>That works for multiple choice. Given the ".5" I'm assuming partial credit is discretionary. So you can just discretionarily choose to give +.5.
Yep, and then you'll deal with the students who want to know why their friends got the discretionary +.5 and they didn't! And you'll be in a difficult position, because arbitrarily adding points to some answers and not others does seem pretty unfair on the face of it. (Remember that the students who weren't sitting on a grade boundary will be comparing their scores with the students who were, so they'll see if you added +0.5 points to question 1 for Jack on 89.5 but not for Jane on 85.)
By the way, "partial credit" in this context means "credit for a partially correct answer", not "non-integer credit". You can perfectly well have a scoring system where a single correct answer is worth 0.5 points, as test points are a completely arbitrary unit :)
> My point isn't "cheating good".
It's not clear to me what your point is regarding cheating. You seem to not like the idea of people being punished for cheating. But as cheating is easy to do, it would run rampant without at least a tangible possibility of punishment. So I don't really understand how you (i) think that cheating is bad, (ii) recognize that it happens frequently, and yet (iii) don't think that cheaters should be punished.
Naturally. If you give people stupid chores they will almost universally try to find a way to avoid them.
> don't think that cheaters should be punished.
Even if I bought into everything else ie: that testing is good and cheating is bad, I would still not punish cheaters. As I said, I cheated that one time because I had other issues that made school difficult. Punishing would have done nothing except add additional stress, making me retreat further from my education. But of course, as I just said, I don't buy into all of that other stuff, so it's not only an ineffective and cruel way to approach education, but it serves no purpose.
> It's not clear to me what your point is regarding cheating.
My point is that most tests are stupid, and a lot of what "cheating" is is just making them less stupid. For example, I remember students would hide their notes during a test so that they could reference them. That's just good sense - in what real world situation do you need to have instant recall for arbitrary information? It teaches kids to memorize shit, which is damaging.
Two students checking each others answers? Sounds a lot like any normal adult problem solving.
So you can try to "tweak" the system until cheating is impossible or so scary that people will rarely try, or you can "give up" and let people cheat... or you can take a step back and realize that you've made up a problem with no solution.
As I said, school should focus on the three things I mentioned. Nonsensical testing strategies and finding ways to trick kids for doing what is, frankly, the sane thing to do, is purely damaging.
If you were smarter you would recognize that in many cases there are substantial financial rewards for good grades. And many classes are curved. It's not just wrong its evil to screw other pre meds for example by cheating. Of course you are obviously right its good to work together on problems, but what does that have to do with exams? Obviously in hard classes everyone could in fact would "work together" with the top students.
That works for multiple choice. Given the ".5" I'm assuming partial credit is discretionary. So you can just discretionarily choose to give +.5.
> For example, suppose that the class you took was graded on a curve.
It wasn't. Also I'm pretty sure I still failed the test because cheating is hard, I couldn't really read much of what the person in front of me wrote.
> You'd be surprised.
I would be, yeah. My school took that very seriously.
> t's sadly rather easy to get away with cheating at university, even if you do get caught.
Yeah, my CS degree had a hilarious amount of cheating going on.
My point isn't "cheating good".