Article about cheating - something that high schoolers and college students should know about

[Frances]

4 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

The issue with this is that there is no just in time feedback for most students. Homework becomes a gate-keeping task and not a learning experience.

If they are provided with answer keys regardless of whether or not they are chosen for grading, that is ample opportunity for immediate feedback. When I took math classes where HW was assigned but not collected or graded, I was constantly checking my work for correctness. And if I didn’t understand why it was wrong or how to get the correct answer, I used one of the many available resources (class time, office hours, fellow students, help sessions, etc) for help.
 

I honestly found no difference between my math classes where HW was graded and where it was not collected or graded. In all cases, answers were available.  If anything, having to immediately check my own answer for correctness and then spend time figuring out why it was wrong was more immediate feedback then waiting to get back graded HW. For me, the only advantage to graded HW was taking some pressure off of exams.

[Sneezyone]

10 minutes ago, Frances said:

If they are provided with answer keys regardless of whether or not they are chosen for grading, that is ample opportunity for immediate feedback. When I took math classes where HW was assigned but not collected or graded, I was constantly checking my work for correctness. And if I didn’t understand why it was wrong or how to get the correct answer, I used one of the many available resources (class time, office hours, fellow students, help sessions, etc) for help.
 

I honestly found no difference between my math classes where HW was graded and where it was not collected or graded. In all cases, answers were available.  If anything, having to immediately check my own answer for correctness and then spend time figuring out why it was wrong was more immediate feedback then waiting to get back graded HW. For me, the only advantage to graded HW was taking some pressure off of exams.

Bully for you? I haven’t seen an ‘answer key’ in all the years my kids have been in school. The schools don’t even use textbooks. What you’re describing resembles nothing my children have actually experienced this decade. Times change. Kids change. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Sneezyone

[EKS]

39 minutes ago, daijobu said:

Because colleges are becoming so lax in passing on their students, companies themselves have admissions exams before they interview or offer jobs. 

Back in the mid-90s I did a lot of hiring for entry level lab positions.  These people were all recent grads in biology or biochemistry.  I asked every person I interviewed for these positions the same two questions:

What is the difference between DNA and protein?

How would you make a 1 M solution of sodium chloride?  The molecular weight of sodium chloride is 58.

You would not believe the number of people who couldn't answer these questions.  The biology majors were particularly bad.

Edited June 2, 2022 by EKS

[Frances]

13 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

Bully for you? I haven’t seen an ‘answer key’ in all the years my kid’s been in school. The schools don’t even use textbooks. What you’re describing resembles nothing my children have actually experienced this decade.

I thought we were talking about college? Surely most college students have a textbook with at least the answers for the odd exercises in the back? Every classic math textbook for lower level classes I’ve ever seen has this. My son graduated from college six years ago and all of his math textbooks still had answers to the odd problems in the back.

I don’t claim to know anything about current public or private high school math classes, as we homeschooled. All of my son’s high school math textbooks had answers and/or answer keys for some or all of the problems.

If high school math classes aren’t providing answers or answer keys, perhaps rather than adopting new assessment methods, they need to go back to the tried and true method of doing lots of problems to achieve mastery, and providing students with answers in order to check their own work.

Edited to add that my son took one CC math class during high school with online HW (unlimited attempts) and in-person exams. While the immediate feedback on the HW was nice, the complexity of the numbers in the problems was ridiculous and completely detracted from learning the fundamental concepts. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Frances

[EKS]

Just now, Frances said:

Surely most college students have a textbook with at least the answers for the odd exercises in the back?

For the lower level math courses (calculus, for example), a lot of the colleges have gone over to the My Math Lab sort of assignments for homework.  The good thing about this is that there is immediate feedback.  There is a whole slew of bad things as well, but the feedback thing is good.

[Frances]

8 minutes ago, EKS said:

For the lower level math courses (calculus, for example), a lot of the colleges have gone over to the My Math Lab sort of assignments for homework.  The good thing about this is that there is immediate feedback.  There is a whole slew of bad things as well, but the feedback thing is good.

Yes, the one CC math class my son took used something like this. Unfortunately, the ridiculous complexity of the numbers in many of the problems detracted from mastering the fundamental concepts. 
 

In general though, it’s really no different than working problems in a physical textbook and then checking the answer yourself against a key. The only advantage I really saw was that if you were having difficulties with a particular concept or type of problem, you could do almost endless related problems. While most physical math textbooks have more than enough problems to get a good understanding of the concepts, you might run out of certain types before you achieve mastery.

[daijobu]

5 hours ago, KSera said:

This. One of my dc attends a university with a very well-known weed out system in most of the stem disciplines. I’ve known of some good students with amazing minds who have given up on their desired career path based on that first weedout class they take. Yet many of the kinds of students who are able to do well in those aren’t necessarily going to do anything great in their field, they’re just capable of learning and regurgitating information quickly and easily, then dumping that info when they’re done to make room for the next set of info. 

