Against Cop Shit • Hacker News Board

Re: Against Cop Shit

#11

Post by advisedwang » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

ses1984 wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I'm against plagiarism detection tech.

Plagiarism detection is only needed because we are using completion/grading of work to determine whether students graduate, GPAs etc. The article is arguing that we shouldn't be so dependent on the "grade of homework" metric at all, so plagiarism should be less impactful and less incentivized.

Re: Against Cop Shit

#12

Post by HarryHirsch » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

What do you do with people who cannot operate in an unstructured environment because their schooling has been completely authoritarian? It's a tough problem.

You try to move away from worksheets and attendance taking because it's a university, students oftentimes have family or work responsibilities, so you hand out problems and administer exams, and it completely backfires. Up to now, everything was rigidly structured, now it's missing, and the kids are floundering.

You read the instructor reviews, it's like the prisoners rating the prison guards. Apparently I'm not a good prison guard because I set problems instead of handing out worksheets. There are no easy solutions.

Re: Against Cop Shit

#13

Post by WalterSear » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

lasdfas wrote: post #9

ilikehurdles wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring a plagiarism detection feature is a symptom of a shitty instructor, syllabus, and/or academic institution.

How does a good instructor, syllabus, and/or academic institution not need this? I went to an Ivy League school with hopefully above average teachers and saw a lot of plagiarism.

The problems are societal in nature. I don't beleive either the parent commentor or original author fully appreciate this.

Adversarial teaching environments are a symptom, not the problem. And the fundamental issues don't have a clear solution, though it is clear that the situation is far from optimal.

Re: Against Cop Shit

#14

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

Haha I just vouched it back from the grave... [EDIT:]... and now it's [flagged] again.

I suspect flaggers may not have actually read TFA. It was published in February, so it doesn't specifically refer to recent public demonstrations. It's pretty clear which side the author would take...

Re: Against Cop Shit

#15

Post by notkaiho » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

lasdfas wrote: post #9

ilikehurdles wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring a plagiarism detection feature is a symptom of a shitty instructor, syllabus, and/or academic institution.

How does a good instructor, syllabus, and/or academic institution not need this? I went to an Ivy League school with hopefully above average teachers and saw a lot of plagiarism.

They could have set work that is difficult to lift word for word, or examine in any number of ways that do not allow googling

Re: Against Cop Shit

#16

Post by mjw1007 » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

lasdfas wrote: post #9

ilikehurdles wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring a plagiarism detection feature is a symptom of a shitty instructor, syllabus, and/or academic institution.

How does a good instructor, syllabus, and/or academic institution not need this? I went to an Ivy League school with hopefully above average teachers and saw a lot of plagiarism.

In principle, you remove the incentive for plagiarism by making the students' reward for their work be what they learn as a result, rather than some kind of certificate.

Re: Against Cop Shit

#17

Post by elil17 » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

ses1984 wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I'm against plagiarism detection tech.

In one class, in order to submit an assignment, we had to accept an agreement that gave the plagiarism detection company the copyright to the essays we had written. I’m sure there is an okay way to do plagiarism detection but I think many companies do it in ways that don’t respect the rights of students.

Re: Against Cop Shit

#18

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Against Cop Shit

#19

Post by bb123 » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

> While I was getting my hair cut yesterday, my stylist told me about her daughter’s math teacher, who is currently punishing her daughter for falling behind on work due to a broken arm by assigning her upwards of fifteen pages of homework a night. The child is seven

This seems insane to me - how could an educator think this is a good thing to do to a 7 year old? There is more risk of putting them off studying and academics for life than solving their maths problem. I think as a parent I would flat out refuse to let my child do that, and if the teacher had an issue they'd have to take it up with me.

Re: Against Cop Shit

#20

Post by jdm2212 » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

This is the kind of stuff you can believe in if you haven't been a student at a bad public school. There are students who for the sake of their classmates (to say nothing of the teachers' sanity) absolutely have to be handled with "cop shit" because they won't respond to anything else and will disrupt not only their own class, but every nearby class too.