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My students cheated... a lot

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Re: My students cheated... a lot

#101

Post by PheonixPharts »

> There were 100+ students in the class

> I was suffering technical difficulties while giving online lectures.

> It was extremely demoralizing to teach to a class that was blatantly cheating the entire time.

How demoralizing do you think it is to be paying a fair bit of money (or more likely taking on a fair bit of debt) to be just 1 of 100+ students in a poorly functioning online class?

To be clear, I'm not blaming the teacher here but the system has continually failed students. It's become a stupid game that you pay a lot to play because you have to. When I was younger I used to very anti-cheating, but I realized with time that was a foolish principle to hold on to. The game is rigged and there is no shame it taking short cuts. The university is trying to exploit you the student so why would you not return the favor and seek to exploit the system whenever you can?

Consider the counter position: what would an incredibly passionate, engaged and hardworking student get from this situation? This experience for that type of student is scarcely better than just teaching yourself from a text book and free online lectures (in fact, all of the material for this class is free online)... only you don't get a degree doing that.

My only critique of the teacher here is not having a enough empathy for these students and spending far more energy trying to catch cheaters than address the fact that these students have gotten a raw deal. Ignore the cheaters and spend those extra hours chatting one-on-one with the students that actually give a shit (if there are any left).

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#102

Post by honkler »

quantified wrote: post #99
honkler wrote: post #86

huh. i am a proud cheater. the entire chain of command, from local bureacrat to the chief of fed, and all company execs are cheaters. so why not me? I'd be a fool if i didnt trick the system.

We'll always have parasites in the system, it's got enough wealth in it to withstand a few. Thankfully in the systems most of us interact within. Which country are you in?

> it's got enough wealth in it to withstand a few

For how long? I assume you're in the west. Look around and tell me – how long?

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#104

Post by [deleted] »

aledalgrande wrote: post #66

Order 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.

[deleted]

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#105

Post by honkler »

quantified wrote: post #99
honkler wrote: post #86

huh. i am a proud cheater. the entire chain of command, from local bureacrat to the chief of fed, and all company execs are cheaters. so why not me? I'd be a fool if i didnt trick the system.

We'll always have parasites in the system, it's got enough wealth in it to withstand a few. Thankfully in the systems most of us interact within. Which country are you in?

the only way to deal with parasites is to parasite them.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#106

Post by LAC-Tech »

willcipriano wrote: post #77
LAC-Tech wrote: post #58

This is a widespread problem. The inevitable outcome is that university education loses more and more prestige. Maybe this is the way it has to be. Self-taught people with impressive portfolios start becoming more and more attractive while well-qualified people become less and less attractive - or even suspect.

Since a plurality of the population has higher education degrees and since that segment of society enjoys greater respect and privilege, I'd wager that instead those with higher education will use their positions and voting power towards the passage of laws and regulations to keep the self taught out of the workplace. You can see the start of that here sometimes. It is sometimes suggested programmers become like "rea…

I think there's going to be an element of this, but how pervasive will it be?

A plurality of that plurality has a higher education degree from an institution that isn't world famous - including myself. I don't feel at all threatened by self taught people, honestly I was not a great student and consider myself partially self taught anyway.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#107

Post by makeitdouble »

jmull wrote: post #64

I 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” a…

> You’re paying so much money for these courses

I think that’s the central point.

- It’s not _their_ money, it’s their parents’ either “hard earned” money, but they’re too inexperienced to understand its meaning, or “not so hard earned” money and they’re just going through it like their parents do.

- the goal is also money on the other end of the pipe. The statistics that get repeated is how much more you earn with a college degree vs without one. There’s no catchy clickbait title about how _learning more_ makes your life better. It only makes sense for them to go for the fastest route to having a degree, if possession is the only thing that has been pitched to them.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#108

Post by hinkley »

jmull wrote: post #64

I 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” a…

I can say from the other side of this that I was employed in the industry while I was still in school, and so by the time I was a junior I was becoming an Informed Consumer, and let me tell you, the realm in which professors are expert is quite a bit narrower than they would have you believe. That knowledge got worse over time, my distrust grew, and it made it quite challenging to finish my degree.

If we want to students to behave this way, we're going to have to change how professors behave too. Mentorship and teaching are two different things, and what you're describing sounds more like the relation one seeks in a mentor, not a teacher.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#109

Post by gnicholas »

What would you tell your child to do if he/she were in this class, and were aware of the massive cheating happening in the chat?

Should the student report the cheating to the professor? Assuming there was a curve in the class, how do you deal with the "but everyone else is doing it" argument with regard to benefiting from the cheating (even passively, by seeing the questions/answers posted)?

I have wondered about similar issues involving ADHD meds, which seem widespread as well.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#110

Post by bjt2n3904 »

This was a completely gripping read. The teacher sounds absolutely incredible, and I would undoubtedly take a class from them. The optional side quest assignments is an interesting strategy.

But at the same time... My goodness. Plagerizing the plagerism essay? That's so brazen, I'm not sure I could give a student a second chance after that. Like... You've got to learn a hard lesson at some point. The sooner the better.

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