It seems like the professor tried to personally deal the problem on a case-by-case basis; this will always end up being more work for him in the long run. What he should have done is just immediately hand the case off to the proper authorities and let them decide the case. However, I'm assuming from the post that the council at this particular college is considered to be a last resort option; other colleges have committees that are dedicated to dealing with cheating and it's standard procedure amongst faculty to forward all cases to them immediately.
Why I will never pursue cheating again
11–20 of 506 posts
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#12> I was also lectured by some senior professors that "I should change my assignments from year to year". (Thanks for the suggestion, buddy, this is exactly how I detected the cheaters.) what? how can there be cheaters to detect if the assignment is completely different?
My guess is that the OP was a bit imprecise, and that he kept some assignments the same as previous years. If 3 assignments are same-same-different, and a student gets grades A-A-F, that could be what they call a 'tell' :)
On second reading, the OP was being sarcastic, and derisively noting that if he changed his assignments, he never would have caught the cheaters in the first place. So he rejects one form of making cheating useless (making traditional assignments, but changing them up each year) and embraces another (choosing different types of assignments that are structurally not cheatable).
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#13[deleted]
I wish this was true, but it actually also hurts all the students who aren't cheating in the course since their classmates are receiving better marks than them while spending less time. Which tragically creates a strong incentive for other students to join in. In some courses this can be an epidemic and you have a significant fraction of the students cheating and getting better marks than the students who are actually learning.
When curves come in to play it means the honest students are getting lower scores than the dishonest ones even though they are learning more. This can suck in a lot of fields where grades matter.
The refrain that it only hurts the cheater needs to stop being something people say when this topic comes up. It is a serious problem that is undermining learning in our classrooms and it needs to be addressed, it is not a victimless act. It certainly does hurt the cheater, but it doesn't only hurt the cheater.
Don't fix it for the sake of the dishonest students, fix it for the sake of the honest ones.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is that the OP was a bit imprecise, and that he kept some assignments the same as previous years. If 3 assignments are same-same-different, and a student gets grades A-A-F, that could be what they call a 'tell' :)
On second reading, the OP was being sarcastic, and derisively noting that if he changed his assignments, he never would have caught the cheaters in the first place. So he rejects one form of making cheating useless (making traditional assignments, but changing them up each year) and embraces another (choosing different types of assignments that are structurally not cheatable).
I believe the intended reading is that he does "change" them, by adjusting the font, etc, as mentioned just earlier. His colleague was suggesting that he write entirely new assignments each year.
The author misunderstood what his colleague meant (Or at least, only does a half-measure), which is why he says that "He is" changing them.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#15I don't know what it is with you US Americans and "cheating"... but it seems to be a very touchy subject in your culture, almost like violating someone's honors. I never understood that.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#16"Cheating" is a meaningless concept once you reach college in my opinion. Either students are learning or they're not. They're (usually) paying money to be there and the only applicable metric is if the skills they acquire while chasing down the degree are worth the money they or their parents spend. To that end, I was impressed with the OP's thoughts on deterring this sort of behavior in the future. Because really,…
> "... the only person suffering from this behavior is the student."
Actually, everyone suffers. Fellow students suffer, as some are compelled to cheat to compete because their peers do. Alumni suffer as students grades lose their value and the university is seen as less rigorous. Similarly for academia as a whole. Finally, society has to deal with whole cohorts that have been formally rewarded for making poor ethical choices.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#17Fascinating read... sort of rings bells in my head along the lines of DRM/piracy cold war.
Reading the article and see the greater and greater extents the students were going through to cheat and the arms-race occurring between the teacher and the students, he leads you to his ultimate conclusion: the game has to change.
You can see the writing on the wall as you read through. Written "brain dump" style assignments, unless changed every year, aren't going to yield great results. Interactive, group-driven projects, competitions and discussions are all things that are much harder to plagiarize, are more fun and will (hopefully) teach the students more.
