141–150 of 1001 posts
Exams and cheating are just parts of the same problem. It's unfortunate that academia can't wrap its mind around this and design better learning experiences for students and teachers.
Is the system perfect? Obviously not. Are the rules of the game laid out in advance? Yes. Do you agree to them as a student? Yes. Is there a clear path to success on your own merits, through your own effort. Yes.
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 feel like people who say that "it's so much money, so try and get something out of it" are people who have never had the experience of being a "bad student" and have an immense passion for learning. I really can't say the same. I'm currently in undergrad for electrical engineering, and I do not give a single fuck about the classes I'm in. I have no passion for electrical engineering - I don't wake up excited to mak…
But the whole meat of this enormous post is the professor having a massive power trip while toying around with the students, reading every message they post without them knowing.
He knew this cheating was happening pretty early on. He was writing R scripts to cross-reference all the group chat participants to the individuals involved. He wrote up all those reports and then still goes ahead with the second midterm. He obviously took pleasure in examining how they were acting; he has dozens and dozens of individual chat messages pasted into that post complete with his snarky little comments about them:
> “nah i aint cheat i took that exam at 7 and did it alone still failed” (hmmm, let me cross reference this claim with your texts in the chat at 7…)
> “if i find out who snitched we got a problem fr” (I had to report this student to judicial affairs)
There are more and more. The professor is clearly relishing each of these little pieces of evidence, filling out all of those forms, and watching the students squirm and panic as he tells them he knows they're cheating:
> There was no way I was going to keep a straight face, plus I wanted to see what happened on the chat, so I video muted myself (bad internet connection day).
It's borderline sadistic. He could have ended the whole debacle at any point, be he chose to spend dozens of hours poring over this chat and examining the students' reactions to what he was doing. Especially given the conclusion where he put in options for all or most of the students who cheated to redeem themselves - at least partially.
The only constructive piece of this entire post is the end where for the second asynchronous version of the course, he adjusts its design and content to be more engaging and conducive to online learning. The rest is just an obsessive power trip.
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 feel like people who say that "it's so much money, so try and get something out of it" are people who have never had the experience of being a "bad student" and have an immense passion for learning. I really can't say the same. I'm currently in undergrad for electrical engineering, and I do not give a single fuck about the classes I'm in. I have no passion for electrical engineering - I don't wake up excited to mak…
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…
The reason I think a lot of people cheat is because they just don't appreciate the value of a good education, they don't even know what they really want to do with their lives, they don't know the value of money, and are just going because their parents just want them to. I went through an unconventional learning path - I didn't think I was ready for post-secondary straight out of highschool, so I worked first. After…
To someone who values college as almost exclusively for its educational value, maybe that doesn't matter. But to many, especially HR, the degree is valuable for its signaling capability and watering that down has real and lasting consequences.
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 sim…
Lots (probably most) of people are in college for the credentials. Most of the rest are there because they feel they are supposed to be there. They do the work required for the credentials. Most of what is taught in college has little value or applicability and is quickly forgotten. Cheating is often rational.
Bryan Caplan once gave an example I found memorable and persuasive. For most university courses, even at elite colleges, you could just show up and attend the course without enrolling. Not like "auditing" the course as a student, but just as someone who lives nearby, you could walk into the class and sit and listen. Nobody is checking IDs, nobody would notice, and, if they did, the professor would, more than likely, be willing to let you sit in on the course provided you asked nicely and didn't cause problems.
Why aren't college courses overloaded with freeloaders? Cause what they actually teach isn't that valuable.
If you were to sit somewhere and hand out free bottles of Gatorade you would quickly run out of Gatorade. Many people would take you up on that. Conversely, colleges effectively hand out free lectures (since they don't control who attends) and approximately nobody takes them up on that. This makes me think that the average value of a college lecture is less than a bottle of Gatorade.
With this perspective on the value of college the issue of cheating is reframed as a question "Why would people skip the boring useless work and more easily obtain the valuable credential they are seeking?"
However, I think students having an obligation to report cheating to the university is ridiculous. Find the cheaters yourself, or give me a bonus to do it for you.
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 feel like people who say that "it's so much money, so try and get something out of it" are people who have never had the experience of being a "bad student" and have an immense passion for learning. I really can't say the same. I'm currently in undergrad for electrical engineering, and I do not give a single fuck about the classes I'm in. I have no passion for electrical engineering - I don't wake up excited to mak…
I am sad for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. But there are endless ways to make money, pick something you actually like.
I've counseled many kids: Draw two circles, one around what you like, the other around what makes money. Do the things in the intersection.
> 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 best teachers I had in university were very tough and very strict. They taught me to study harder. They taught me how to learn difficult material. They taught me to understand things at a deep level. They would give 10 minute pop quizzes designed to fail you if you did not know the material (no time to even look up an answer or pass to a friend) ahead of time.
Fail the cheaters. It's for everyone's own good. No one grows up if you never make them.