I feel so bad for whoever invited him into the chat. That must have been mortifying
That's the best part, the group invite was just posted in the official class chat. Those are some braindead cheaters.
My students cheated... a lot
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Re: My students cheated... a lot
#62> Aside from all the ways that I can be empathetic, there was a lot of evidence in the chat that students were blowing off the course and making a mockery of the whole thing. But, the brash language in the chat could also be covering up difficult issues students were facing in their lives that were preventing them from committing to their studies. This author really does not want to confront some plain truths about h…
> this article is really a character study about the author, and not at all about cheating Yeah exactly. Extreme cop energy in the writing those scripts and publicly documenting so much of the chat text verbatim. I started out sympathetic to the author, and still am abstractly, that's a hard spot for a teacher to be in. But it started to feel like the author expected me to find it... titillating? attractively transgr…
> I don't think the impulse to invest so much time and technique in this "investigation" should be encouraged
It resulted in a large amount of the students finally engaging with the material and ultimately caring about the course, though. I don't believe it is healthy to expect that of a professor, but it seemed to work out here.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#63Not 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…
No, a subgroup of students surround themselves with cheaters and believe everyone else is cheating. There are plenty of students who are quite satisfied learning the subject matter and receiving a grade for their performance. They just aren't part of the study/social groups that devolve into cheating.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#64I honestly don’t get widespread cheating like this…
You’re paying so much money for these courses — probably a ridiculous amount, so much you may never recoup — … so at least get everything out of it you can. Otherwise, why sign up in the first place?
Let me tell you: essentially no one cares what grade you got in your courses. (Sure, there are cases, but over time they quickly attenuate from “sometimes” to “never” as time passes.) You might as well strive, get the most you can out of the course, and let the grade fall where it may.
Here’s an idea: if you’re cool with cheating, after school is over, just lie when anyone asks your gpa. You can get all the A’s, in one single, easy, low-risk cheat. Many won’t check and there’s little consequence for those that do (maybe you wasted some time at a job interview). This “frees” you to just do the best you can when you’re actually taking the courses — to get the most out of them you can — no risk, all gain.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#65I 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.
> (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind.
If college degrees themselves held no real value, and the purpose of a college education in terms of career was to prepare you for a comprehensive exam, I think you'd see radically different behavior. Grades would no longer matter, or even exist, so cheating your way through a class would seem pointless.
Creating a comprehensive exam that meaningfully tests a college degree's worth of education seems like it'd be near impossible though.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#66Order of importance you get told at school: grades, experience, network. Order of importance you realize is out there in life: network, experience, grades.
I have a masters and never have I been asked for it for work (either for credentials or because I actually needed the advanced topics in it). Grades never ever been on the table.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#67Quite 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…
Another thing is that college is voluntary You voluntarily agree to abide by the academic integrity rules. If you don't want to do that, you can voluntarily go to a different institution with different rules and standards. The goal of the place is learning not pointscoring and cheating undermines that.
Yea but the pointscoring is literally all that matters, if you change the incentives you’ll see the behavior change with it.
If you take away the aspect of college as “a place to get a credential” you’ll see the cheating stop. Instead for those credentials just hold exams like the AP, ACT, SAT, RHCSE, or the 7 Actuarial exams. No college required. Whatever you do to pass them is fine.
Then make college totally ungraded except as a mechanism for student feedback. Have tracks for people that just want the credentials (just like the APs) that terminate at the exams. All other courses are just for people who are genuinely interested and confer no status or praise.
Now the incentives are aligned. Outside of the testing areas there is literally zero reason for anyone to cheat, and non-credential classes have to actually be interring, engaging, and useful to students for anyone to take them.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#68Re: My students cheated... a lot
#69I'm not really a fan of how the author handled the situation, but it is clear they care about their students and want them to learn. But when the second semester begins and the author silently joins the new groupchat... I feel like that is a lack of integrity.
He was invited.
Re: My students cheated... a lot
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Tough to do when you’re sharing a curve with a bunch of cheaters Are curves still that common these days? In my time at university, the only classes that got curved were a couple math classes that were curved in the students' favor.
Cheating still a fairness issue even if the curve is "in your favor". The higher the scores of your classmates, the lower your post-curve score will be.