201–210 of 1001 posts
In oral exams, it's obvious whether you know the material or not.
It may appear more time-consuming, but considering there is no need to grade or worry about cheating, you may come out ahead.
I taught two courses to undergrad CS students at Stanford. I think about half of students cheated on problem sets and tests. The answers were all way too uniform and done without correction. In the first course, there was a student who definitely didn’t cheat and was objectively horrible at all tasks assigned, consuming a frustratingly large portion of my grading time. This student ended up with a massively impressiv…
Give a quiz that can be completed in your own time over the course of a week. That sounds more like an assignment to me. So... the cheating was violating the rule that it can't be done cooperatively? If I'm cheating by asking other students about an assignment then I think I cheated on everything.
And, of course, I did not. My answers to assignments were my own, but, often, I collaborated with other students to understand the questions, or to develop an idea of how to approach finding the solutions, or to clarify issues that were unclear.
And, always, to make sure I got the right answer. Because if I didn't, it meant that I did not understand something and I needed to go back over the material to work out what that was. Any other approach would have rendered school valueless.
This is the normal process of education. You can tell that I did not cheat because my work and my answers were unique. If I submitted an image of someone else's work, that would be obvious.
Ah, but wait! I think I see. If the answers are multiple choice, that doesn't work.
But why are they multiple choice? To make it easier and cheaper for the school. Your inflation of the profit margin on my education makes me a cheater because you can't tell if I did the work myself? That sounds about right.
I think academic integrity is eroded more by the profit motive than by the Jesuitical definition of cheating in the article.
Even though I went to what are considered some the best schools, the greatest insult to academic integrity was always the faculty, because most of them didn't know the subject they were teaching, faked it, and didn't care.
And when I see many of the students who didn't cheat coming out of school not knowing shit from Shinola, I have to wonder why it matters? You get out what you put in, so who cares if people violate an arcane rule that says, "this, this here is an assignment; but that over there, that thing that looks identical to this in every way, that's a quiz, so don't talk to your friends about it or we'll nip your promising young academic career in the bud. Understand?"
The only lesson here is that you need to cheat better.
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…
Employers are setting GPA cutoffs and checking transcripts for some of the competitive jobs for fresh grads and interns. Not unusual to see a hard GPA cutoff of 3.7, and the employer wants a copy of your transcript sent directly from the university. As always, when an arbitrary metric becomes a goal, it will be gamed. Especially with the path dependency nowadays where your first job sets the course of your early care…
Three months after starting the job, I got an email from HR asking all new grad hires to send in their transcripts which I conveniently "forgot" to do. Never heard from them ever again after ignoring that first email.
My feeling here is that these are just vanity metrics that companies like to parade around to signal how "prestigious" their employees & hiring practices are.
We must assume they don't care about learning, so if we want to cram some knowledge into them anyway, hit them the only place they apparently care about: their transcript. Either they'll shape up or be rightfully denied the (ever more scant) honor of a degree. The heroics of the author here cannot be scaled, and we shouldn't be asking anyone to go to that extent. Just fail the bastards. You're only recording what's already true.
I've read the entire article. The cheating was rampant. This part, however, jumped out at me: > At my most mystified, I proceeded to release a class announcement warning students not to plagiarize the academic integrity assignment. To cheat on the very assignment that is giving you a second chance is ... stupid and/or brazen and/or pitiful. So, why warn the students again? This was their second chance, right? I'm ope…
I am curious though what the frame of reference is for someone who cheats on the assignment where they promise not to cheat.
Perhaps there are people who make it through life with a sense of learned helplessness or even possibly a cultural mandate - basically, something that represents a higher authority to that person than the Western standard of justice, ethics and fairness.
I'm fully in favor of true justice, shared ethics and fair and compassionate treatment - that's a conversation for another time.
If that's not reality for that person, then to have a teacher attempt to engage with them seems more likely to have an impact on their success in a Western society. I'd guess that failing them and possibly expelling them would not.
I'm curious what you think?
It was eye-opening. I had a miserable pandemic, juggling childcare and online school for my kids with my own job. But this colleague had gotten interested in CS somewhat late in college and had only had a few in-person CS classes before the switch to online. In the colleague’s words, “quality declined a lot then.”
There’s a new cohort of college students who’ve been given a terrible education, and have a lot of loans to pay off. I don’t condone the cheating in TFA, but the professor seems to have a formalist rigidity to academic honesty while teaching a course online in a way that’s almost designed for cheating. And rather than admonishing students when he became aware of what was happening he spent time (days? weeks?) analyzing the chat while the behavior continued.
I empathize a lot with students who’ve just been through a terrible educational experience. The effort this prof has put into plagiarism detection could arguably have been better spent on improving course materials and grading mechanisms to render cheating rare/ineffectual.
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…
Turns out 90% of the shit I learned in college was a waste and GPA matters quite a bit.
There are still jobs that's ask my GPA 10 years in. And your first job determines your second one, and I imagine I lost out on somewhere between 70-250k in compensation at least from having a bad GPA.
Earlier 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…
Curves typically ignore outliers (because otherwise they would be useless, there’s always that one kid) so unless everyone except you is cheating you’re usually fine. There are two cases, usually, where curves make sense. * When the professor doesn’t actually know how hard the exam is because it’s a new test. And since people save tests that’s most classes. * When the professor is actually trying to find that one kid…
There's a big range between "that one kid" and "everyone". In some of my courses it'd be easy to believe 15% were cheating in some way. Another comment in this thread put the share at 50%. How's a curve going to deal with that?
I've read the entire article. The cheating was rampant. This part, however, jumped out at me: > At my most mystified, I proceeded to release a class announcement warning students not to plagiarize the academic integrity assignment. To cheat on the very assignment that is giving you a second chance is ... stupid and/or brazen and/or pitiful. So, why warn the students again? This was their second chance, right? I'm ope…
You're right. I am curious though what the frame of reference is for someone who cheats on the assignment where they promise not to cheat . Perhaps there are people who make it through life with a sense of learned helplessness or even possibly a cultural mandate - basically, something that represents a higher authority to that person than the Western standard of justice, ethics and fairness. I'm fully in favor of tru…
An excellent point.