Preventing Networked Gizmo Use During Exams? 870
bcrowell writes "I'm a college physics professor. My students all want to use calculators during exams, and some of them whose native language isn't English also want to use electronic dictionaries. I had a Korean student who was upset and dropped the course when I told her she couldn't use her iPod during an exam — she said she used it as a dictionary. It gets tough for me to distinguish networked devices (iPhone? iTouch?) from non-networked ones (calculator? electronic dictionary? iPod?). I give open-notes exams, so it's not memory that's an issue, it's networking. Currently our classrooms have poor wireless receptivity (no Wi-Fi, possible cell, depending on your carrier), but as of spring 2011 we will have Wi-Fi everywhere. What's the best way to handle this? I'd prefer not to make them all buy the same overpriced graphing calculator. I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less-adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one."
Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people can simply memorize anything they look at, while others struggle at this. A proper exam should be designed to test one's ability to demonstrate processes: exams should give you all the information you need, but the questions should be designed such that only someone who has invested prior effort in practice and learning will be able to solve the questions in the allotted time.
For less-concrete subjects such as the arts, I'm not so sure how this can be accomplished. However this is a trivial design decision for exams in maths, sciences, programming, and engineering.
Furthermore, I think any physics or math exam that requires a complex calculator really has a wrong approach. Assuming everyone at this level has already demonstrated their ability to perform arithmetic several times over, the calculator should only be there to free them from making mistakes on the menial number crunching (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squares, squareroots, proper value of e,Pi, etc...). The exam should test for core concepts: ideas where you simply must understand the knowledge through prior practice and learning.
Sadly, I think many professors fall back on rote-memorization exams just because they can't be bothered to design proper exams each semester. These types often teach straight from the textbook-provided lesson plans, and then wonder why students cheat...
But honestly -- an exam is but one facet of demonstrating proficiency in a subject. Personally, I think projects & labs the best way: sure one can cheat, but it's easy to determine who has spent time polishing a proper unique lab report. In this respect, open-ended projects are the best, as the room for creativity limits the possibility for undetectable cheating, and lets the students show their enthusiasm for the subject. If you're really worried about cheating, a lab-practical may even be a legitimate tool: it's pretty damn hard to make stuff up as you go while you've got a one-person audience of the professor.
Short answer: let them use basic scientific calculators, the textbook, their notes, and a dictionary; design your tests so that students have all the resources they need, but don't have enough time to learn-as-they-go during the exam.
"Never memorize something that you can look up." --Albert Einstein
Tough (Score:1, Insightful)
1. Tell the students "Tough!". You don't need a calculator!
2. The best way I've seen professors handle this is to design the questions to only require basic math knowledge, or only require answers that don't require extensive calculations. Make it so that if they are correctly arriving at the answer, the math is stupidly easy.
3. Tough about the English requirement. You are in the USA, and our language is English. And in a physics class, there shouldn't be that much to look up anyways. If you must have a dictionary, you can buy really cheap paperback ones. You think I get access to a dictionary when I take a test, or any book for that matter? NO!
No test should ever need a calculator if setup properly. It should only require basic math skills. If it must require knowledge of square roots and such, make a table available or make it so that the final calculations are ridiculously easy (like square root of 9). You are testing physics concepts, not math. And if you can't handle basic math and basic English, how did they ever get into college in the first place?
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:5, Insightful)
Ramen (Score:3, Insightful)
10 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
thin client exam takers (Score:5, Insightful)
Speak English (Score:1, Insightful)
If the kid needs an ipod/dictionary to be able to take the course, perhaps they shouldn't be there in the first place. Students should be learning the language as well as the subject. Where any of us allowed to lug dictionaries (of any sort) around during exams?
The alternative is simply to dumb down exams to the point to where everyone can pass them and feel good, and the exams no longer matter. No doubt we are a lot closer to that point these days than we were 20 years ago.