Really?  That's your take on students who are well-prepared for college work?

Why are successful students metaphorically equivalent to vomiting? 

Why do we criticize students and throw disgusting epithets at those who study and earn A's in their classes?  

[lewelma]

diajabu, I have taught in the American and NZ systems, and I find cross cultural comparisons very useful to breaking down paradigms. One of the biggest differences is how kids earn As, Bs, and Cs. In the USA, it is percent correct, so 90%-100% is an A, etc. But in NZ, it is based on levels of thinking from Blooms Taxonomy, it is NOT a percent correct system. So if you show only memorization/comprehension then that is a C, if you show relational thinking that is a B, and if you show insight/abstraction/generalization then that is an A.

So a student who gets 95% on an organic chemistry exam that only has memorization/comprehension questions would only earn a C here. 

There are absolutely students who can memorize and put this content on the exam (I will not use the word 'regurgitate'). They can memorize a LOT. But if they cannot use it in both practical applications and novel ways, then are they actually 'good' learners, or are they only 'good' students who can do what they are told?

Edited June 2, 2022 by lewelma

[Clemsondana]

18 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I have taught in the American and NZ systems, and I find cross cultural comparisons very useful to breaking down paradigms. One of the biggest differences is how kids earn As, Bs, and Cs. In the USA, it is percent correct, so 90%-100% is an A, etc. But in NZ, it is based on levels of thinking from Blooms Taxonomy, it is NOT a percent correct system. So if you show only memorization/comprehension then that is a C, if you show relational thinking that is a B, and if you show insight/abstraction/generalization then that is an A.

So a student who gets 95% on an organic chemistry exam that only has memorization/comprehension questions would only earn a C here. 

There are absolutely students who can memorize and put this content on the exam (I will not use the word 'regurgitate'). They can memorize a LOT. But if they cannot use it in both practical applications and novel ways, then are they actually 'good' learners, or are they only 'good' students who can do what they are told?

It doesn't work easily for every section of every subject, but on well-designed tests you can sometimes achieve the levels of thinking-style grades with points.  I had a college professor who would have 20 points of definitions on every test.  If you only got that, obviously you would fail, but if you missed all 20, you weren't likely to get most of the other points, either.  Then there would be some simple 'explain' questions, and then there would be the 'interpret this result' or 'design and experiment'.  He also graded everything on a curve, but the point still holds - to get one of the higher scores, you needed to get pretty much all of the definitions and explains and then as many points as possible on the 'design an experiment' questions.  He explicityly said that he was writing tests with sections that you could get just by studying and others where you had to understand and apply.  

[lewelma]

30 minutes ago, Clemsondana said:

It doesn't work easily for every section of every subject, but on well-designed tests you can sometimes achieve the levels of thinking-style grades with points.  I had a college professor who would have 20 points of definitions on every test.  If you only got that, obviously you would fail, but if you missed all 20, you weren't likely to get most of the other points, either.  Then there would be some simple 'explain' questions, and then there would be the 'interpret this result' or 'design and experiment'.  He also graded everything on a curve, but the point still holds - to get one of the higher scores, you needed to get pretty much all of the definitions and explains and then as many points as possible on the 'design an experiment' questions.  He explicityly said that he was writing tests with sections that you could get just by studying and others where you had to understand and apply.  

So I think the complaint that some previous posters have made is that in the weeder classes, if the goal is to sink kids in so much content that they were overwhelmed, which allowed certain top-memorizing kids to rise to the top, well that is just one kind of learning that is being rewarded. Memorizing does not equal actually using the content to solve problems.

I took a weeder class once. I was a biology major and required to take organic chemistry for obvious reasons. But at Duke, Orgo was a weeder class for the pre-med kids. So I did what I was told to do, memorized piles and piles of equations, so much TIME, so much work!  I did great in the class, and promptly forgot it all. It would have been so much more useful for me as a biology major to have way way less content (like 20% of what I had to learn), but to use it and own it and have the time to make it my own. So I got an A, but I learned nothing. The goal of this class was simply to RANK students. There was no way to hold all that content in your head for more than just the exam. Learning was clearly a secondary goal. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by lewelma

[Clemsondana]

18 minutes ago, lewelma said:

So I think the complaint that some previous posters have made is that in the weeder classes, if the goal is to sink kids in so much content that they were overwhelmed, which allowed certain top-memorizing kids to rise to the top, well that is just one kind of learning that is being rewarded. Memorizing does not equal actually using the content to solve problems.

