Ethics and online schooling (FLVS in particular, if anyone has experience)

[Daria]

DS15, a rule-follower to a fault, is taking some classes at Florida Virtual School.  He regularly has assignments that are labeled as "quiz", but are always visible (e.g. you can read the questions before you start the related reading), are open book, and can be retaken as many times as you want.  

 

DS generally reads the materials, watches the videos, and does the activities, while taking copious notes.  He then takes the quiz and looks for the material in his notes.  Sometimes he gets a B, in which case he studies what he got wrong, resets the quiz (which sometimes means new questions, and sometimes doesn't), and goes back and restudies.  

 

I have suggested to him, that he should read the new questions before he goes back and studies again, so he knows what he's looking for.  In fact, I suggested that he might print out the questions and have a copy of them as he goes through the unit, so he can answer them as he goes.  I also suggested that if he gets full points on a question, particularly an essay question, he should print out his answer before resetting so he can just copy it in again.

 

My son is convinced that any of these approaches would be cheating.  I figure that if FLVS didn't want you to do that they wouldn't let you see the questions until you're ready to take the test.  It wouldn't be hard to set it up that way, their exams are set up that way, as are the unit pretests, so I figure that if they let you see the questions before you read, then they don't care if you see them.

 

To me, it's like the questions in the back of a chapter of a textbook.  As a student, I always read those before the chapter.  They gave me a schema, and a sense of what was important to look for.   When I found an answer, I went back and answered the question right away.  It never occurred to me that this would be construed as cheating. 

 

I will add that this drives me slightly nuts.  He will spend hours studying for a test, take the test, miss a multiple choice question, and reset it.  Then he'll spend hours restudying, take the test, and be marked down for a grammatical error in a short answer question (a question he answered correctly the previous time), and reset it.  Then he'll spend hours studying . . . 

 

I also don't really appreciate the fact that my kid thinks I'm encouraging him to cheat.  What would you do?

 

[kiana]

I actually think that his method is superior. Not all of his college classes will give him the question first. I don't think it's *cheating*, I really don't. But I think his method will give him better long-term study skills and note-taking skills. 

[bettyandbob]

In the online program where I work the student can toggle back and forth from the text to an assignment. So, the student should be able to look up every answer. In some classes the assignments are called quizzes. I think you should check with the teacher. I think your ds is following an honor code beyond what may be expected. It's good he's being that strict with himself. He will likely learn and retain more of the lessons.

 

The only time the student cannot do this for proctored exams. The system is set up so that if a student attempted to open text material for the class at the same time as the exam, the account would be shut down.

[regentrude]

I am with kiana. It is not cheating, but it is studying to the test -which is not my educational goal for my students.

Your son is doing fine. He is learning a lot more about studying than if he were merely looking up the quiz answers in the book.

[chiguirre]

I'd have him email the teacher even though I'm sure they'll tell him he can use his notes and book.

 

T has quizzes like this called Spot Checks for Latin where the instructions specifically tell you to consult your notes and book. It's a way to make the homework auto-correctable but the software calls the exercise a "quiz". The teacher renamed them Spot Checks and added the instructions to clarify the expectations, but I can imagine that a teacher forgets or doesn't have a place to enter them.

[katilac]

I would email the teacher and ask.  

 

His method actually sounds like a good one (except for not printing out his own answer, lol), except for the part where he's studying for hours before the initial quiz, and then studying for hours in between . . . studying for hours because of a minor point loss for a grammar error sounds like perfectionism run amok. 

 

Would I insist he stop if she says it's okay? Probably not. In my house, the ensuing debate would consume as much time as redoing the quiz, and he's old enough to decide on his own study and time management strategies. 

 

Having the teacher clarify might be a big help. My dd was confusing me to no end when she talked about the "quizzes" in her DE math class, until I finally figured out that quizzes are what they call the practice work for the day. They are allowed to ask for help and, if they get a problem wrong, they are allowed to redo a problem of the same type until they get a correct answer or die of frustration. 

 

Why they call it a quiz, I have no idea. 

[Daria]

In the online program where I work the student can toggle back and forth from the text to an assignment. So, the student should be able to look up every answer. In some classes the assignments are called quizzes. I think you should check with the teacher. I think your ds is following an honor code beyond what may be expected. It's good he's being that strict with himself. He will likely learn and retain more of the lessons.

 

The only time the student cannot do this for proctored exams. The system is set up so that if a student attempted to open text material for the class at the same time as the exam, the account would be shut down.

 

Yes, he can do this in this program.  To me it seems obvious that if they set it up to allow the students to do this, they don't mind if the students do this.  

[Daria]

I am with kiana. It is not cheating, but it is studying to the test -which is not my educational goal for my students.

Your son is doing fine. He is learning a lot more about studying than if he were merely looking up the quiz answers in the book.

 

I think there is a place for studying to the test (or in this case the assignment) though.  I think that reviewing your assignment, identifying what you don't know, and then going back and finding that information is a hugely important skill.  I hit this today in a tutoring session today, one of my kids has been working on math facts with Xtramath, but is having trouble filling up the +4 row, so we looked at the diagram that shows what she knows, identified +4 as a problem, and pulled up another website that lets you practice a specific set of math facts, and worked on +4 for 10 minutes.  Is that teaching to the test?  Absolutely.  But because I picked a test that reflected what I wanted her to know it made sense.  I want this kid to know all of her addition facts.

 

To give you a sense of what he's doing, today he took an English grammar quiz with 5 questions.  So, each question was worth 20%.  He lost points on one question because he used the word a instead of an.  A/an was not the point of the question, but he had to use a certain kind of phrase in a complete grammatically correct sentence, so he lost points.  

 

His response to this will be to restudy the unit.  My response would be to look at the question, figure out what I did wrong, and then resubmit the quiz with the one extra letter in it.  

[Arcadia]

I think there is a place for studying to the test (or in this case the assignment) though.  I think that reviewing your assignment, identifying what you don't know, and then going back and finding that information is a hugely important skill.

.....

His response to this will be to restudy the unit.  My response would be to look at the question, figure out what I did wrong, and then resubmit the quiz with the one extra letter in it.  

 

The first part is more of doing corrections for a quiz that has already been graded.  His restudying of the unit is a response to a re-test with different questions.

 

If it was only careless mistakes, and he already mastered the unit, he could have taken the re-test immediately instead of restudying. My kids were with virtual academy for three years and they did that for mastery tests/quiz for school.  

[Mom22ns]

I didn't really like any of the choices in your poll. I think your son is doing it right, but if they have the quizzes available, it probably isn't considered cheating to look at them first. I would encourage him to continue to use his technique of studying before looking. However, I would encourage him to reduce the study time between quizzes. Target that studying to the information he didn't know and retake more quickly. 

 

If it would make him feel better, he should send the teacher an email and ask for a policy on the quizzes. Are they completely open book/note? Is it acceptable to look at them before he starts the chapter as you suggest. My fear with your suggestion is that all he will learn is the information on the quiz. That is the way targeted studying goes. It is also a crutch I wouldn't want him to get used to having since he is unlikely to see the quizzes before he takes them in college.

 

His plan is better, but that doesn't mean it can't be adapted some to be more efficient.