One more thing about my exams.
I was having a problem with people being really late to my classes this semester, so I started having a quick (<5min) talk about someone important in computing history at the end of every lecture and I told them that they would be quizzed on this material if I decided a sufficient number of students were late and latecomers would not have any chance to make up the lost points. I stole the idea from my predecessor, who used vocabulary words. I only had to have one pop quiz. It worked like a charm, the students were mostly on time after that. The fabulous T.J. my predecessor is a very smart man.
One of the people I mentioned was Alan Turing (how could I not?) and because it's something I think needs to be said and follows naturally, I gave my little speech about how we shouldn't discriminate against anyone because we never know what people might do for us. In his short life, Turing gave us computing, who knows what he might have done in his old age? This is a somewhat disingenuous argument, since really, we shouldn't discriminate because all people have rights, not because we are selfish, but pragmatism is always an easier sell than idealism.
The last question on my exams is always a throw away, "what is the most important or valuable thing that you learned in this class?" One of the responses this time began "The most important thing I learned was that we shouldn't discriminate against people, because as we have seen, Alan Turing..."
I'm really proud of that, darlings. This is a violently homophobic society, and I did something to fight that.
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