Answers To Homework

[Natalí Stibb]

Thecommunity has mixed feelings about homework questions. While some feel that students should be able to get an answer to any question they want to ask, others feel that Stack Overflow is not a place for homework questions at all.

This is an attempt to reconcile these two extreme positions in a way that is acceptable to the majority of the community. Note that this post is not the official position of the Stack Overflow administrators, but rather a community-edited effort to provide clear guidelines on how to respond to homework. Individual community members should, of course, use their own judgment.

It is okay to ask about homework. For one, it would be impossible to stop it all, even if we wanted to. Stack Overflow exists to help programmers learn and provide a standard repository for programming problems, both simple and complex, and this includes helping students.

Providing an answer that doesn't help a student learn is not in the student's own best interest. Therefore, you might choose to treat homework questions differently than other questions.

Make a good faith attempt to solve the problem yourself first. Users here respond negatively if your question gives them the impression that you're asking them to do your work for you. On the other hand, questions that ask about a specific issue that you're having a problem with usually receive a much better response.

Ask about specific problems with your existing implementation. If you can't do that yet, try some more of your own work first or searching for more general help; your professor is likely to be a better resource at this stage than Stack Overflow.

Search for already-existing questions about your issue. Try using both the Stack Overflow site search and your favorite search engine. Most search engines allow you to limit results to a single site. For example, you can search Stack Overflow on Google. Definitely try searching for your title and/or the keywords in your title, along with the language tag for the language your question is working with. Look through at least the first several results. People tend to respond negatively if they can easily find a duplicate to your question, particularly if they can do so by just searching for your question's title...

Help us understand your baseline. Broad pleas for help like "I have no idea where to start" are problematic, because we can't know your starting level. If you are new to programming, or the specific programming language or system platform you are trying to use, and can't even write or run a simple "Hello world" program, concentrate on solving that in isolation, and return to your actual assignment only when you have solved that. Past that point, it might help to explain the purpose of the course or mention topics you have been taught recently. Do you know how to assign a value to a variable? Do you know how to loop over a range of numbers? Tell us what you already know, and tell us what you already searched for or looked at, and why those resources were not helpful for you.

Never use code you don't understand. It definitely won't help you later (after school, in later assignments, on tests, etc.), and it could be, at best, very embarrassing if you are asked to explain the code you turned in.

Understand the difference between "asking a question about your homework" and "asking a specific question about the code in your homework". You should never ask a question about your homework, because more often than not, it will not meet the recommendations in the rest of these guidelines. Instead, ask about the code you wrote to solve your homework problem and be specific with the inputs, desired outputs, and error messages. It is ideal if you take your code and create a minimal, reproducible example instead of pasting your entire code, especially if it is a long code block.

Try to provide an explanation that will lead the asker in the correct direction. Genuine understanding is the real goal for students, but trying to provide that is usually appreciated for any question.

Focus on the explanation rather than providing full source code. A student is more likely to learn from clear steps and proper explanation rather than ready-made code. However, if a code example will help understand the solution, don't stop yourself from providing one.

Recognize that homework is likely to include artificial constraints, and honor those constraints. Also, be aware that these constraints may affect whether a question should be closed as a duplicate. That said, there is nothing wrong with also including information in your answer about how the problem would normally be solved in the real world. It's helpful for students to learn real-world patterns, and this also makes your answer more useful to future readers.

Failure to comply with these guidelines is not a reason to downvote an answer. Naturally, if the answer is incorrect, low quality, poorly explained, and/or something that you would downvote anyway, then it is fine to do so. Remember that it's not always obvious at first glance that a question is homework, especially when you're not expecting to see it here. You can, according to your judgment, leave comments on the answer with suggestions on how to improve it.

Don't ridicule a student because they haven't yet learned something obvious or developed the good habits you'd expect from a seasoned programmer. Do add a respectful comment or answer that points them towards best practices and better style.

If you work with others to complete your lab, list those people with your source code. Also, if you get code from an online resource, list the URL with the lab, and credit where you got the code from. This is a common courtesy and a legal requirement, even for free, open-source software.

Students who Google their homework answers may get a short-term boost but at the cost of longer-term harm, according to a new study by Rutgers-New Brunswick psychology professor Arnold Glass in the School of Arts and Sciences.

Further, fewer college students are benefiting from doing homework. Over 11 years, the number of college students who score lower on their exams than their homework has increased from 14 percent in 2008 to 55 percent in 2017.

Absolutely. When everything is done on the internet, it will become the familiar way to work. While students will be more skilled at using internet applications, they will know less and may become less interested in knowledge. It is especially concerning as remote learning may mean less oversight when completing assignments, whether parents are distracted, teachers aren't checking in or students are feeling less motivated.

Rutgers is an equal access/equal opportunity institution. Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to direct suggestions, comments, or complaints concerning any accessibility issues with Rutgers websites to access...@rutgers.edu or complete the Report Accessibility Barrier / Provide Feedback form.

Glass discovered this from analyzing homework and the grades on tests that he gave college students who took his courses from 2008 to 2017. Glass gives his students a series of quiz-style online homework assignments. The day before a lesson, students answer homework questions about the upcoming material. They answer similar questions in class a week later and again on the exam.

To test this, Glass and Kang asked students in 2017 and 2018 whether they came up with their homework answers themselves or looked them up. Students who tended to look up answers also tended to do better on homework than their exams.

correlation: A mutual relationship or connection between two variables. When there is a positive correlation, an increase in one variable is associated with an increase in the other. (For instance, scientists might correlate an increase in time spent watching TV with an increase in rates of obesity.) Where there is an inverse correlation, an increase in one value is associated with a drop in the other. (Scientists might correlate an increase in TV watching with a decrease in time spent exercising each week.) A correlation between two variables does not necessarily mean one is causing the other.

internet: An electronic communications network. It allows computers anywhere in the world to link into other networks to find information, download files and share data (including pictures).

psychology: (adj. psychological ) The study of the human mind, especially in relation to actions and behavior. To do this, some perform research using animals. Scientists and mental-health professionals who work in this field are known as psychologists.

Kathryn Hulick is a freelance science writer and the author of Strange But True: 10 of the World's Greatest Mysteries Explained, a book about the science of ghosts, aliens and more. She loves hiking, gardening and robots.

Founded in 2003, Science News Explores is a free, award-winning online publication dedicated to providing age-appropriate science news to learners, parents and educators. The publication, as well as Science News magazine, are published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.

For any assignment other than a Programming Assignment, your instructor can set a time limit on your work. This means you will only have a set number of minutes to upload your files or enter your answers from the moment you start the assignment or see the questions. Here are some things you should know about working on a timed assignment.

Except in the case of Online Assignments, when you submit your work, you will receive an automated email from Gradescope that includes the date and time you turned in the assignment, the assignment due date, the late due date (if your instructor set one), and a link to your submission. The email also reminds you that you can resubmit work as many times as you need to until the due date passes or the timer runs out (if your assignment is timed).

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