Re:Talk to network ops. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just about searching online for the question... you also need to be able to prevent people from asking their friends for help
SLIDE RULE (Score:4, Insightful)
two words - SLIDE RULE
cultures AND pressures (Score:5, Insightful)
First remember that foreign students pay FAR more than we do to go to US schools. Compound that with the fact that many come from poor countries. The pressure to succeed is EXTREME. Furthermore, not all cultures despise cheating as much as Western culture. The results are predictable.
Personal anecdote: I was invited to the Indian CS students' "study session" once while on a group project. I was AMAZED. They had a library of homework and test questions and answers. They passed them around casually. They also begged me for graded solutions from my previous courses to add to their collection. They were all cheating their way through and thought it was normal.
They also kept asking me how I could come up with working algorithms to programming assignments on my own (without copying from something). It was as if actually being able to program was wizardry to them. I wonder why.......
Go cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
If your students are having a hard time adapting to cheap, "employer" provided calculators...how do you think they'll handle the real world?
The only flaw I can find with your plan is to pay for these out pocket, but I understand that's the norm for a lot of college supplies. Of course, given the cost of books, it's not too absurd to expect students to buy the model you specify either.
Some advice (Score:1, Insightful)
1) Give the students different exams. That's done frequently at several universities (at least in Canada). The questions remain the same but alter the number from say 2.5 to 7.3. Compose say 3 exams and alternate who you give them too.
2) Weigh the assignments more. Or give them enough assignments such that they don't need to cheat. Or a combo of the two. If you can't kill the material, you're doing too much.
3) Ultimately, if you want to know if a student knows a subject, you ask them things on a private interview. Now doing this for each student is time consuming, but it's ultimately the best way.
4) Just relax. Tell them they aren't allowed to network with each other or to their mainframe, and to do otherwise is cheating. Students are in the course cause they want to learn the material. Barring required courses which are dead simple anyway.
Tip: You should also photocopy all your exams when you they get turned in. Or at least photocopy the ones that complain about marks in their assignments. That eliminates the old tied and true method of changing what you wrote after the exam, and then showing the prof.
Tip: Don't leave your studens assignments outside your office to be picked up. Savey D students will pick out the A students of the next year, so that when they take the following course, they have the assignment completed already.
Tip: Give the assignment out, AND give the answer solution to them, at the same time. Yes they could copy it straight out, but students don't tend to do that, they work it out, then look at the solution if they don't know. They learn more. Even if they do just copy, they don't not do it. They learn more than not doing it, and the tudents that reallly want to learn, do it themselves anyway.
Tip: Let them network. If your in a real world engineering company and you don't know something. You had better go ask or consult something that does. To do otherwise would mean you're fired. Guessing in the real world is horrendus, people depend upon this being right.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:5, Insightful)
if students have networking access to someone inside the exam room (or worse, outside the exam room), no matter how hard you make the exam, you are testing the brainpower of their lifelines, not them.
This.
I didn't come here to troll, but I feel obliged to point out that the grandparent poster lost himself in a forest of his own self-righteousness regarding assessment design. The problem under discussion is that two students in the room working on the same test at the same time could have IM ability through wireless networking, and so one could do the work while passing the answers wirelessly to the other, who could simply copy what he sees on IM.
Parent is almost right: there is no solution short of "no unapproved electronics." Students with poor English abilities who need dictionaries should bring their dictionaries to office hours for inspection; the invigilating TA's (if this is a large lecture) could be notified on the sign-in roster (I'm assuming a sign-in procedure for a large lecture) or be introduced personally to the student in question to be sure they recognize them. The policy would have to be on the syllabus and announced in class the first day. It's not a simple solution, but it's probably more fair to students not fluent in English than denying all electronics.
Of course, the administration could also try requiring that all course instruction and assessment (outside classical/modern languages in Arts & Sciences) be conducted in English, and that all students entering pass an unaided (no lexicon!) English proficiency exam that's not a total joke. I mean, imagine a student going to France and expecting accommodations because he doesn't know French... Of course, administrations in the US will never enforce a convenient language policy, so you're going to have to make allowances for electronic devices like dictionaries if you ban electronics from testing sites.
