my own experience (engineering program). But I'd seriously question the usefulness of homework problems which can be auto-graded. The homework and test problems I got were ridiculously difficult. Average grade on homework problems were like 50%. Average test scores were like 35/100 (there was one test where the high score was 18/100). My school didn't believe in cookie-cutter problems with one Right Answer. Our homework and test problems were tough and really tested the limits of your understanding of the material. Consequently, you had to show all your work, and the professor (and his TAs) had to go through it with a fine-toothed comb to see if you really understood the material. There was one test problem I got nearly full credit for, even though I'd messed up on one of the early steps so nearly all my numbers were wrong. My solution setup and the rest of my calculations were right, and that's what mattered.
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Not any more (Score:2)
Why assign homework? (Score:3)
That's right. Don't assign mandatory weekly homework. The only components of a grade should be written assignments/term papers (which can be turned in for free via email) and exams.
Homework can still exist as optional review questions to be discussed at a professor's office hours and distributed by .pdf. This isn't high school -- treat students like adults who are responsible for learning the material, or not. Their level of learning will show up on term papers and exams.
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Thats the idea.
Did the person have the skill set to find the work set. Could the person do the set questions. Later talk about the set work with other people.
Get the set work in on time. Get the work in on time over weeks and months?
Thats what sort people who cant manage time, who cant study.
From people who can do set work every week on time and then talk about what they had to do.
Who have the skills to manage time ever
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They need the ability to have a project done. To manage time. To be able to talk to people about a complex new project.
People expecting their productive work on time cant wait to find out if a professional/expert can do the work expected.
Hours late? Days late? Weeks late? Who would pay for that level of work and ability?
A professional who lacked the needed skills? Made mistakes?
Re "But if you want something else out of
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The only components of a grade should be written assignments/term papers.
That doesn’t really work very well for subjects like mathematics, science, or engineering. For those subjects incremental checks are good as topics build on each other: solving partial differential equations requires the ability to solve differential equations.
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May I ask just what your major was in college because there is no way in heck that any type of engineering program that could be run with this approach. Learning is typically an iterative approach.
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Uh huh. Homework is like sports practice - it sucks and it's boring, but it serves a purpose. You are given a lot of homework calculating derivatives etc not until you can do it right, but until (hopefully) you can't do it wrong as long as you double-check your work. And so you still remember how to do it when you come back that that type of problem two months or two years later.
Better solution: use Open Source LMS (Score:2)
The only components of a grade should be written assignments/term papers
Unfortunately, if you have a lecture with 300-400 students in it there are logistical and financial problems with grading that many assignments each week with TAs. It also is a waste of the TA's time - many questions can be graded extremely well by computers and students provided with feedback. This frees the TAs to spend time teaching in tutorials and grading only questions which cannot be easily handled by computer. This is better for the students and the TAs.
However, I hate the publisher homework sys
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Don't assign mandatory weekly homework. The only components of a grade should be written assignments/term papers (which can be turned in for free via email) and exams.
Those two things do not contradict each other and you can have both.
When I was a lad (walking uphill both ways through the snow), we got weekly mandatory question sheets about the lecture courses we were currently having. We'd then meet with tutors (two on one) and go over our answers which would generally be illuminating since no one ever ma
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That sounds like a "recitation course."
No it doesn't.
Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
The public has bought the idea that a young person needs a college degree to get a good job. Once the American Public has accepted this falsehood, the Academic Industry (public and private schools of all sorts; especially public Unis, IMHO) fleeces the parents of students and now even the students through student loans and increasing fees. I do know a US Uni that does not raise tuition but does really raise the price of all the fees. They can advertise "low tuition" and not mention the exorbitant fees (that will always continue to rise).
So charging student to turn-in their homework is the latest scam from the Education Industry. Surprised? I'm disappointed. Disappointed especially to read that the textbook/software companies kickback money to the Unis so that the Unis will use their products that create a great and stable income stream. Don't we expect our Uni admins and bureaucrats to be more ethical (and honest) than that?
Pink Floyd sang it best,
"We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control"
The Academic/Educational Industry is just as greedy and demanding as the worst Capitalist! Praise Solcialism!
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Umm... maybe for "traditional" classes.
But for lots of stuff, whether it is system admin or programming, or nursing, etc. project based and "demonstration of skills" based evaluation is even better.
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Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The public has bought the idea that a young person needs a college degree to get a good job.
Times seem to have changed a bit since I got my degree; but in the 1990's and early 2000's, a 4-year degree was required by almost all employers hiring computer programmers. When I was looking for my first programming job in the 1990's, I had been writing software for nearly ten years already. I knew languages ranging from several dialects of BASIC to C to two dialects of assembly (on Motorola and Intel CPU's), and had written a diversity of software in those languages.
I had submitted job applications t
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At least it's not Socialism (Score:3)
Horrible (Score:2)
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Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't like this the only real solution is to pass laws.
