Sunday, February 17, 2013
It's not quite a Prisoner's Dilemma as there was no incentive to defect
The students in Professor Peter Froehlich's “Intermediate Programming” and “Introduction to Programming for Scientists and Engineers” (a Python language class) classes, boycotted their finals last December. The former initially organized the boycott and the latter followed suit.
To avoid the stress of taking their exam, the students decided to capitalize on a loophole in Froehlich's grading system.
“In my courses, all grades are relative to the highest actually achieved score. Thus, if no one showed up and everyone got 0 percent, everyone would be marked as 100 percent,” Froehlich wrote in an email to The News- Letter.
Via Reddit, Computer science students successfully boycott class final | The Johns Hopkins News- Letter
As remarkable as all the students in class deciding not to take the exam, it's even more remarkable that the instructor kept his word and awarded everyone 100 percent on the exam.
And I'm bummed that I never had an instructor in school make such an offer.