Take a page from the ETS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look toward standardized testing practices for how to conduct tests in a rigorous and fair manner. Quite simply, the rules and expectations for the course should be clearly stated at the outset. Don't wait until the exams come around to drop the bomb. Tell them that you expect them to use a calculator that is on an approved list. No other electronic devices will be permitted. All other possessions not explicitly allowed must be placed at the front of the room, and any mobile devices must be turned OFF. No "vibrate." Watches are permitted but cannot have an alarm function. If they need translation, that's too bad; the ETS does not offer to administer mathematics tests in the language of the examinee's choosing. This is a college level course, with lectures in English. You don't provide lecture notes in twenty languages. It is the student's responsibility to become sufficiently proficient in the English language in order to continue their studies. That may put them at a disadvantage, but we don't try to equalize the playing field for someone who hasn't learned calculus.
Education necessarily requires that some students have to work harder--sometimes, much harder--than others to achieve the same proficiency level as others. That is not being unfair, that is just the way life is.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because there's no direct analogue of exam conditions in the real world doesn't mean they're not useful for testing performance. The most fundamental troubleshooting and performance evaluation tool we have is the isolation test. Take a thing apart, test each component, and that will give you insights as to how the thing performs as a whole. By all means give students access to the reference material they need to complete an exam, but they shouldn't be able to discuss it amongst themselves or search the internet for prior work on the topic, because the entire point of the exam is to measure the students' own unaided ability.
Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can make WiFi unusable, however.
Technically possible but not practical for economic reasons.
Or you could alter the classroom so RF cannot enter through the walls or ceiling.
VERY expensive. Colleges don't really have the funds to justify that, especially when just banning the offending devices is free.
I suppose convincing the university to alter the classroom in this manner could be difficult, but they could also see the value in having some exam rooms that are essentially faraday cages
Why not just take the figurative bullets out of the gun (no networked devices allowed) instead of building an expensive figurative bullet proof vest. If they don't need the networked device for the test, there is no reason to allow it in the room in the first place.
Re:cultures AND pressures (Score:3, Insightful)
One physics lecturer at the college I went to openly trained students to pass the exam. He was shameless. Every example he took us through became a question in the final examination. Needless to say he was a popular guy. This was in the days before there were a significant number of foreign students.
Re:SLIDE RULE (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a little one at my desk. The trig scale on the back of the slider would be a handy place to put cheat notes. Or even better, write them on the body of the slide rule under the slider so they are normally hidden.
Hiding your cheat sheet on an "open notes" test sounds like a good time to waste time.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thin client exam takers (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he's worried that you could IM a friend during an exam to work the answers out for you, as if you're a thin client, with all that computing power over in the cloud.
Idea: hinder the "sensing" not the communications.
E.g. ask them to solve a single problem, in which the explanations do need a fairly complex diagram. Draw the diagram on a low-contrast color scheme (and/or on a very glossy paper), so that taking a photo (w/wo using flashlight) to result in nothing intelligible.
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not just about preventing WiFi signals from getting in. Remember, the students could also conceivably set up an ad-hoc network to share answers, which is just as much a case of cheating as using Google.
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not so sure it's that expensive.
I'm an accountant in my day job. There isn't a single sane department chair or accounting department that would spent a dime making a classroom RF proof to prevent cheating on tests. It's a waste of money and would never make it through the capital budgeting process.
The alternative (banning the offending devices) is free and requires no capital expenditures.
Oh yeah... and banning devices may not be effective.
No effort to prevent cheating is 100% effective. But it has the beauty of being clear, simple, mostly effective and cheap. Get caught with a non-approved device and you fail the test. If I were the teacher they might get hauled in front of a disciplinary committee as well.