 

I took a weeder class once. I was a biology major and required to take organic chemistry for obvious reasons. But at Duke, Orgo was a weeder class for the pre-med kids. So I did what I was told to do, memorized piles and piles of equations, so much TIME, so much work!  I did great in the class, and promptly forgot it all. It would have been so much more useful for me as a biology major (I'm not speaking for premeds here) to have way way less content (like 20% of what I had to learn), but to use it and own it and have the time to make it my own. So I got an A, but I learned nothing. The goal of this class was simply to RANK students. There was no way to hold all that content in your head for more than just the exam. Learning was clearly a secondary goal. 

I won't argue that there isn't a weeder component to some intro classes (at least historically...colleges now seem much more concerned about retention), but I also have an idea in my head, that I'm guessing I must have heard from a faculty member somewhere along the line although maybe not, is that one reason that intro classes cover so much material is that they don't know where you are going next and the student might not either.  Like, in intro bio, they don't know if you're headed to microbiology, biochem, or animal science so they both need to explain the things that you'll need and also give you some of the things you won't see again so that you know they exist.  It's maybe related to something I read on WTM at some point - somebody was saying that they were going easy on science since their kid was wanting to go to a conservatory (or maybe going easy on humanities because the kid was STEM...the point stands whatever the subject) and another poster replied that they always were more careful in things that their kid wouldn't see much of in the future - the STEM kid will get plenty of STEM in college, but may never see much arts and humanities again so it needs to be particularly strong.  I was told by our dept head as an undergrad that our required coursework was chosen to have us both prepared for the MCAT and prepared for research since they didn't know which direction we'd go, and I'm wondering if something similar plays out in individual classes.  

It's part of why I get frustrated with simple solutions...there are a lot of complex things at play, from course sequencing, to education philosophy, to whether college is for getting an education, a credential, or career training, to where colleges should put their resources (we have people  on this board looking for disability support services, help with student mental or physical health, TAs so that profs can give more feedback, etc...doing all of it everywhere is expensive).  As with many other issues, I could be convinced that tweaks would fix problems, and I could also be convinced that remaking the whole thing would be better, but I'm pretty sure that some 'small' changes will have unintended consequences.  

[Farrar]

I just want to say that a number of absolutely feasible, already implemented in some places suggestions have been made about institutions ranging from highly selective to community colleges. And that it's frustrating that these cannot be heard by everyone because of systemic issues in what's demanded of professors. 

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:

That doesn’t have anything to do with colleges. People gain coding skills through life experience and hobby activities and certifications through open source platforms.  You don’t need college to code. That’s actually an example of inclusive hiring.

My husband got his bachelors in computer science and I got my bachelors and masters in electrical engineering. Both disciplines have certification programs that can get you in the field. However with just certifications there is going to be glass ceiling because a certification program teaches you very different things than what a Bachelor's program teaches you. (Essentially a certification teaches you how to use a hammer and a Bachelor's teaches you the theory behind tools.)

In electrical engineering the ceiling is much clearer in that typically you'll need the BS degree to get an engineer title and certification just gets you a technician title (moving from technician to engineer depends on the company some decades of experience as a technician can get you the title, others absolutely require the degree). In computer science the same does occur but they don't have a a title that they use across different companies for it. I've still seen instances where a person with a BS in computer science vs a person who has certifications have different job titles and not in the same ladder. 

I think also it's important to recognize some of these STEM majors are geared towards professional training more than "life-long learning". The goal of my BSEE is to train me to do a job. I did use a lot of the academic things I learned in college.  

As to the weeding, most of the weeding I saw were people not willing to do the amount of work required not that they flunked out.

[lewelma]

25 minutes ago, Clemsondana said:

It's part of why I get frustrated with simple solutions...there are a lot of complex things at play, 

Completely agree with this statement.

Also, once again from a cross cultural comparison viewpoint, in NZ most kids who want to go to college can as we have guarantee entrance even for low grades on our national exams (ETA: apparently I made a stink comparison so I'll take it out so people aren't confused). And then we have first year free to let kids give it a go. So a LOT of kids start, and a LOT of kids fail out. Looks like the first year retention rate is about 60% across all seven universities here.

So America is all about restricted access to get in but once you are in high levels of retention, but NZ is about letting most kids try and if they can't cut it, then time to find a different path. I don't know what is the better approach, but by seeing two different ways to address the same issue always helps me to re-evaluation my own assumptions and think more deeply about the complexity.

https://www.otago.ac.nz/about/otago624196.html

Edited June 2, 2022 by lewelma

[Clarita]

3 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Also, once again from a cross cultural comparison viewpoint, in NZ most kids who want to go to college can as we have guarantee entrance even for low grades on our national exams (basically it is kind of like getting a 3 on 4 AP exams would get you in).

