From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,cfb6419893fcbe2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Thank you! Date: 1996/10/05 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 187735539 references: <325296EF.7445B8D2@labyrinth.cftnet.com> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: A general comment on helping people with homework assignments or other simple problems. I think it is important that we think a little about what the policy of comp.lang.ada should be in this regard. I am talking here about an informal community policy, not one that anyone enforces in any sense. Ada is taught in quite a lot of schools (a recent survey showed it to be nearly a third of the schools if you exclude Pascal). This is certainly not an overwhelming presence, but neither is it a trivial presence, and what it means is that we have many thousands of students learning Ada. Typical students have an assignment every two or three weeks, and if we establish that CLA is a good place to get answers to your questions, then I would guess, from my experience teaching and soliciting such questions, that each student might post two messages per assignment. This can easily add up to thousands of posts a week. If people answer such questions by posting followups rather than email, a common habit, this number can easily be multiplied by 3 or 4. Well that's a volume to start worrying about. As a teacher, I would prefer that students make more effort to figure things out on their own, and then if they can't, bring me or my teaching assistant the problem in any case. I tell my students NOT to post to CLA, and that I will notice if they do :-) [DejaNews has been the downfall of quite a few students in the past :-)] I don't really want to start a long thread on this issue, since that would be even more noise on the group, but it would be helpful if everyone would think twice before answering questions that are obviously from students working on assignments. If you feel you should answer, don't just do their work for them, if you do, you are doing them a disservice, not helping. Instead try to point out how THEY can find their own mistake. Also, reply to them by email, NOT by posting. Nearly all newsgroup readers can easily reply with email instead of followups, but sometimes you get the impression that some people have never found this capability. My thoughts here only apply to beginning students learning Ada for the first time and asking very elementary questions. Of course, especially for those with little experience in teaching, it can be hard to tell these cases sometimes (you can't count on an edu address, since many students post from other accounts). I guess it is because I have been teaching for a long time, but I have a pretty good idea when this happens, and I have seen a number of occasions on the group where students have had an assignment to do, and someone has completely done the assignment for them, thinking they are being helpful. So, if everyone can think about this a little before they post replies, it will (a) help to keep traffic down on the group and (b) end up helping the students more -- programming is something you learn by doing, not by having someone else do for you :-)