Especially when the non-networked functions of those devices could be beneficial on a test, if people are allowed to use electronic notekeeping aids, they should be allowed to use them (without the networking functions)
There is never a need to allow networking to test the student's ability to master physics. NEVER. If they have to consult their notes for every question (regardless of format) then they should fail the test because they don't understand the material adequately.
Re:10 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, it's the same problem as before - how do you make a level playing field to test students? This is complicated when the students come from vastly different backgrounds. As a former HS teacher, I struggled with kids who had accommodations to take tests outside my classroom. Some got the tests read to them. Some got extra time. Some had a scribe. But when they were outside the classroom, when a student spotted a typo, and I corrected it on the board for all to see, they didn't get it. When a student pointed out a question that wasn't overly clear and I clarified it for the entire class, they missed that clarification.
What I realized after a few years is that there is limited value in trying to quantify knowledge beyond "100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 0%". On any given day, a student's test will vary by 10% or so. To put much weight on a test is pretty silly. For my Master's degree, I looked into the standardized testing my state did to meet the NCLB requirements. Some of the score categories they placed students into were smaller than the error bars on the tests!
Back to the point, the success of students with limited English skills is determinant on the format of their humanities classes. If they are project, essay, and perhaps even presentation driven, they may do ok. Being able to practice something many times, have the tutors (all colleges have extensive, free tutoring programs, ESPECIALLY for non-English speakers) go over it a dozen times, etc., may allow them to pass. Asking them to read and parse English in a short time period may give them too little time to actually complete the test.
That said, I get infuriated by the foreign students who come to the US, and spend all their time hanging with their countrymen, speaking their native language. Every country I've visited, even if only for a week, I tried to learn some of the language. I hung out with the locals, listened to them talk, ate their food, drank their drink, and tried to appreciate what makes their country unique. Yet again and again I see students come here, and cloister themselves from the language, culture, food, etc. It baffles me. When I get to go somewhere new, the best part is reveling in the newness.
Re:Go cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
You get a calculator? All I've had on my desk for many years has been the calc program on my computer.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they have to consult their notes for every question (regardless of format) then they should fail the test because they don't understand the material adequately.
That is all well and good, if physics happens to be the only class that a student takes in that semester, and the student's brain has been properly calibrated to just "get" physics. For the rest of the world, notes are a life saver. Show me one real world scenario where notes and resource materials are not made available to employees.
Re:Well not sure if this is the right approach but (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahhh Slashdot, the only place where nerds can post smug smart ass responses to a suggestion and neatly avoid the real life consequences of being punched in the face for being such a dick.
In the US, you can apply to the FCC for a permit to operate a jammer. It may be worth a go although I have no idea how likely it is they'll grant you one.
Re:Well not sure if this is the right approach but (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, are you saying that if someone cannot remember formulas and other detail type of information then they don't understand the material?
I disagree. There are many people who grasp very sophisticated concepts and need their "notes" to remember the formulas, etc to handle the math etc.
Einstein himself failed math, and was quoted as saying "Never commit to memory what you can look up." I doubt very much he would have passed your tests.
Let em use whatever they want, catch em. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let em use whatever device they want and lay out the rules for no communication or internet access.
Be vigilant, Make it a goal to catch the cheaters.
At the end of the day the college degree you get is just your ticket in the door at a company, If you really know your stuff your performance will take you far.
If you know how to find the answer to a problem by tapping your network of contacts you will likely go farther. (the cheating your worried about)
If you can't figure out how to cheat on a physics test in college your probably going nowhere so weed these people out.
In all seriousness i would rather hire the person who found some elaborate way to cheat while avoiding detection than the person who worked for 3 weeks to get a B on the test. The enterprising cheater is probably far more inventive but was just bored by the material, thats a skill set that I can work with. Working for 3 weeks to pass a basic physics test isn't.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between not reinventing the wheel and asking people to do your job for you.
