This might not be a good sign for students enrolled (or to enroll in the future). They may suffer from lagging (immediate -> >1 week) or limited (only a score with few words) feedback, less exercise (limited materials, not timely release), spend more time/money on seeking course materials for past semesters (e.g. coursehero, chegg), and biased grades (students with materials from past semesters or have a connection with more senior students are more likely to have better grades).
But this is not an excuse. iTechX may also have downsides. Some students that have direct access to solutions may finish their homework without actually thinking. Some materials might get abused in an inappropriate way. Though we have done a lot to prevent such a thing from happening (hide solutions from students until they provide a correct answer in online assignments, use secure third-party support), it cannot guarantee that iTechX is serving the functionality we expected. A possible solution is that instructors create new homework, quiz and exams for new semesters. But in some cases, there is limited time and workforce budget, course materials are not suitable for designing a large number of exercises, or it has risks designing problematic exercises. There is still a long way to go in promoting the quality of education in universities. For now, we understand that direct material sharing is not a perfect solution.
iTechX takes the rights of the owners of course materials seriously. An instructor has full access to his/her course for all semesters (even if he/she is not the creator of the materials). It is welcome to send an email or make a pull request to make sure that the contents on iTechX are as expected.
We are sorry to inform everyone that we are starting the procedure of removing existing course materials. https://github.com/i-TechX/iTechX/issues/27#issuecomment-1477773424
This might not be a good sign for students enrolled (or to enroll in the future). They may suffer from lagging (immediate -> >1 week) or limited (only a score with few words) feedback, less exercise (limited materials, not timely release), spend more time/money on seeking course materials for past semesters (e.g. coursehero, chegg), and biased grades (students with materials from past semesters or have a connection with more senior students are more likely to have better grades).
But this is not an excuse. iTechX may also have downsides. Some students that have direct access to solutions may finish their homework without actually thinking. Some materials might get abused in an inappropriate way. Though we have done a lot to prevent such a thing from happening (hide solutions from students until they provide a correct answer in online assignments, use secure third-party support), it cannot guarantee that iTechX is serving the functionality we expected. A possible solution is that instructors create new homework, quiz and exams for new semesters. But in some cases, there is limited time and workforce budget, course materials are not suitable for designing a large number of exercises, or it has risks designing problematic exercises. There is still a long way to go in promoting the quality of education in universities. For now, we understand that direct material sharing is not a perfect solution.
iTechX takes the rights of the owners of course materials seriously. An instructor has full access to his/her course for all semesters (even if he/she is not the creator of the materials). It is welcome to send an email or make a pull request to make sure that the contents on iTechX are as expected.