Whoa – I assumed I would get a notification when you replied, but apparently not. Glad I checked the thread again!

But what’s the value in a take-home exam, if we assume that the intent is to be closed-book but with effectively unlimited time? Presumably that means it’s a problem roughly on the scale of an assignment, but they’re not meant to be able to look up their notes, review the lecture material, etc.?

Interesting point! I definitely see where you’re coming from here… If I gave a take-home exam, I would want students to use their notes, some online resources, etc. I just wouldn’t want them to copy an exact answer from online or other students. That may just be impractical today.

For what it’s worth, I’ve seen first hand that code copy-detection tools are honestly not actually all that great.

100% agree. I had small enough classes that I could check for plagiarism more directly. And, what you said later is spot on – I think most students who cheated were not subtle enough to make hard-to-detect changes. Though, if they were, I wouldn’t know they cheated, so… hard to say.

I’m actually not 100% sure on what “proctor” means, but based on how I’ve seen it used in this thread, I gather the two are the same?

Yep! Based on an online dictionary that said “proctor” was the US version of invigilator :)

Anyway, you make some great points, so thanks for the discussion!

Thanks for the reply! I figured that bit would be the sticky point. I tend to give long answers, so let me start by saying that I really struggle with that bit and, although I don’t fully agree, I see your point and acknowledge that I may be wrong here. I don’t want to argue, but I do want to clarify my thoughts and maybe have a dialogue if you’re interested.

First, I want to clarify between two reasons I see when people are posting about this that are distinct but can sometimes get muddied: (1) “real life” is open note, so schoolwork should be too; (2) it is impractical to stop students from using their notes (or whatever) at home, so even if it would be helpful in theory, it just disadvantages honest students in practice.

I strongly disagree with (1) for the reasons in my original post. That’s the main thing that had me somewhat annoyed and led me to post that probably unnecessary section of my previous post. You don’t seem to be arguing for (1), so I’ll just leave that be, but I wanted to clarify for the benefit of anyone else reading. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but (2) seems closer to what you are saying, so I’ll talk about that for now.

As far as (2), I agree, but accepting that wholly runs teachers into another practical issue: in-person time constraints. If I want to test a student’s ability to, say, complete a complicated proof, then putting the time constraint and pressure of a 1 or 1.5 hour exam may be unfair and arbitrary. So, if I need my exams to be in-class and proctored, then I might not be able to test the skills that I am actually teaching, and students tend to dislike that as well. It feels like we’re forced into a choice of either giving a fair exam at home and trusting students or giving a time-pressured or trivialized exam in class. Neither option feels great, but, to me, this makes the take-home exam and trust at least seem like a reasonable option.

The questions should be tailored to test their understanding of the underlying principles, or even better, should encourage their ability to do research.

This is a really good idea. However, without assuming at least some honesty from the students, I don’t think there is really any defending against the methods of just asking the other students or posting the paraphrased question somewhere the teacher won’t see, so it feels like it brings us back to take-home work being impossible, which is a bummer of an endpoint.

Some of it may also come down to “has no ability to restrict…” (emphasis mine). When I used to teach, I taught programming. Although I could not restrict their access to resources outside class, I could detect cheating better than they would expect, and I warned them about this beforehand. I think that if students believe being caught is a credible threat, then it can alleviate that feeling of “if I don’t cheat, I’m just letting everyone else look better than me,” and it makes following the rules a reasonable option. Despite all my rambling above, I probably would not give a take-home exam if I didn’t believe I could detect cheating with at least moderate probability. So, in OP’s case of (presumably) physics, I probably wouldn’t do it. In the end, maybe we don’t even disagree at all in this case. (Edit: I meant to add this link: What it looks like when students copy code . Just a funny take on what I used to see sometimes.)

Tough questions like this are one of the (many) reasons I no longer teach, so bear in mind that this is all just the view of a washed-up former professor :)

(Also, I learned the word “invigilator” today, so thanks for that)

You will probably get better answers if you ask this in a community dedicated to teaching/professors. Posting on general asklemmy seems like you’re going to get flamed a bit.

I gave my students a take home exam over spring break. (This is normal where I teach)

That is rough. Nothing you can do about it this time, but, in the future, I wouldn’t recommend giving work over break even if others are doing so. Breaks are there for a reason.

It came down to a factor of three in the solution. That factor inexplicably appeared with no justification on many of their exams.

It’s hard to say without seeing exactly what you mean, but this sounds a little flimsy. You want to be pretty sure before you accuse someone of cheating. You can always just mark the answer as wrong if they didn’t prove to you that they understand it.

I intend to have the students I suspect of cheating come to my office to solve the problem on the board. What would you do?

If I strongly suspected cheating, I would probably do something like that. Just be aware that the environment is different from a paper exam, so you need to be lenient. They are not used to standing in front of a board and working while someone watches. Also, a problem on a take-home exam could be worked on for hours, whereas you presumably expect them to do it quickly. You may need to give them the solution they wrote and see whether they can explain it to you. Or, give them most of the solution, but have them fill in some missing details that they should know if they actually did the problem.

Also, as others have said, there was no cheating unless you were very clear on what resources were allowed and not allowed on the exam.

FWIW, I do strongly disagree with the folks who are saying that any take-home exam should be open-everything. The argument that you will be able to do it in your career doesn’t hold water. School isn’t the workplace. Students are working on simple problems to build up skills that they can use to solve more complicated problems later on. If people want workplace rules about collaboration in the classroom, then the problems need to be scaled up accordingly. In many schools, that does happen later in the curriculum with things like senior projects or some project-based upper-level courses. But, teaching that way from the start wouldn’t give students the time and support they need to gradually improve, so allowed resources need to be scaled back accordingly to account for the deliberate oversimplification of the problems.

On a more personal note, sorry that you have to deal with this. Everyone can appreciate that the situation is tough for the students, but a lot of people don’t realize that dealing with cheating is also very stressful and disheartening for teachers.

Don’t know how to get you something without ads, but:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOxb_SW4Cfg

(Kanye West, Gold Digger)

One of my faves (didn’t come up with this one, though I can’t find it right now):

Though my troubles number nine and ninety
A trollop is not among them.

There’s a discussion about this on lwn (relevant part starting around this comment). My understanding is like @fayo said: you can pull this “trick” of releasing their source code, but only once (assuming they catch you).