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Why I will never pursue cheating again

behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com

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Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#261

Post by sliverstorm »

badclient wrote: post #228
Panos wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me start by indicating some logical flaws in the timing of the events: The office hours for the class were from 12.30 to 1.30, Monday and Wednesday. The class was starting at 2pm. According to your account, I showed up at 1pm, being 30 mins "late". Then the first student came in at 1pm and came out at 1.20pm? Then it took me another 50 minutes while I was running around? So I came to talk to you at 2.10pm, when I…

I don't think being pissed at 28/108 students is a valid excuse for acting pissed at everyone. That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. I have had professors that had me write huge essays and then proceeded to just put a huge ass check and never really read past the first paragraph. If I plagiarized and cited my frustration with all th…

Imagine yourself living in a small colony of 109 individuals, 108 plus yourself. At least 25%, or one in four, want to kill you, and you don't know who they are.

Would you act friendly, trusting, kind and natural around everyone because up to 75% of them do not deserve your fear and suspicion?

It is perhaps a bit of an extreme thought experiment, but I think it illustrates handily how the human mind reacts in this kind of situation.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#262

Post by nostrademons »

equark wrote: post #184
nostrademons wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median base salary for a Stern school graduate is only $60K: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/undergraduate_... I made more than that straight out of college, and now make much more than that. So no, they didn't win. Technical skills pay if you're good at them.

That's nyu undergrad business majors. MBA is 150k on average. http://www.stern.nyu.edu/OCD/Recruiters/PlacementReports/ind...

Total compensation. Only $100K base salary. From the salary survey posted here a couple days ago, a number of HN readers are doing better.

Also, remember that that includes an average of 5 years work experience. How much do engineers with 7 years of work experience, or 5 years and a master's degree, make?

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#263

Post by lyudmil »

jamesbritt wrote: post #238
mentat wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"who put in the most effort and demonstrate the highest level of achievement" I've noticed a growing problem with people equating effort with achievement as the parent does. Just because one "works really hard" doesn't mean that one creates something of value. I'm not sure where this belief arose from, but it doesn't apply in school and it certainly doesn't apply in life.

In the US at least people are constantly saying that hard work should be rewarded, with no mention of whether the effort produces any particular value. The assumption may be that, well, no one works hard to create _no_ value, but indeed there's at least a lot of misguided hard work that people then think deserves some sort of arbitray reward.

You commit a fallacy here because your comment (as well as the one it's in reply to) assumes that work is rewarded proportionally to its value. It isn't. If you have the bargaining power to get paid more, you get paid more regardless of your contributions.

The assumption you're referring to I think has to do with the question of whether it's moral to reward people for working hard (even if inefficiently). I think there are clear situations where it is moral and necessary to do so. Perhaps not always, but at least sometimes.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#264

Post by wisty »

nyustern wrote: post #189

Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as “Info Tech,” and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC. Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is som…

Correlation != causation, but I doubt it wasn't related. You might not have marked him down for his anti-cheating stance (directly), but chasing cheats might have affected his attitude (playing "prison guard" may not have put him in a nice mood), which caused you to mark him down.

Here's a theory - Panos burnt himself out trying to chase the cheats, and deal with the bad-will and tantrums. This left a lot less time and energy to deal with students who had genuine problems. Playing the bad cop is not a good way to build relations, and makes everyone a bit paranoid.

So he turned himself into a bit of a jerk, by chasing cheats, which resulted in the worse assessment by the students.

As for his complacence, would you rather be taught by a hard-assed jerk who cracked down on the cheats, or a nice guy who turned a blind eye? There's no right answer, is there.

It might be good if the lecturer of a subject was not responsible for the summative assessment. Let some other lecturer do the marking, and set the exam. The lecturer could set (and mark) formative assessment, but that wouldn't go to your final grade. Why don't universities do this? They generally treat the lecturer as "King of the class", provided the students don't complain, so it would be seen as an "insult" to bring an outsider in. Like, have you ever seen another lecturer auditing another one's class, so they can offer suggestions about how to improve it?

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#265

Post by roundsquare »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #88
vacri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember doing some work on an essay with a friend of mine over the phone. There was one particular sentence he came up with that was absolutely stellar. I know it was original because we were working from the same text and discussing it over the phone - I was there when he came up with it. When he got his essay back, this one sentence was circled in red with the comment "If you're going to plagiarise, be less obvi…

This happened to me in English comp. I decided to make the most of the class by really studying style. I turned in three papers utilizing different author's styles in my own way: H.P. Lovecraft, Hunter S. Thompson, and Henry Thoreau. I learned a hell of a lot but was told that I cheated. I told them I would sit after class and write a paragraph or two of each style for them. They said it wasn't necessary as they coul…

There certainly is such a thing as being too aggressive in trying to detect cheating. It happened to my dad once but he cleared it up by re-doing the problem from scratch in front of the teacher.

