[Haskell-cafe] RE: Answers to Exercises in Craft of FP

Paul Hudak paul.hudak at yale.edu
Thu Jan 27 15:28:28 EST 2005


Chris, I'm not sure that I understand your argument.  How about this 
scenario, which is what I do:  Students are assigned problems, without 
solutions.  They are given some time to work them out and turn them in. 
  Then they are given the solutions, most of which I go over in class.

This does not require posting solutions ahead of time, or in a public 
place, it still allows the "autonomous" student to do the work on his or 
her own (although constrained by a particular time-frame), and it 
permits the student to see the solutions in the end.

   -Paul


Christian Hofer wrote:
> Dear Hamilton,
> 
> I think we just have a different framing of the problem. You are 
> confronted with the laziness of students and want to teach them 
> something anyway. By that you are forced to disrespect the autonomy of 
> students who are intrinsically motivated (e.g. by giving bonus points on 
> exercises).
> 
> I on the other hand am a great fan of the old German university system, 
> which they are currently about to abolish in the so-called "Bologna 
> Process". The idea is to just treat students as if they were autonomous. 
> Most students fail in the exams in their first year, because they are 
> not used to solving exercises when nobody forces them to do it (s.th. 
> they should of course already have learned in school). Those students 
> that don't recover don't belong to university. But most students learn 
> from this negative experience, that they have to work on their own. And 
> that is more important to learn on university than the details of a 
> certain programming paradigm...
> 
> It's nice that you offer me your exercises with solutions. But I am 
> afraid that does not really help me, because I want to do (and am 
> actually doing) the exercises in the books that I read (because that is 
> the way to get a better understanding). Thus what I would need are the 
> solutions to those exercises.
> 
> Regards,
> Chris
> 
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-- 
Professor Paul Hudak
Chair, Dept of Computer Science   Office: (203) 432-1235
Yale University                   FAX:    (203) 432-0593
P.O. Box 208285                   email:  paul.hudak at yale.edu
New Haven, CT 06520-8285          WWW:    www.cs.yale.edu/~hudak



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