That's not a very low bar, considering the majority of US kids who would have never even taken an AP exam. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Clarita
typo

[lewelma]

8 minutes ago, Clarita said:

That's not a very low bar, considering there is a majority of US kids who would have never even taken an AP exam. 

I was doing the best to make a cross cultural comparison in two very different systems. Clearly, I picked the wrong comparison, sorry. The NZ system is complex, and not really comparable. Sorry for the confusion. 

In my experience, I personally do not know a single student who did not make the cut, and if you don't make the cut, you can go to the national summer school program to catch up the credits. 

Point is, if you want to go you can go. And at 20 years of age, ANY student at all (even without a high school diploma) can go. There are no restrictions at all. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by lewelma

[Clarita]

2 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I was doing the best to make a cross cultural comparison in two very different systems. Clearly, I picked the wrong comparison, sorry. The NZ system is complex, and not really comparable. sorry for the confusion. 

No worries I have no idea about the NZ system. 

[KSera]

3 hours ago, daijobu said:

Because colleges are becoming so lax in passing on their students, companies themselves have admissions exams before they interview or offer jobs.  

https://blog.tryexponent.com/how-top-tech-companies-interview-software-engineers/

"Google first has new software engineering candidates complete an online assessment before their phone screening.  Candidates should expect to answer coding questions on a shared Google doc.  They are not only seeking candidates who can write fast, error-free code, but those with ingenuity, strong problem-solving skills, and adaptability, along with culture fit."

"Amazon's on-site interview will involve several rounds of technical interviews consisting of many coding and system design questions."

"The process consists of an initial phone screening, a coding test, and an on-site visit with several rounds of interviews."  (Microsoft)

"First and foremost, Facebook hiring managers ask their candidates to complete one or more coding exercises. The coding questions are short or simple enough to answer and explain within a 30-minute window."

For software engineers, these phone interviews are technical in nature. Candidates will be asked to code in a collaborated online document while discussing common technical problems experienced at Dropbox. These screenings are used to evaluate a candidate's CS fundamentals, problem-solving skills, and quick thinking."

These questions have been a standard part of interviewing for coding jobs for forever. I don't think this particular thing has anything to do with the drop in standards, though candidates level of preparation is all over the place now, that is true. The fact is that with computer science, it's still the case that most of the learning for that job starts after the person has left college and is actually working. Anyone fresh out of a computer science program is very green. These coding questions are done even with people who have worked in the field for decades, though. They are just the way it's done.

2 hours ago, daijobu said:

Really?  That's your take on students who are well-prepared for college work?

Why are successful students metaphorically equivalent to vomiting? 

Why do we criticize students and throw disgusting epithets at those who study and earn A's in their classes?  

I'm sorry, it sounds like the use of the word "regurgitate" might be different where I am than how it's striking other people. Where I grew up, that's a common, non-derogatory way to talk about quickly producing material learned by rote. Also known as "spitting out the answers" 🤷‍♀️. I'm one of the students I'm talking about with that description. I was a high performing student who learned material well, tested extremely well, and moved onto the next thing. I was a very successful student, earning a spot in a highly selective program and doing well in it. My spouse was not that kind of student. I maintain he learned material deeper than I did. He still recalls his high school chemistry. I recall close to none of it despite having taken several semesters in college as well. That's what I was trying to say. Sorry my language made it sound like I was insulting students.

Edited June 2, 2022 by KSera

[lewelma]

8 minutes ago, KSera said:

 I was a very successful student, earning a spot in a highly selective program and doing well in it. My spouse was not that kind of student. I maintain he learned material deeper than I did. He still recalls his high school chemistry. I recall close to none of it despite having taken several semesters in college as well. That's what I was trying to say. Sorry my language made it sound like I was insulting students.

This is exactly me and my dh. And I also hear the word regurgitate used in a non-derogatory way.

[KSera]

2 minutes ago, lewelma said:

This is exactly me and my dh. And I also hear the word regurgitate used in a non-derogatory way.

Thank you. I started to worry that the phrase was coming across that offensively to people, but I just looked it up on Merriam-Webster, and my way of using it is part of standard English:

From the definition page:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regurgitate#examples

A student, for example, might be expected to learn information from a textbook or a teacher and then regurgitate it for a test. 
 

Definition of regurgitate

intransitive verb

: to become thrown or poured back

transitive verb

: to throw or pour back or out from or as if from a cavity

regurgitate food

memorized facts to regurgitate on the exam

[Roadrunner]

41 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I was doing the best to make a cross cultural comparison in two very different systems. Clearly, I picked the wrong comparison, sorry. The NZ system is complex, and not really comparable. Sorry for the confusion. 

In my experience, I personally do not know a single student who did not make the cut, and if you don't make the cut, you can go to the national summer school program to catch up the credits. 

