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Why I will never pursue cheating again

behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com

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Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#191

Post by aik »

From the post: "My role is to educate and teach, not to enforce honest behavior. This is a university, not a kindergarten."

In my opinion this is one of the primary issues with a lot of teachers: I don't believe a teacher's job is specifically to narrowly teach the subject matter at hand, but more broadly teach the student whatever it takes to assist the student in succeeding in life, and especially within their given field. This would include cheating. Ignoring cheaters is contrary to this purpose.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#192

Post by commanda »

I worked for 5 semesters as an undergrad teaching assistant in the CS department of my university. We had generally 1 to 2 cases of cheating per semester in classes of up to 150 students and ~10 assignments. We identified them using Moss[1] which we ran over all submitted assignments. This plagiarism rate now pales in comparison to the rate the OP has seen.

I wonder why there's such a huge gap between my experience and this professor's; undergrad vs. graduate school? CS vs. business school? Moss vs. Turnitin? Arizona vs. New York?

1. http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#193

Post by jseliger »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #19

While there's much to be said in favor of more creative assignments that aren't minor variants of last year's assignments, the author has drawn the wrong conclusion from what happened. 22 cheats out of 108 is big - and the real proportion may have been even higher, given that it seemed like he caught only either blatant cheats or conscience-stricken/less brazen cheats (the latter category from when he acted people to…

"However, all this wasted time, and all this aggravation, wouldn't be necessary if all the other professors were doing it too."

This is a classic problem in economics: what to do if an entire group of people would be better off doing something, but you doing it alone makes you worse off? In his case, working on cheating on his own results in lower evals and a more contentious class environment. The incentive, as he points out, is not to bother.

I wrote about incentives in a longish post about grade inflation (http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-in...) that comes to a similar conclusion: instructors are rewarded more for good evals than they are for grading harshly (or, for that matter, pursuing cheating). So we get situations like the one described in this post.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#194

Post by ZachPruckowski »

stonemetal wrote: post #100
brudgers wrote: post #32

Once the author decides that the academic standard allows copying and pasting, it ceases to become cheating - and he has joined those for whom the term "academic honesty" has lost all meaning. Seriously, when 44 hours over the course of a semester is too much work to uphold a minimum standard, the issue is not confined to students and the author has no moral high ground because they have abandoned the tough part of t…

What I don't get is why he spent all that time on it. Catch someone cheating turn them in, no need for the in office histrionics, or long winded lectures about how to site sources.

Because the cost of being wrong[1] or of leaving doubt of guilt could well be a lawsuit or administrative action. A student who gets expelled or suspended for cheating loses a lot of money and has a very, very serious black mark that'll follow them for years. This (a) is not something you want to inflict incorrectly[1], and (b) makes the unconfessed student desperate enough to lash out in a lot of ways.

[1] - If your method is 99.9% accurate, you've got a 50% chance of a false positive after 700 submissions, which for a 100 person class is a milestone you could hit in your second semester.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#195

Post by pak »

Panos wrote: post #149
jamesaguilar wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a different conclusion. There are several problems, but the biggest is his approach. Now, I'm not a teacher, and all those caveats. But in my imagination, my approach would be much less time-consuming. I cribbed this from my high school physics teacher. It involves little detective work and no long drawn out confessions. When cheating is detected, simply send a note to the student with the following: "I'm awar…

James, I did exactly what you suggested. Every single student came to protest. I believed that things would play out exactly as you are thinking. Unfortunately, they turned out very differently.

How about taking a harder line then? Make your warning at the start of the semester, and to everybody: any reasonable suspicion of cheating results in an immediate referral to the honor board, no protesting or second chances. The first assignment rolls around, a few people are caught cheating, and you spend X hours submitting their cases to the honor board. Let the honor board handle the adjucation of the matter, which is where it belongs, and wastes less of your time. It also lets the department know that they have a problem, since some of them are probably involved with the honor board.

Students hear that peers are getting sent straight to the honor board, and they fall in line. The next assignment that rolls around, almost surely less students will attempt to cheat. If you have to spend Y hours sending more students to the honor board, hopefully Y is less than X. But it sends a loud-and-clear, unmistakable message to the students that cheating is unacceptable. With any luck the students that actually take the class seriously will appreciate your candor on the matter.

