• The real solution is to design exams to allow students to use any sources they like.

    If we absolutely have to buy proprietary software for this, it should be for automated generation of individualized exams.

    • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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      22 years ago

      The real solution is to design exams to allow students to use any sources they like.

      YES !THANKS YOU !

      (I dont get your second point, could you rephrase it please ?)

      • @UserServiceable@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Western policy makers will often only allocate funds to something if someone connected to them stands to get richer from it. Rather than our graft going to useless bullshit, it could go to something useful.

        How much better off would the entire world be if even a tenth of the money incinerated in the MIC went to designing renewable energy and building trains, with exactly the same levels of theft and waste as you see in the military?

        The single most effective tool against cheating is for every student to have a different test. ( and the cheaters invariably out themselves when you spring that on them.) This can be labor intensive to write and to score. You couldn’t design a better problem for software to solve.

        • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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          12 years ago

          Thank you !

          I think I understand what you mean. But then I slightly disagree : if we want to use such a useful program to randomize tests and a free software doing that does not exist, it is not a reason for a “policy maker” to buy a proprietary software, but a reason to pay a developer to write free code.

          But if all you mean is “if you HAVE to buy proprietary software, at least do it for something more useful (like randomizing tests)”, yes of course I agree with that !

          • I imagine an alternate history where liberal waste was directed at actually attempting to making the world better while robbing it blind. It’s a world where no one is here because there is hardly anyone with an articulateable grievance against capitalism.