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:1, Insightful)
Indeed, at my uni you were only allowed the notes the lecturer specified (2xA4 handwritten, textbook, dictionary etc) and an approved calculator (there was a long list, but mainly stuff without memory/programmability etc).
Why not just allow notes and dictionaries (physical) and disallow all other equipment. If the student doesn't like it tough shit really. They are after all in (I assume) an English university, so language shouldn't be too much of a problem (especially for more technical subjects).
Just have a rule that any device "with the CAPABILITY of communication with external sources" is not allowed. You can further specify exceptions to take care of devices which look identical apart from comms ability.
Basically, you're the lecturer, you decide. Be harsh. Dictionaries are not expensive (at least compared to the amount of money in tuition fees) and even then, it's not as if the language changes every year (like some other textbooks). If I was you, I'd make a deal with the library to reserve X number of dictionaries for the day of your exam so whoever needs one can borrow it for the exam.
Also : You need to think about what your student is doing - it's a lot easier for someone to type a word and select a match, rather than actually know how a dictionary works. I would assume that someone graduating from a English speaking uni would know the alphabet and how to order words. If they want to not lose time looking stuff up, they should learn the language they are being taught in.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:5, Insightful)
so you're going to have to make allowances for electronic devices like dictionaries if you ban electronics from testing sites.
I heard they have a totally newfangled dictionary now, that works entirely without electronics. It consists of lots of sheets of paper, with the words printed on it. Like as if you made a big printout of a site-rip of m-w.com.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:4, Insightful)
First off -- I applaud your use of open-note exams. That is the ONLY real-world way to learn and demonstrate knowledge.
I partially disagree. Memorization has its place in learning. For example, if one is taking a proper mathematical analysis class but they do not know (by heart!) the formal definition of the limit by midterm, then one is left to wonder how much actual analysis they can do. Ditto for Newton's laws of motion, for example, in the corresponding physics class. In every discipline there are these basic things one needs to understand thoroughly—without having to look them up—to even begin to appreciate the rest of the results. The parent may say: is it not enough to test whether a student solve problems? I do not think it is quite enough. Parent's student may now be able to solve a calculus problem when he is given a one and told it is a calculus problem. My student, who actually remembers the basics of analysis, will be able to pose calculus problems in her field of interest and in her very life: to see things in nature or in the society that can be modeled using limits and derivatives. IMHO, this is better learning. I do agree mostly, though: at least in mathematics, rote memorization should be reserved for just a few central concepts.
As for the root question, I tend to side with people who say: ban all devices but a simple calculator, and design the test in a way that would make even that device unnecessary (don't bother buying them: these things are, like, $1). Whether it's a written test for 100 people or a tête-à-tête in an office, we absolutely have to prevent all communication in order for the examination to have any meaning. Jamming would accomplish that, but it is unsafe and dickish. In the future, when people have wireless adapters in their heads, every test taker will have to be surrounded by a Faraday cage, but for now whitelisting devices is the way to go. For special needs like language translation, have single-purpose devices pre-approved. Do they even make them anymore, now that there are much more capable robots on the internet? Who cares, it's not your problem. No matter what, flatly ban everything that has even a hint of a rumor of the networking capacity.
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be confusing training with ability to solve problems.
Training can make a doctor better at handling the familiar, but won't help when the doctor is faced with the unfamiliar. In some cases training can even be harmful -- if you have extensive training in recognizing a particular condition, you are biased towards it, and are likely to score more false positives for the diagnosis than you otherwise would. The typical scenario is the young idealistic doctor who takes a course in [moderately rare disease], and then sees that disease behind every bush for the next few months.
An exam should measure how a student does when faced with problems they can neither memorize nor train for, but where they have to show enough understanding of what's been taught that they can apply their knowledge without having been shown exactly how.
Re:Pen. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yeah, no one would want a calculator for a question like that"
Don't do such a question, then:
"A student is given 1,000 cubic centimeters of ethanol ice that's initially at -164 degrees Celsius. Said student is instructed to heat the ice until it melts and continue heating until it eventually reaches a temperature of +36C throughout. How many total calories did this require?"