I agree that allowing students to actually come in and argue their case to you is a waste of your time. You're right, that's not your job. Send it to the honor board and waste the time of the deans and the department heads, since that's their job. If you let students waste your time by giving them an extra strike before they're out, you can't be surprised when they try to take advantage of it. One strike and you're out tells students that it doesn't matter if ex post facto you think your best friend's grandma's death drove you to do it: cheating is never acceptable.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#196

Post by WorkInKarlsruhe »

It is interesting that so many people think that Panos should have taken a hard line. Panos seems to have had few options (and I applaud the approach he ultimately chose for the reasons he gave), but that is only if you constrain yourself to the current system, which is grade based. Removing the grades from the system is an option, but few consider it, and there is much evidence from the people that have stopped using grades that it nets great results. My PhD experience, since it inherently was not graded, was a data point for myself --- everyday was a day of glory, pursuing my passions; and I could dive deeper into what a professor said, or ignore other things that I wasn't yet ready to hear, without a second thought about earning a grade. I learned a ton, more than at any period of my earlier life (now I learn, as in gaining understanding, more per day than during my PhD), and I attended some "good" schools. Using grades has poor psychological side effects, one of which is to groom people for employment, as opposed to preparing them to start companies; another is to drive self consciousness and fear of mistakes (which are horrible side effects to have associated with learning); competitiveness; and focus on pleasing others to the extent of deceiving them. I think many people in their 30s or 40s realize what a waste of life those years of earning grades was (but won't admit it) --- now they probably use the skills gained from passing tests more than they use the knowledge that they accumulated.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#197

Post by Panos »

runningdogx wrote: post #181
Panos wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justin, I am the professor who wrote the article. The 44 hours is not a number to show how much extra I had to work. Believe me, a 14-hour day is a pretty common thing for me. Teaching is only part of my overall job (I also have to do research, supervise PhD students, review papers, serve on committees and many other things). The 44 hours figure is given just as a contrast to the actual time that I spent in class. I…

What about shifting to a teaching model where students review material and watch lectures (MIT OCW, Kahn, or even the professor's own recorded lectures) out of class, and do actual assignments (problem sets, essays) in class -- in an atmosphere that encourages working together so nobody feels "stuck" or gets stressed to the point where they feel like they have to cheat, while still preparing solutions separately? Tha…

I thought of that as well. With this approach you hit another structural problem: activities such as solving problems etc are considered appropriate only for "recitations" (i.e., done by TA's) and not for "lectures" (the part where the professor teaches).

Kind of stupid, I know. But it is really impossible to violate the mandate that my teaching should not be "wasted" on doing assignments in class etc.

And yes, when I tried it, I loved it. The teaching time becomes so much more interesting and stimulating. But I can only practice this a couple of times over the semester, as otherwise I will be seen as "wasting" my time in class.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#198

Post by delluminatus »

justin_vanw wrote: post #83

This professor is a huge part of the problem. He's a tenured professor saying "caring about cheating is counter productive", which to me says "I would rather have an easy life where I don't have to work hard than to protect the reputation of the institution I work for and ensure that students that graduate have learned something along the way". He complains he had to work almost 44 hours (2 hours * 22 cheaters) and r…

I'm a little late to the party, but as a Math major myself I wanted to say that I find your tone disappointing and, at the risk of being hypocritical, more than a little judgemental.

Discussion regarding your first point has already begun, so I shall focus on the latter half of your post.

> If he can't tell his students are cheating without globally searching everything with this software, what are they supposedly learning?

I can't parse an argument from this sentence or the remainder of the paragraph. I would like to point out that the learning experience is being quantified in the form of a percentage-based grading system so I am uncertain of your point. Globally searching the papers is an attempt to discover plagarism -- are you suggesting that he should somehow recognize plagarism without attempting to actually compare his students' essays with each other and outside sources?

Edit: I mean, I'm honestly curious. Please try to elaborate.

Secondly, Many classes don't have in-class exams, including most English classes, some social studies classes, and indeed a certain percentage of classes in almost any field besides mathematics and engineering. Exams are, in my humble opinion, a relatively ineffective way of determining learning in many situations. For a business school class to not have exams is perfectly reasonable.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#199

Post by jdunck »

nyustern wrote: post #189

Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as “Info Tech,” and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC. Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is som…

Some of this might have been better expressed in the evaluations.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#200

Post by Caballera »

ary wrote: post #175
justin_vanw wrote: post #83

This professor is a huge part of the problem. He's a tenured professor saying "caring about cheating is counter productive", which to me says "I would rather have an easy life where I don't have to work hard than to protect the reputation of the institution I work for and ensure that students that graduate have learned something along the way". He complains he had to work almost 44 hours (2 hours * 22 cheaters) and r…

I saw your comment before it was edited and calling someone to the carpet (in your case by calling him a coward) isn't the kind of name-calling that should be frowned upon here. He is a coward. He comes out and plainly says that it's in his best interest to go along with the incentive structure in front of him instead of standing up for academic integrity. Let's not let the cultural politeness here get in the way of…

I don't see how he's a coward, he's coming up with new ways to teach his students that make it so they are not able or less able to cheat. If he was a coward he would just continue to teach in a way that was still easy to cheat. He's even asking for ideas on other ways to prevent cheating.
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