Point is, if you want to go you can go. And at 20 years of age, ANY student at all (even without a high school diploma) can go. There are no restrictions at all. 

It’s the same here. American system doesn’t restrict access. Sure, we have some selective schools where that’s the case, but we have a ton of public and private colleges that accept pretty much most kids. Plus Community colleges accept everybody, and there is a transfer path usually for kids. 
In fact I would argue that US system is much more open than anything I have seen. Our kids don’t have to sit in any exams. You can get accepted to college without taking a single AP. SATs used to not be optional, but low score wasn’t a problem at many places. We have nothing like A levels in UK or Baccalaureate in France…. 
the problem in US is some schools and some majors are selective because supply can’t meet demand. But you want to study sociology at a public U? It’s not a problem. It’s when computer science, engineering, nursing is the desired major that kids run into problems. 

[lewelma]

31 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

It’s the same here. American system doesn’t restrict access. Sure, we have some selective schools where that’s the case, but we have a ton of public and private colleges that accept pretty much most kids. Plus Community colleges accept everybody, and there is a transfer path usually for kids. 
In fact I would argue that US system is much more open than anything I have seen. Our kids don’t have to sit in any exams. You can get accepted to college without taking a single AP. SATs used to not be optional, but low score wasn’t a problem at many places. We have nothing like A levels in UK or Baccalaureate in France…. 
the problem in US is some schools and some majors are selective because supply can’t meet demand. But you want to study sociology at a public U? It’s not a problem. It’s when computer science, engineering, nursing is the desired major that kids run into problems. 

The difference seems to be the sorting hat. Here in NZ, all universities are 'ranked' equally, and get a similar selection of students from low to high. In the USA, they are sorted. This difference has a lot to do with this thread topic, I think. The cheating thing was named as a community college issue, (whether this is fair or not I do not know, as others have said it is a large class size problem). And there have been some posters in this thread who have said that community colleges in the USA are not comparable to NZ universities, so the ways to inhibit cheating must be different and not usefully comparative. 

 

 

Edited June 2, 2022 by lewelma

[lewelma]

I guess what I'm interested in is how the large class sizes at my ds's university seem to have more accessible assessments (for neurodivergent kids) than the large classes sizes at the American universities. I'm curious what drives this - both the philosophical assumptions and legal barriers. I'm also interested in path dependency, because that seems to be the root of the problem. 

[Frances]

34 minutes ago, lewelma said:

The difference seems to be the sorting hat. Here in NZ, all universities are 'ranked' equally, and get a similar selection of students from low to high. In the USA, they are sorted. This difference has a lot to do with this thread topic, I think. The cheating thing was named as a community college issue, (whether this is fair or not I do not know, as others have said it is a large class size problem). And there have been some posters in this thread who have said that community colleges in the USA are not comparable to NZ universities, so the ways to inhibit cheating must be different and not usefully comparative. 

 

 

At least in the US, I think cheating is a problem at most colleges, large or small, selective or not. While certainly there are differences in amount and degree, it certainly is not only a community college or large class size problem. 

[lewelma]

5 minutes ago, Frances said:

At least in the US, I think cheating is a problem at most colleges, large or small, selective or not. While certainly there are differences in amount and degree, it certainly is not only a community college or large class size problem. 

Is cheating on the rise, and if so, why? Not the two simple answers  that 1) kids are lazy and want something for nothing, as that has likely been true forever. And not the 2) its easier now, because I know that back in the day all the fraternities cheated by keeping test banks when the tests were reused every year. I think that it is just a escalating war as it has always been. 

No, I'm looking for the structural changes in society that have led to more kids choosing the cheating path. If we can sort that out, then we can make fundamental changes that can fix the system. Might take decades, but nothing with complex underlying causes is every easy to fix. 

[Frances]

2 hours ago, lewelma said:

Completely agree with this statement.

Also, once again from a cross cultural comparison viewpoint, in NZ most kids who want to go to college can as we have guarantee entrance even for low grades on our national exams (ETA: apparently I made a stink comparison so I'll take it out so people aren't confused). And then we have first year free to let kids give it a go. So a LOT of kids start, and a LOT of kids fail out. Looks like the first year retention rate is about 60% across all seven universities here.

So America is all about restricted access to get in but once you are in high levels of retention, but NZ is about letting most kids try and if they can't cut it, then time to find a different path. I don't know what is the better approach, but by seeing two different ways to address the same issue always helps me to re-evaluation my own assumptions and think more deeply about the complexity.

https://www.otago.ac.nz/about/otago624196.html

I think the US system is just so much more variable than the New Zealand system. Sure, we have a small percentage of highly selective schools with high retention and graduation rates. But we have a much larger number of basically open admission schools with low retention and graduation rates. And then it also depends on your major and sometimes state of residency.
 

