Thursday, October 22, 2009

a wise quack

http://itwatercooler.illinois.edu/s/mallards-retirement-set-june-30-2010

3 comments:

Konstantinos said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Konstantinos said...

In the summer of 1999 I gave a presentation to faculty about Mallard's assessment capabilities and illustrated the use of the “cheat” button that is used to quickly denote and input all the correct answers for all questions in a quiz. Instructors were amazed but some looked frustrated and a few even horrified. In the question and answer portion of the presentation a faculty member asked what would happen if students gained access to the cheat button. I replied that in that unlikely event… academic performance at our institution would skyrocket. Everybody in the room laughed strongly

Mallard’s flying away and it feels like the end of an era. I know of at least one professor that will keep using it though!

Lanny Arvan said...

Lest the uninitiated reader be confused, let's point out that the cheat button was there mostly for only TAs who might lend assistance to students struggling on the problem. In order for that to work, obviously the student and TA need to be looking at the same question.