Not to mention more fun to teach.
I have a lot of teachers in my family (midwest) and none of them glow when they talk about teaching... they describe it like a war of attrition between the teachers, the students and the administration... like there is some clock ticking away slowly in the background and everyone is going through the motions just trying to outlast everyone else. I am talking about 2 separate generations here, like 40 years apart saying the same thing.
I can't imagine a shittier experience.
On the other hand, I am friends with a few (younger) teachers out here in the west that are rabid about how exciting their class is and how much fun they have.
The common denominator here is that the ones having a blast frequently do highly engaging and custom events in the classroom like re-enacting scenes from a play in drama on-the-fly or the poly-sci teacher segregated his class for a week while teaching about separate-but-equal.
Those are micro-examples, but what I'm getting at is that the teachers that recognize that the game has changed are still having a great time teaching.
Just like /cgi-bin shopping carts and "DO NOT HIT 'Purchase' TWICE!" buttons are dead on the web, so is the schooling experience of yester-year. If school wants to stay relevant, it has to compete with the allure of these extremely fast lives we live now. People cashing in $100,000,000 companies at 22 makes it tough to argue why your kid should stay in school until he's 73 so he can make $80k as an architect.
I wouldn't want to go to school now, a lot of things seem in flux. Notice how popular the "Why go to college?!" conversation is now adays?
I think in 10-15 years it will be much different/more effective with a different outlook though; that'll be a more engaging and compelling experience I hope.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#18I have had many courses in which the answers to the homework are given prior to the homework assignment. The assignment is large enough that copying the answers would take about an hour. Most students feel that if they are going to spend that much time faking it, they might as well do the assignment. Furthermore, biweekly quizzes clearly highlight a lack of understanding. Not doing the homework (or just copying the answers) is a rough road to go down, when averages midterm scores are in the low 60s (and yet some kids ace the midterm). Those who copy the homework do badly in the course. It's just that simple.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#19While there's much to be said in favor of more creative assignments that aren't minor variants of last year's assignments, the author has drawn the wrong conclusion from what happened.
22 cheats out of 108 is big - and the real proportion may have been even higher, given that it seemed like he caught only either blatant cheats or conscience-stricken/less brazen cheats (the latter category from when he acted people to own up). And it's a lot of work, and I've been around this process at a couple different institutions and seen how tough it is to see it through to an appropriate conclusion.
However, all this wasted time, and all this aggravation, wouldn't be necessary if all the other professors were doing it too. The only reason they're at 28/108 or higher is that people have obviously been getting away with almost anything.
The author has buckled (understandably) as being the only hard-ass in a environment where everyone else is getting away with it isn't feasible. From his perspective, I can see why he didn't fight this, but if he'd stuck it out for another year or two - and showed the next round of incoming classes just how ugly it will get - he'd have gone back to 'normal' cheating rates rather than 28/108.
The idea that you can always produce assignments that are 'unique flowers' that can't ever be duplicated year by year by cheating students has its own pitfalls. One problem is exactly that these assignments _are_ unique flowers, and might turn out to be systematically too hard or too easy or too vague. An advantage of the rather mechanical, "near-clone of last-years stuff" approach is that you can learn from last year's assignments and tune them onto the target. Faculty shouldn't be dumping the same material without fixes every year, but in many fields it's insane to expect that they have to prepare all new assessment material every year. They just don't get paid enough or get enough time for that.
Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again
#20"Cheating" is a meaningless concept once you reach college in my opinion. Either students are learning or they're not. They're (usually) paying money to be there and the only applicable metric is if the skills they acquire while chasing down the degree are worth the money they or their parents spend. To that end, I was impressed with the OP's thoughts on deterring this sort of behavior in the future. Because really,…
the only person suffering from this behavior is the student
You really think so?
The more diplomas you give to students who learned nothing, the more the rest of the world will pick up on it and refuse to hire anyone from your University.