Nursing is one major that was already brought up and in my experience living in different parts of the US, geography plays a huge role in how competitive entry is to nursing programs. For virtually every healthcare profession, my state of origin offers way more training slots than my current state of residence, despite having a significantly smaller population. 

[Bootsie]

7 hours ago, Frances said:

Yes, the one CC math class my son took used something like this. Unfortunately, the ridiculous complexity of the numbers in many of the problems detracted from mastering the fundamental concepts. 
 

In general though, it’s really no different than working problems in a physical textbook and then checking the answer yourself against a key. The only advantage I really saw was that if you were having difficulties with a particular concept or type of problem, you could do almost endless related problems. While most physical math textbooks have more than enough problems to get a good understanding of the concepts, you might run out of certain types before you achieve mastery.

When I first began using these computer-based problem sets I thought it was really no different than working problems in a textbook.  After a great deal of experience using them in my classes, and seeing my own children use them, I have concluded that there are some significant differences.  From a pedagogical standpoint, on of the biggest differences is that the student enters an answer--not the process of getting to the answer.  The process of getting to the answer is not captured from beginning to end as it is when a student works a math problem on a sheet of paper.  A problem is on the screen; a student may or may not write some things down on a piece of paper, but does a lot of pushing calculator buttons (not recording the process of working the problem), then enters an answer like 157.93 in the computer screen and the program says it is incorrect (not always saying what the correct answer should be).  Where did the student go wrong?  Transposed number when entering in the computer?  Missed a decimal place?  Entered a number incorrectly in the calculator?  Misread the problem?  Had a rounding error?  Made a careless mistake at Step 3?  Had no idea even how to begin the problem?  The computer gives them the same problem with different numbers--and again they get it wrong--did they make the same mistake?  So, they come to office hours and ask me how to work the problem; of course, I have worked similar problems in class and there are similar problems in the book--they really don't need me to work the problem for them to learn; we need to diagnose why they can't work the problem,  where are they going wrong?  Do they not know how to round?  Do they not know to multiply before they divide?  I need to see their thought process, but it isn't written out on paper to refer back to.

Teaching a subject that uses math heavily, it is not just can the student get the mathematical answer, but the student needs to see patterns and differences.  The math is a tool, not the end result.  I can design (or books would have) a problem set that would have a problem if a person saved $200 a month for retirement for 20 years and earned 8% interest, how much would they have.  Then a problem would increase the amount to $300.  Another problem would have the interest rate at 9%.  And there would be a variation for if the person saved the money at the beginning of the month or the end of the month.  This highlights how the financial mathematics works--and how sensitive the results are to the variables.  When the problems are appearing on a screen and then disappearing and we are on to the next problem; it is impossible to say, "now look at how we set up Problem 1 differently from Problem 2".

Pedagogically I think it is a very different experience.  That is before we even get into the issues of the numbers in the problems often don't make sense, the data entry is often difficult, and rounding issues are a problem.  Does "round to two decimal places" mean simply round the final answer to two decimal places or all intermediate numbers?  If the problem is about percentages, does it mean 12.42%  or 0.12.  And from a cheating perspective, now anyone anywhere in the world can be doing the homework for the student.  At least with paper and pencil if Johnny is going to copy off of Mary, he at least has to go through the process of copying (which maybe he at least learns something).  Now, Johnny can just pay Mary who is half-way around the world to do the problems.  

 

[Sneezyone]

I just want to reiterate that, in many/most of my kiddos math and science classes, the problem sets are not as Bootsie just described. Yes, the students may enter an answer which is automatically checked but then DD also has to take a picture of her work written by her hand and attach it to the assignment. With EdPuzzles, the instruction is happening/being viewed by the student with the instruction being paused periodically to ask students to respond/engage with the content. Problem sets are then done IN CLASS with teacher support, a flipped classroom model.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Sneezyone

[8filltheheart]

4 hours ago, lewelma said:

Is cheating on the rise, and if so, why? Not the two simple answers  that 1) kids are lazy and want something for nothing, as that has likely been true forever. And not the 2) its easier now, because I know that back in the day all the fraternities cheated by keeping test banks when the tests were reused every year. I think that it is just a escalating war as it has always been. 

No, I'm looking for the structural changes in society that have led to more kids choosing the cheating path. If we can sort that out, then we can make fundamental changes that can fix the system. Might take decades, but nothing with complex underlying causes is every easy to fix. 

