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My students cheated... a lot

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Re: My students cheated... a lot

#11

Post by cgriswald »

realitysballs wrote: post #4

I hate to be a cynic here but I feel like education should be engineered in a manner that either : (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind. (B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest.

There are two problems with (B). The first is that however you disincentivize it at the local level, the greater society incentivizes it by pairing earning a degree (as opposed to gaining knowledge) with greater earnings. The second is that people will still get away with cheating.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#12

Post by colechristensen »

realitysballs wrote: post #4

I hate to be a cynic here but I feel like education should be engineered in a manner that either : (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind. (B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest.

Universities shouldn’t be credential factories.

Get rid of grading and nobody cheats.

Have a separate entity do the verification or make graduation more like PhD defense.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#13

Post by bradleyjg »

Scramblejams wrote: post #9
necovek wrote: post #3

Quite a read, indeed. As a student witnessing the amount of cheating going on, I was always surprised about the noise raised by teachers on it: I always felt that my score was my own, and didn't care about comparing against others. Perhaps that's why I didn't care? Another thing is that college is voluntary, and everyone takes the courses for some perceived gain. If it's just a diploma with high GPA, I let them be. T…

I always felt that my score was my own, and didn't care about comparing against others. Tough to do when you’re sharing a curve with a bunch of cheaters, and the grades matter for your future. I know in the program I attended I was up against a fair few who were taking cognition enhancing drugs, others who had exam copies from prior years to help them prep, and a lot of people who copied each others’ homework. It was…

grades matter for your future

Here’s the real problem. Grad programs and/or employers are cheating—-they aren’t doing their own homework.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#15

Post by mccorrinall »

dleslie wrote: post #10

This is part of why academic credentials have both lost their intrinsic value and become mandatory for all candidates. While it may seem contradictory at first, the appearance of low ability amongst credentialed candidates also lowers the perceived value of the non-credentialed; fore if the credentialed are so lacking in ability, then those unable to achieve even such a low bar must be worse, yes? Of course, this isn…

I don’t know, a multiple choice quiz shouldn’t be used for grading students at all? My university asks the students to make projects in groups which are different from one another. One team gets to write a tictactoe game in c with ncurses library, one team gets to write connect four with another library and has to implement a given Interface, etc pp.

Honestly, these kind of multiple choice tests just suck, and OP shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t take this stuff serious.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#16

Post by pugets »

nr2x wrote: post #5

Exams are the mark of a lazy instructor who doesn’t want to design appropriately challenging assignments, as the author says: “I hadn’t fully prepped the class”.

What appropriately challenging cheat-proof calculus assignment could you give to a classroom of 100 undergrads?

As soon as those questions leave the classroom, they will be passed around in group chats. That’s why exams remain relevant. If a student averages 95% on their assignments, but shows up to the exam and can’t solve ∫sin x dx like they had supposedly done a hundred times on their own, then they’re probably cheating.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#17

Post by adolph »

Scramblejams wrote: post #9
necovek wrote: post #3

Quite a read, indeed. As a student witnessing the amount of cheating going on, I was always surprised about the noise raised by teachers on it: I always felt that my score was my own, and didn't care about comparing against others. Perhaps that's why I didn't care? Another thing is that college is voluntary, and everyone takes the courses for some perceived gain. If it's just a diploma with high GPA, I let them be. T…

I always felt that my score was my own, and didn't care about comparing against others. Tough to do when you’re sharing a curve with a bunch of cheaters, and the grades matter for your future. I know in the program I attended I was up against a fair few who were taking cognition enhancing drugs, others who had exam copies from prior years to help them prep, and a lot of people who copied each others’ homework. It was…

“and the grades matter for your future”

There’s the key problem.

A vitality curve is a performance management practice that calls for individuals to be ranked or rated against their coworkers. It is also called stack ranking, forced ranking, and rank and yank. Pioneered by GE's Jack Welch in the 1980s, it has remained controversial. Numerous companies practice it, but mostly covertly to avoid direct criticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#18

Post by t-3 »

nr2x wrote: post #6
realitysballs wrote: post #4

I hate to be a cynic here but I feel like education should be engineered in a manner that either : (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind. (B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest.

(C) don’t use exams, period.

Exams should be fine as a condition of entry, advancing grade rank, or graduating, but teachers need to be spending the majority of their working time teaching, not ranking and scoring and having to deal with all the overhead of grading. Evaluating whether or not a student has bothered to learn can wait until they attempt to claim a diploma or certification.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#19

Post by nso95 »

mccorrinall wrote: post #15
dleslie wrote: post #10

This is part of why academic credentials have both lost their intrinsic value and become mandatory for all candidates. While it may seem contradictory at first, the appearance of low ability amongst credentialed candidates also lowers the perceived value of the non-credentialed; fore if the credentialed are so lacking in ability, then those unable to achieve even such a low bar must be worse, yes? Of course, this isn…

I don’t know, a multiple choice quiz shouldn’t be used for grading students at all? My university asks the students to make projects in groups which are different from one another. One team gets to write a tictactoe game in c with ncurses library, one team gets to write connect four with another library and has to implement a given Interface, etc pp. Honestly, these kind of multiple choice tests just suck, and OP sho…

But then 1 person ends up doing most of the work on the team

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#20

Post by readthenotes1 »

voidfunc wrote: post #7

Not surprised. Just about everyone performs some amount or cheating in high school and college. Really if anything these places are teaching you not to get caught. To be honest I think academic integrity policies are stupid. Colleges administrators are living in a pretend world that doesn’t exist where they think the kids are there because they care and dont just want the piece of paper they are paying 200K for so th…

Do you mean that you're incredibly past careing about arbitrary constraints on someone's ability to solve a problem?

If there is a policeman, the onus of enforcement lies on the policeman. The teacher plays this role by giving a grade. Any teacher that allows cheating is encouraging it.

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