My students cheated... a lot • Hacker News Board

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#911

Post by nonrandomstring » Sun, May 29, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

styren wrote: post #876

nonrandomstring wrote: post #661

This thread, more than any I have read on Hacker News shows the greatest variation of opinion, and the least ability for us to have common agreement upon terms, normative behaviours, standards of judgement or goals. Sadly, education really is a mess. I think it reflects the schisms within wider society. After 30 years in and out of "academia" I am exasperated and despondent at the state of affairs and what I consider…

I've personally never witnessed any cheating, heard any friends or students even allude to doing so, I never cheated myself and I can't even comprehend how you would cheat at most of the coursework I did in uni in Sweden. Sure you could copy your friends code, but you still had to present it to a TA who would certainly get suspicious if you couldn't answer to what you had written. Ditto for exams and essays/reports.…

> I've personally never witnessed any cheating, heard any friends or students even allude to doing so, I never cheated myself and I can't even comprehend how you would cheat at most of the coursework I did in uni in Sweden.

For most of my life I would've been frightened to even say so, or risk accusations of being a "swot", "teachers pet" or as the Aussies call it, "a tall poppy".

But the attitude that it's "normal" to cheat is common within US/UK/AUS culture now. Truth is I always considered cheating beneath me and was simply _WAY_ ahead of every class I ever took - but you can't say that in "polite" US/UK culture - one cannot be too pious and clean-cut, one must seem little bit like "everybody else" - even if everybody else is not really like that, if that makes sense.

So actually I've taught at universities in Sweden (Stockholm) and Finland (Helsinki) and notice similar attitudes to those you say. But those cultures aren't without dirty hands either. Here's the weird thing: Tall Poppy Syndrome is culturally closest to Jante Law [1], a Scandinavian ethos of "Don't think you're better than anyone else" which is precisely the corrosive culture that means people cheat because everybody else is cheating and causes a downward spiral or race to the bottom.

       "When you've done your very best
        When things turn out unpleasant 
        When the best of men take bribes
        Isn't it the fool who doesn't?"
   -- Human League 1978

It wasn't until I became a professor that I even knew this dynamic existed, but now I see it everywhere, not just in school.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#912

Post by erikerikson » Sun, May 29, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

When you cheat in school...

...you cheat yourself out of an education - the opportunity to learn from and join a community of true experts.

...you cheat the society in which you live that created and supported you then provided you an educational opportunity.

...it's a pretty big middle finger to every student who didn't get the spot you did.

Probably the solution is to avoid the gatekeeping role degrees have played. Perhaps even to recognize and harness the positive aspects of the collaborative and knowledge sharing behaviors that can also serve you and the society you live in.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#913

Post by bckr » Sun, May 29, 2022, 6:57 PM UTC

blintz wrote: post #799

Discussion forums like Piazza can really help with stuff like this. By allowing students to communicate with each other in public, with TAs/instructors explicitly present answering questions, the need to get a group chat going diminishes and you avoid the temptation to cheat. As an aside, I will say, weekly quizzes are one of the lowest-reward types of homework. They are mainly favored by instructors because they are…

> weekly quizzes are one of the lowest-reward types of homework

I loved having weekly quizzes because they forced me to study at a regular pace.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#914

Post by thih9 » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

I don't like how the teacher created an anonymous account and started listening to students' conversations. That on its own is creepy at best and lacking academic integrity at worst.

Then he muted it for a couple of months and resumed after accidentally discovering a violation. Then didn't act immediately but waited and observed more violations.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#915

Post by lamontcg » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

Feels like we're seeing this all over society. From the way executives in businesses and politicians act all the way down to the way people drive. And everyone has a blizzard of excuses for why they constantly look to cut corners.

And these are the kids that are supposedly so much better than the old boomers and they're cheating like it is a reflex.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#916

Post by cbsmith » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #525

Threads like these are always frustrating, because as usual people (programmers in this case) freely air their opinions on how schools are broken with phrases like “we need to fix the system”. As someone who studied pedagogy for years and quit due to an immense frustration with exactly this — how broken the system is — I would encourage you to entertain the thought that maybe, you as a person who is almost in all cas…

> These are very hard questions, and it’s frustrating to read the phrase “we need to fix the system” because yes, obviously we do, but agreeing that things are bad isn’t the hard part, and probably input from people who have never worked in the field is of pretty limited value in how to resolve the hard part, and will not do much more than annoy teachers even more.

It's kind of hard to believe this needs to be said, because it is so obviously correct.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#917

Post by vehementi » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #380

> For example, in this course I ran short multiple choice quizzes each week. Students could take the quiz as many times as they wanted during the week. The quiz questions changed each time (pulled randomly from a pool), and students always got their most recent quiz grade. The quizzes were low stakes. I also told students that taking the quizzes would help them study for the midterms, which would contain questions fr…

Correct, that is not the cheating OP is talking about. Take another read.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#918

Post by vehementi » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

Ameo wrote: post #143

This post really turned my stomach, but not because of the cheating. Yeah, obviously the cheating is wrong and students who cheated should be held accountable according to university policy. Yeah, it's nice that the professor was able to get something of a "happy ending" for at least some of the students at the end. But the whole meat of this enormous post is the professor having a massive power trip while toying aro…

Nah the students are the sadistic ones who coudl have ended it at any point by saying "let's all stop cheating".

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#919

Post by strawhatguy » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #525

Threads like these are always frustrating, because as usual people (programmers in this case) freely air their opinions on how schools are broken with phrases like “we need to fix the system”. As someone who studied pedagogy for years and quit due to an immense frustration with exactly this — how broken the system is — I would encourage you to entertain the thought that maybe, you as a person who is almost in all cas…

That last paragraph shows the real issue: that schooling is government controlled and provided.

The only people that ought to be involved are the teachers (and other school employees) the students (and their parents) of that school.

The fact the it might take ‘5 election cycles’ to see a reform through, is a disservice to the students, and often frustrating for the teachers as well.

If government does it, that literally opens the door for everyone else to be involved, muddying otherwise clear waters.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#920

Post by vehementi » Sun, May 29, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #264

As someone who “cheated” - it was a requirement to pass classes. “Professors” (researchers and post-docs who hated lecturing) were in a constant arms race against the students. We were assigned problems routinely that we would ask the professor to solve in class - they could not do it. They would fail it themselves. This happened in multiple subjects. Many classes also had students not showing up if it was clear that…

Nah this is a situation like someone else pointed out where you were an underpeformer and surrounded yourself with other underperformers/cheaters, and then assumed everyone else was like you, but in actuality you were in the minority.