## Forum archive 2000-2006

### Doug Drinen - My students are too clever for me

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
 My students are too clever for me topic started 11/1/2004; 9:19:52 AMlast post 11/2/2004; 10:02:00 AM
 Doug Drinen - My students are too clever for me  11/1/2004; 9:19:52 AM (reads: 1199, responses: 5) Sorry for the nondescriptive title, but I couldn't think of a way to summarize the issue. In almost all cases, I like to give my students unlimited attempts to get each problem correct. The only exception is when I am doing true/false or multiple-choice questions. For example, I gave them a homework problem last week that was basically this: Here are ten series, tell me if each one converges or diverges. Obviously, I can't give them unlimited attempts on this. They could all get 100% in about 60 seconds without giving the problems any thought at all. So what I did was to set $showpartialcorrectanswers = 0 so that they could not see which were right and which were wrong. Then I give them something like 5 tries to get the whole batch of 10 problems. That gives them plenty of chances to correct mistakes, but prevents brute-force methods. I've given this problem in past semesters and thought it was great. When told that they did not yet have full credit, students were forced to re-evaluate *all* their answers, which not only helped them find mistakes, but also helped reinforce the ones they already had. But this time... Some students noticed, and I had told them before on previous assignments, that once you had gotten an answer correct, you were given credit for the answer even if you later submitted over it with a wrong answer. So some clever students discovered --- and were nice enough to tell me about --- the loophole: submit all "converges", then change them all to "diverges" and re-submit. Then you'll be guaranteed to have answered each question correctly at some point and thus have 100%. Is there any way to turn off the above behavior, and have WeBWorK only count the most recent attempt? It appears that the answer has something to do with$problem->status in the file lib/WeBWorK/ContentGenerator/Problem.pm, but I'm not quite confident enough to go in there and start changing things. Better yet, is there any other way to give multiple attempts on true/false questions? I know that sounds like a funny question, but I've given this question to previous (less clever/devious) classes and it's been a very successful one, in the sense that it's gotten them to work hard. Thanks very much, Doug <| Post or View Comments |>

 Davide P. Cervone - Re: My students are too clever for me  11/2/2004; 10:02:00 AM (reads: 1430, responses: 0) Doesn't using  install_problem_grader(~~&std_problem_grader); take care of this problem? The student must get all the parts right to get credit for the problem. I always include this in T/F and multiple-choice questions. I just tested entering all true and then all false, and got 0% score both times. <| Post or View Comments |>