That makes as much sense as having a class about political corruption and requiring that students pass the test by bribing the teacher.
If I taught a class on political corruption I would totally do that if it wouldn’t get me in trouble.
My goal with that question was to confront the students with a real game theory based moral dilemma. Tests are not just for evaluation, but should also be learning exercises.
But there’s a difference between “this is how you do X” and “doing X is appropriate in this situation”. Deciding that because a class is about bribery, you should get your grade in it by bribery, confuses these two things—you’ve given the students an opportunity to use the lessons from the class, but it’s not a situation where most people think you should have an opportunity to use the lessons from the class. If your class was about some field of statistics related to randomness would you insist that your students roll dice to determine their exam score? If your class was about male privilege, would you automatically give all female students a grade one rank lower?
Tests are not just for evaluation, but should also be learning exercises.
While tests can have purposes, such as learning, that are orthogonal to evaluation, that’s different from giving the test an additional purpose that is counterproductive to evaluation.
Also, I’d hate to be the student who had to explain to a prospective employer that the employer should add a percentage point to his GPA when considering him for employment, on the grounds that he scored poorly in your class for reasons unrelated to evaluation.
That makes as much sense as having a class about political corruption and requiring that students pass the test by bribing the teacher.
Just because the class is about X doesn’t mean that grades in the class should be measured by X.
If I taught a class on political corruption I would totally do that if it wouldn’t get me in trouble.
My goal with that question was to confront the students with a real game theory based moral dilemma. Tests are not just for evaluation, but should also be learning exercises.
But there’s a difference between “this is how you do X” and “doing X is appropriate in this situation”. Deciding that because a class is about bribery, you should get your grade in it by bribery, confuses these two things—you’ve given the students an opportunity to use the lessons from the class, but it’s not a situation where most people think you should have an opportunity to use the lessons from the class. If your class was about some field of statistics related to randomness would you insist that your students roll dice to determine their exam score? If your class was about male privilege, would you automatically give all female students a grade one rank lower?
While tests can have purposes, such as learning, that are orthogonal to evaluation, that’s different from giving the test an additional purpose that is counterproductive to evaluation.
Also, I’d hate to be the student who had to explain to a prospective employer that the employer should add a percentage point to his GPA when considering him for employment, on the grounds that he scored poorly in your class for reasons unrelated to evaluation.