My TA pointed out to me that some students are skipping the matlab portion of the assignments and most of the students who do the matlab portion have identical code to one another, which probably means 1-2 students are doing all the work
I’m definitely imposing a “skip a problem, get a zero for the entire assignment” policy, but I’d like to have students write code individually to make sure they can do it
PhD student here. I do my data work in Matlab, R, and python. Same mix for at least 3 years. Coding new stuff at least 4 days per week. I can’t write Matlab code without seeing an example of something else I’ve written. The syntax escapes me (parentheses, colons, semicolons) although I’m super comfortable with the logic I need to use.
What about some multiple choice questions where they have to choose which is correct from a few choices? Make the difference between the choices substantial (i.e., not just a comma versus a semi-colon). This examines whether students learned something about coding, but doesn't require that they memorize precise syntax.