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I like my idea better, drag him into a dark alley and beat him with said books then take his wallet.
Among The First Up Against The Wall... (Score:2)
taking over higher education (Score:2)
God bless America (Score:2)
This is why we can't have nice things! (Score:2)
Digital textbooks should have been a solution to a problem: expensive textbooks, that may go obsolete in a year or less because they decided to 'revise' them (maybe only one page), creating not only unnecessary expense for students and/or schools, but all sorts of unnecessary waste. 'Revised' textbooks could be delivered digitally, wirelessly, directly to e-book readers. So what do they do instead? Turn i
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An underlying issue: (Score:3)
Higher education is highly sought after, but the available number of seats at any given college or university is somewhat inelastic. A school CAN expand to meet demand, but doing so is slow and expensive. No school will invest the many millions in expanding the physical plant and staff numbers unless they foresee a lengthy duration for that increased demand. Since increasing the number of students is slow, difficult and expensive, the board is always going to be looking for ways to increase the revenue they get per student.
I encountered this particular story a few days ago and there is a few pieces of crucial info missing:
1) that the software vendor has a deal with the dean to give a sizeable grant to the school, contingent on the school mandating their homework submission solution. On the student end, this amounts to double dipping by the school, with the software vendor getting a rake off as the money goes past them. On the Vendor end, it amounts to naked corruption.
2) That the teaching staff manipulate things so that 30% of their current non-homework software users FAIL, so that the dean can show to the board that the project provides real value to the students. I consider this to be an outright betrayal and economic exploitation of the student body. It's hard to imagine any academic chicanery that would be worse than sending students into what amounts to a rigged fight.
Given the high moral tone higher education claims to aspire to, this really should merit the firing of the dean and any other salaried professional who agreed to this arrangement, regardless of tenure.
student loans need bankruptcy and then the banks (Score:2)
student loans need bankruptcy and then the banks will help push to end BS like this.
The Right to Read (Score:2)
Richard Stallman's short story the The Right to Read comes to pass.
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in collegeÃ"when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan. This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help herÃ"but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrongÃ"something that only pirates would do. ...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy... [gnu.org]
Can't believe the kind of stuff that flies in US (Score:2)
Paying money to a corporate to submit assignments? That sounds ridiculous. This kind of stuff simply wouldn't fly in the Europe. May be it won't fly any where else in the world too, except US. May be people in US have been brain washed to not protest and simply accept things that corporates send their way. How come the students at the University didn't protest? Because protests and strikes are considered bad? Is it because of the fear of being labeled a commie? Are students scared that they may not get any
Universities, schools together should be smarter (Score:2)
A couple of years ago I went back to school to get my masters degree. What appalled me most was the use of Smartschool.
If you take all universities and schools together, shouldn't they be able to write standard software for all schools, giving students and teachers insight in how such software works, needs to be maintained, needs to be administrated, etc?
Instead of paying a parasitic company.
Western Governors University (Score:2)
Refuse on the ground of digital rights (Score:2)
The solution is that you refuse to use the system, until it can be shown, with a public audit, that it doesn't violate or take advantage of your privacy / data, and that any work submitted to the system can be fully erased at the will of the su
Used book market (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to love the bookstore's used book bin. For statistics it was indispensable. They'd have books from other schools and the keys. I'm not talking the low level BS stats class, I'm into the 400 levels. Engineering type. The way to master those is to do problems, problems, problems. I lent out my books to the other students. I still have them today, 30+ years later.
I'm sorry to see that go. This is sort of like the library at Alexandria burning. Need to keep it written down on paper.
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Tests and written projects. I've said as much in other posts. Besides, most exams in universities aren't standardized, but rather written by the professors themselves. They're teaching a syllabus, but they're typically not teaching to a standardized test.
The "pay to submit" homework assignments are typically canned problems and questions from the textbook publisher. They're not really better than standardized tests. They just save the professors from having to make up their own problems.
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They got their work on the "problems and questions" back on time. As asked for and set out. Given a task they could do the task on time and with some ability.
They had the ability to keep time and could show up each week to talk about different questions relating to the "problems and questions".
The person doing the "learning" could talk to other people about complex and new questions on the topics they had
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1) Distribute solutions a few days after the homework was assigned. Students will see where they went wrong -- if their method on steps #2, #3, and #4 is right but they got #1 wrong, they'll still learn where they went wrong.
2) Offer more than one variation of the same problem in the same handout.
3) Why does gratification need to be immediate?
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Who wants to find out the person they accepted to work for them cant study/learn/work? Has no learning skills after many years of "education" and who cant take in new information?
Who cant do any of the professional work needed?
Who cant turn up on time?
Who cant talk about work/skills/new advancements?
Who cant manage time and be ready with a project/task on time?
Who cant manage their own time?
All that should have bee
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Sounds like a school you don't want to go to. If unavoidable, first try pdf, it will probably be fine. If not, export docx from Libreoffice.
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