See? Same knowledge tested, no calculator needed.
Unnecessary complication... (Score:4, Insightful)
The student shouldn't need to show that he can substitute values in an expression to arrive at a numeric answer. Any idiot can push a few buttons to do that, so it's just wasting time.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
It'd be nice to know he knew the procedure. However, if something unusual came up I'd prefer to have the guy who 'phones a friend' than the one who decides to wing it. If you're having a 2+ hour piece of surgery is a 5 min delay while the surgeon checks to ensure something is right really so bad?
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah there's really no other way to look up words than a networkable computer. It's just too bad nobody's invented a dictionary that works with simple nonelectronic parts like wood pulp and pigments. This is an open-book exam here, I guess an easy solution to this guy's problem is to have a dictionary that was built into, you know, a book.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:2, Insightful)
The examination system in the US might be different from that of the UK or Australia where I have taken degree level exams, so excuse me if I have got this incorrect in relation to the thread.
In my experience, I have been allowed a non-programmable calculator and a *paper* translation dictionary. There was no limitations on who could bring a paper translation dictionary to the exam, so there was no unfair advantage to someone who chose to bring one.
I have seen some students with disabilities being able to use a desktop computer to write out answers rather than using paper and pen, however in these cases the computer was provided by the institution and was not network enabled.
If the exam was open book, as is the case in this thread, then I was allowed to bring any paper documentation that I liked but was not allowed to have anything in electronic format.
I have never been allowed any form of electrical device - ipod, mobile phone, laptop in an exam room other than a non-programmable calculator (if a calculator was allowed).
I don't believe this has hindered me in my studies, and I see no reason why the above should not be standard practice.
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:1, Insightful)
Show me one real world scenario where notes and resource materials are not made available to employees.
Someone else pointed out that surgeons and dental surgeons don't carry notes into the OR.
If you've honestly never heard of a surgeon consulting written material in the middle of a procedure, all I can say is thank god you aren't one.
Re:10 years ago (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I get infuriated by the foreign students who come to the US, and spend all their time hanging with their countrymen, speaking their native language.
I know. They should follow the example of Americans when they go abroad. :-D
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:3, Insightful)
It is easy to apply to yourself because you already speak english. For foreign language speakers, they often don't have the option of going to a well respected college in their native language, the way you do. If you -had- to speak some other language to get a higher education would you think it fair that your inability to learn another language is hindering your mathematics degree?
Yes.
I'm not a native english speaker, and expect that if I am to go to school anywhere with a different language, I have to learn the language.
Eivind.
Re:Unnecessary complication... (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of students are bad at algebra simply because they don't understand what to do with x and y in e.g "y = 2x", so you still need at least part of the test to force them to work all the way to a concrete result from concrete inputs. Again, there's a big difference between theory and practice, and people should be learning both.
Re:Open Notes & Well-Designed Exams (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I think giving ESL students a paper dictionary to be the perfect way to solve any language difficulties. I would also see no problem allowing that student some extra time on the exam, perhaps even as much as an extra 50%.
I believe that is similar to how it is usually handled. The main point being its kinda unfair to give a student access to something that might enable them to cheat.
Either way, you would think any student that is taking college level classes should have a good grasp of the language they are being taught in, only needing the dictionary sparingly. Otherwise how do they learn during class without being glued to the dictionary.
Re:Why do the complicated expensive solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many institutions of higher learning do not have graduate students for this and some which do, do not allow them to work beyond what their weekly duties are (blame graduate student unions).
This solution creates its own horrible problem: you cannot kick a student out of a class, even if caught cheating, unless you go through the proper channels. For all the universities I have been at this means weeks if not months of dealing with a bureaucracy that has no interest in being fast and is worried more about being sued by the student's family than having academic rigor.