While periodic evaluation has long been standard in BITS Pilani, the forms in which students are usually assessed, be it weekly in-class exams or surprise tutorial tests, are widely unpopular. To come to each class expecting a test detracts from the learning process and places undue pressure on the student. The English Press Club, in an attempt to dissect the viability of making take-home assignments more significant to the learning procedure, reached out to faculty and administration to gain their perspective on the matter.
Definition
A take-home assignment (THA) is usually homework which is graded. It may be a list of problems, an essay, a report or a set of proofs which need to be solved within a deadline. THAs may be assigned to students as frequently as biweekly, or as rarely as a couple of times a semester. These assignments usually involve research, and help expand a student’s knowledge and improve cognitive thinking. Their specific formats and time constraints also improve students’ efficiency.
BITSian Perspective
Prof. Ajit Pratap Singh, Dean of Academic Undergraduate Studies Division (AUGSD) asserted that THAs are a very good concept but need fine-tuning. As per the academic guidelines for first degree courses, there has to be a 20% weightage for open book evaluatives. THAs are included in this 20% umbrella. The Dean came to know that this was not always followed for undergraduate studies, in spite of the policy being in place.
Prof. Singh said that THAs should be difficult to plagiarise and duly evaluated for effective teaching and learning in the university. Due to differences in courses and the numbers of students in each, THAs can be structured in different ways. As examples, he mentioned group discussions for management courses and an open-ended design problem for a civil engineering course.
Prof. Singh pointed out that higher degree and PhD students should be trained to evaluate THAs and be a link between undergraduate students and professors, so that they are more involved in the teaching process. Citing Engineering Graphics as an example, he said, ‘If we provide 20 Teaching Assistants (TAs) to help out with a course, we must conduct a workshop for the TAs first to explain the aim and objective of said course. We have to work on how and what they should evaluate and its significance.’
THAs were introduced in General Biology in 2012. In its current offering (II Sem. 2018-19), the course has three Take Home Assignments, one in-class assignment and two course quizzes. The IC, Prof. Manoj Kannan, said that learning should be made interesting and students should genuinely have a drive for finding information. He feels that too much of the present-day learning procedure has been equated to scoring marks in tests and exams. ‘We decided to keep a component where the students would not have to worry about the marks at all. You are judged on the basis of your approach, sincerity and promptness to work on these assignments, and not just the final outcome. There usually isn’t a fixed correct answer, since the questions are open-ended.’ Prof. Rajdeep Chowdhury, however, is of the opinion that THAs should not account for a major portion of the grade due to the lack of plagiarism checks in place, and since they are generally submitted in the form of hard copies.
International Perspective
For Science, Technology, Engineering, an Mathematics (STEM) subjects, Western universities give out regular Problem Sets (or PSets) that form anywhere between 10-70% of the final grade. PSets are generally solved collaboratively, in contrast to take home examinations. The latter are also given with time regulations, which are supposed to be self enforced. For humanities and management classes, THAs make up a larger part of the grade, and so tend to require a lot more research and are generally in the form of longer papers or projects. Universities frequently use software such as Turnitin to keep a check on plagiarism. While resources and solutions for past years’ assignments are available online, plagiarism from these sources is generally caught by TAs.
Honour Code
A majority of these Western universities rely on an honour code. Honour codes formally define terms like “cheating”, “stealing”, “unfair advantages”. They are generally in the form of pledges that participants agree to adhere to. Receiving unpermitted aid or engaging in any form of plagiarism generally constitutes a violation of the honour code. Honour codes are self-regulating, as students are supposed to report suspected violations by other students.
Prof. Singh said that in his THAs, he required students to agree to an undertaking about not being involved in plagiarism. For BITS, an honour code would mean violation leading to repercussions similar to those for unfair means. ‘In an unfair means case, everyone knows that even smallest thing will be reported to AUGSD or ID top brass. People are scared of that… This does not happen in the case of THAs as the faculty tends to be lenient. The same intensity must also be executed for THAs.’
Prof. AP Singh felt that honour codes will be successful if there is an increase in interaction between faculty and students. Increased communication would yield better responses as the students would work conscientiously and cooperatively to live up to the instructor’s expectations. Prof. Kannan also commented along the same lines, emphasizing that maintaining an excellent personal touch with students is the greatest deterrent for a student to indulge in cheating. According to him, plagiarism checks should be a “last resort”. Students should be honest and responsible for the work they put out, and the instructors should strive to bring them up to this high standard.
Feasibility and Implementation
Prof. Kannan suggested two different ways that a teacher can use THAs – they can set one problem set for the class as a whole, or formulate separate sets of questions for different students based on their inclination, ability, and interest. The latter, despite being complicated, personalises the teaching procedure. When asked about the uniformity of correction in such a system, Prof. Kannan mentioned that the correction should be based on the approach or effort, rather than the final answer. He admitted that the second system would require a lot of extra effort from the teachers’ side and would be feasible for relatively small classes only.
Prof. Kannan mentioned that THAs in Probability and Statistics and Computer Programming in the past have been discontinued because of rampant cheating. He conceded that THAs may encounter more logistical difficulties in courses without smaller tutorial sections, such as CP.
On the whole, Prof. Kannan was positive about making take home assignments a significant part of the evaluative procedure in coming years. In spite of the massive groundwork required, it is something which the administration can explore more extensively.