I think it's absolutely critical that any accusation of cheating allow the student to respond, preferably to a different teacher if the original teacher still thinks they were cheating.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#266

Post by nostrademons »

mentat wrote: post #223
nyustern wrote: post #189

Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as “Info Tech,” and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC. Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is som…

"who put in the most effort and demonstrate the highest level of achievement" I've noticed a growing problem with people equating effort with achievement as the parent does. Just because one "works really hard" doesn't mean that one creates something of value. I'm not sure where this belief arose from, but it doesn't apply in school and it certainly doesn't apply in life.

I agree in general, but remember that we're talking about an MBA program here. Just what "value" is there to be created sitting in class?

The point of schooling is to develop the skills that will help you in the real world. Hard work is one of those skills; it's not outside the realm of plausibility that schools should incent it. (FWIW, cheating - when you don't get caught - is another one of them. Maybe schools should incent cheating and teach you how to not get caught. Oh wait, they do. Mission fucking accomplished. ;-/)

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#267

Post by jamesaguilar »

Panos wrote: post #260
jamesaguilar wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, interesting. But I got the impression from your article that you typically had a discussion with the student, presented them with the evidence, etc. after they protested to you. That's a little different than my proposal, where in the case of protest you hand it off to the honor board immediately. I.e. the students should know that the only discussion is one where they risk suspension if they don't manage to pro…

When I detected 15+ cheating cases, I just asked permission from the Dean's office to notify students over email, and then direct them to the Dean's office for appeals. So I did that, notified the cheating students they got a -30 (negative the points of the homework) and directed them to the Dean's office for appeals. Well, it was very difficult to enforce the "talk to the Dean's office if you have a problem with my…

Of course I would not advocate physically pushing the student out of the office.

> Instead, I sent an email to the class. I just said that there were cases of plagiarism detected and whomever cheated, could come and find me. For the rest, I would report the case . . .

I guess I just read this as an invitation to come and discuss the matter with you. And I understood from this that any who didn't come would be referred. If I were a student and reading this paragraph, I would make damn sure to speak with you about my indiscretions. That is the exact opposite of what I'm proposing, which is that you only refer students to the dean if they do come and speak with you.

Perhaps you meant to convey something different than what I'm getting from the blog post, if so, sorry for misreading.

> When the student comes in my office during office hours . . .

Once again, I've never been a professor, although I did TA for a while when I was in college. That said, I had an expectation that my office hours would be utilized in some way or another by students. I would propose prioritizing any student that wants to ask about something other than their cheating conviction. For students who want to talk about the cheating, just say, "If you really believe you did not cheat, we can discuss the evidence. But that will only happen at an academic integrity board hearing. If they find you innocent, I will regrade your work. Think about it and let me know by email if that's what you want to do." And then just refuse to talk about it.

Again, you're the professional and I'm the backseat driver. You know more about how this works than I do. This is simply how I imagine it would go, and although you've disagreed with me several times I still haven't gotten the impression that you did what I'm proposing.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#268

Post by btilly »

badclient wrote: post #252
btilly wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think being pissed at 28/108 students is a valid excuse for acting pissed at everyone. That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. FYI professionals are humans first and professionals second. If think that professionals can easily turn off how they are feeling and always act properly, then I conclude that you have little understan…

It goes both ways. Are you willing to listen to the many excuses for why each student may have plagiarized and potentially extend the same they-are-human-too sympathies?

I understand why the students cheat. However it is possible to be in their positions and not cheat. I don't want to have co-workers who cheat. I therefore would like to see the book thrown at them so that they learn not to cheat.

If they truly had no choice about cheating, then I'd show more sympathy. But they do. By contrast we truly don't get to choose how we as humans are emotionally wired.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#269

Post by Confusion »

nyustern wrote: post #189

Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as “Info Tech,” and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC. Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is som…

If 30 out of a 100 students were cheating and annoyed at the anti-cheating measures, his rating would significantly drop. That alone would be a sufficient explanation and is reason to infer causation from correlation, as we humans do every day of our lives to make sense of what is happening. We constantly successfully defy Hume.

You are not accounting for the fact that his ratings dropped, which implies previous classes did not have the kind of experiences you described and rated him low because of it.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#270

Post by sorbus »

lyudmil wrote: post #255
sorbus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't lose money, he gets a smaller raise.

Getting a raise less than the rate of inflation is losing money. His purchasing power declined.

The article does not make the claim that his raise was lower than the rate of inflation. If it was, then yes, it was effectively losing money.
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