Kids graduate from high school undereducated and underprepared. Schools spoonfeed kids exactly what they need to know and many give them endless opportunities to demonstrate they have learned it.  (Testc retakes, homework redos,)

My kids have gone to college and watched their peers flounder bc if they don't understand something, they lack the basic skills in trying to figure out how to go about learning it on their own through reading the text or working through example problems until they master concepts. Many are reluctant to use office hours or the tutoring center until it is too late. Kids dont go to lectures. It is often the first time every tiny detail of what will be on the test isnt explicitly laid out.  There are a multitude of factors.  Cheating becomes the "learning method" of choice amg  many. 

Regardless to the arguments to the contrary in this thread, most cheating comes down to students simply not doing the work and wanting an A. Partying, poor time management, taking classes they are uninterested in, being overwhelmed, enrolling in too many hrs......unlimited reasons. But, being unable to finish the test is not the primary reason for poor grades or impetus for cheating.

[Bootsie]

3 hours ago, lewelma said:

Is cheating on the rise, and if so, why? Not the two simple answers  that 1) kids are lazy and want something for nothing, as that has likely been true forever. And not the 2) its easier now, because I know that back in the day all the fraternities cheated by keeping test banks when the tests were reused every year. I think that it is just a escalating war as it has always been. 

No, I'm looking for the structural changes in society that have led to more kids choosing the cheating path. If we can sort that out, then we can make fundamental changes that can fix the system. Might take decades, but nothing with complex underlying causes is every easy to fix. 

I think the complexity of the cheating has increased and I think the opportunities for cheating have increased.  Some of the reasons for this I think are:

1)  Technology has increased the ability to record information and share it. Yes, fraternities had files of old tests that were returned to students; 35 years ago, if I returned a test, I assumed future students had access to it.  Today, as soon as I hand out a test, I assume that there is a possibility that the questions are available outside the classroom--around the world.  Minute cameras on pens, tie clips, etc. transmit the exam immediately.  Thus, it is not simply wandering eyes in the classroom or having access to passed exams.  A student can literally transmit the exam to India, have someone work the exam, and then need to go to the restroom, have the answers transmitted back to them, and go into the classroom and complete the exam.  

2)  A heavier reliance on multiple choice and objective type exams, rather than essays and oral exams (and there are many reasons this has happened).

3)  More graded components in classes.  If a class has three exams, 10 graded homework sets, 10 graded quizzes, and 5 reflection papers, there are 28 opportunities for cheating--in classes with a midterm and a final there are only 2 opportunities.

4)  Educational training.  I had a friend teaching high school math and was required to have the exam questions identical to homework questions--she couldn't even change the numbers; this type of system encourages students to expect to pass classes by having access to a question/answer and then just copying it down.  When my children were in third grade I went to a school technology fair; the students had done "research" about a country and produced fancy PowerPoint presentations.  The research was they went to Wikepedia or other websites, copy and pasted, and then added music, colors, words flipping up and down--WOW--and they all got awards for their wonderful research and use of technology; I saw exactly where they were learning to simply copy and paste (plagiarize) and submit work and be told it was wonderful and thought that was perfectly acceptable by the time they got to college.  They were not learning how to read, summarize, analyze, compare the validity of different sources, and other academic skills.

5) Change in the perception of the purpose of university education.  More and more students are needing remedial coursework.  Thus, they begin their university education with courses that the point is learning tools (like algebra).  It is simply a change in the location of the classroom seat after sitting in a different chair for 12 years.  When a university is more about becoming part of a intellectual community that wrestles with ideas, explores new frontiers, questions, etc. the entire atmosphere is different.  It is also different for a nursing professor to see part of her role as making sure that students are not only academically prepared for a career but that they have the character to be ethical nurses.  The professor teaching remedial math does not have the same professional concerns--it is easy to say "oh, if they cheat they are only hurting themselves because they won't know the material for the next class."

6)  Little consequences for cheating.  If a student cheats in math in high school, gets an A, gets into university, can't pass the math placement test, takes remedial math, cheats and passes, and then moves on to physics but doesn't have the math background, the physics professors are still under pressure to make sure they pass physics to maintain the retention and graduation rates.  

[fourisenough]

Replying to question posed much earlier in the thread:

The primary reason that despite the nurse shortage in the US it is very difficult to get into a nursing program (whether ADN, BSN, or 2nd degree BSN) is this: accreditation requires that nursing clinical instruction maintain a 1:8 teacher-to-student ratio. This means it’s expensive and difficult to educate nurses. Even at a huge state university (40k undergraduates), the college of nursing might enroll only 60-80 students annually. There can be no 400 student lectures for nursing; it’s small-batch, largely hands-on instruction during the clinical phase.

[Tree Frog]

9 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

Bully for you? I haven’t seen an ‘answer key’ in all the years my kids have been in school. The schools don’t even use textbooks. What you’re describing resembles nothing my children have actually experienced this decade. Times change. Kids change. 

