Simple solution

In one of my classes, I give regular homework assignments. Most of these involve digesting and synthesizing material out of the textbook.

A distressing number of students leave at least one question blank on the assignment. Because I am a diligent person, and also because I don't like complaints of "I couldn't FIND that!" on things, I had been writing in the correct answer (or writing it in when people got the question wrong). And it took a lot of time, and it gave me hand cramps, and it frustrated me.

(Yes, I know, I could just mark a big X on the blank spaces and not do anything else, but I'm a little too nice for that).

This morning, I hit on an even better solution: the homework is based on textbook information, right? So I just write down "see page x" when someone leaves a question blank. That way, while I may not exactly teaching 'em to fish, at least I'm not completely handing 'em an already-fried-up slab o' perch.

But the thing is: these homework assignments are like five questions long. And the stuff is both stuff I go over in class and is in the textbook. And they count, all together, for 1/4 of the grade. And people get a week to complete them. How lazy do you have to be to not do that kind of a homework assignment?

(The other thing? I consider them as "fair game" for the tests I give - so doing the assignment, I tell the students, is essentially a bit of study time.)