 

9 hours ago, Frances said:

I thought we were talking about college? Surely most college students have a textbook with at least the answers for the odd exercises in the back? Every classic math textbook for lower level classes I’ve ever seen has this. My son graduated from college six years ago and all of his math textbooks still had answers to the odd problems in the back.

 

My son is a senior this upcoming year in college. Most of his classes have given homework and the professor has either posted the answer key online to check before class or posted it at the beginning of class and asked students if they have questions before beginning the lecture. I don't think it's as outdated as one might think based only on one's own kids.

[Clemsondana]

I think that one issue is that different populations have different issues, so solutions don't work consistently.  As a simple example, several people on here have described it being easy to implement online proctoring of exams to increase access.  But, at least a couple of my former students have talked about how online monitoring just added another layer of stress - they were absolutely terrified that they would do something like stare off into space to think and then be detected as cheating.  They were incrediblly relieved to return to class, even with its tighter time limit due to the next class coming in.  

Somebody wrote about instructors giving problem sets and then posting answers rather than making corrections on individual assignments as a way to give instant feedback.  This was common when I was an undergrad - back in the day profs taped answers outside their door or, for big classes, on windows by the entrance to the building.  But, this doesn't allow facutly to accept late work - their policy for graded work was that nothing was accepted late because they'd post the answers.  On this post, people have argued both that emphasis shouldn't be put on tests because the high-stakes, disconnected-from-reality nature of them makes them unreasonable, while also saying that giving a multitude of assigments disadvantages those struggling with executive function.  I actually agree that both of those can be struggles for particular students, but other than a 1:1or tiny group mentorship situation faculty can't just pass students because they say 'trust us, we're learning!'.  I do think that more jobs ought to be trained in a mentorship model rather than a college degree,, but engineers and doctors and accountants and scientists are still going to go to college and need to be assessed somehow.

I read about flipped classrooms when they were first implemented, and the results were interesting.  They fit what I see during my genetics unit - it seems to really benefit some students, bore others, and make no difference for another group.  Genetics is the only bio unit with math-like problem sets.  I do lecture/discussion in decreasing amounts over the 5 weeks, so that the first week only has 15 minutes to work on problems but by the last week the entire period is me circulating to answer questions as they finish their problem sets.  It's really weird what happens.  When everybody is new to the material, they mostly seem to benefit from having me there to help.  But, after a week or 2, the students who grasp the material quickly are showing up with all of the problems done and maybe asking for clarification on 1 confusing one, or they finish them in the first 30 minutes and then do other work.  The students that almost-but-not-quite get it seem to benefit - they work, I help, then they try another and need less help - this is probably the goal of the flipped classroom.  And the most confused...don't even get out their work because they don't know where to start and they don't want to look lost in front of other students.  On rare occasion one of these students is working in a group with students who can explain, but mostly they don't.  They either sit and feel dumb or they form a group of students who don't understand and then convince themselves that nobody understands.  You can say that it's a classroom management issue, but there isn't much that you can do to force a student to work in class when they say that they'll just do it at home, other than to regulate it with points, which puts us back in another debate about assigning points based on perceived effort, or them having to get it right (if you do this, they copy others' work when they think you aren't looking).  

My point isn't to complain that different policies aren't implementable.  There are lots of options!  But, none of them will meet the preferences of every student.  Like, I didn't enjoy tests themselves, but I much prefer being left alone to ponder material for a while and then apply it to being barraged with lots of small assignments.  Others see no benefit to anxiety-producing tests.  I think that's why there is so much frustration on these threads.  Some approaches are hard for an instructor to implement at scale but may work great in small classes.  Some approaches make students feel 'put on the spot' and can work great in classes where students know each other or are confident but might cause another population to quit showing up due to anxiety about being in the spotlight (I had a grad school class like this - I learned more in that class than any class I took in grad school, but unprepared students didn't come and it was very stressful for everybody, but a nightmare for the sensitive).  

I feel like there are 2 different perspectives on why students are in college - credentialling and education, which are a major part of the tensions between retention and standards.  Students may have various life issues that create challenges, and faculty want to be sensitive to that and work with them.  But, for students who are seeking a credential rather than an education, they sometimes seek flexibility (taking a test later, or remotely, or...) as a way to cheat.  CCs are open to everybody, and sometimes it's not clear what students are expecting or hoping to gain.  As an example...the first CC class that I ever taught was a lab that met on Saturdays.  Because labs have to be set up ahead of time by prep staff, and because the pre and post lab questions are included in the manual, there is very little control that an instructor has over the lab - I made my own lab report rubric and decided what quiz questions to ask, but basically I was a facilitator in a class with a common final.  I started with 24 students.  After 3 weeks, as was typical, 1/3 had dropped due to not being able to do the math (metric conversions).  By the end, most students were hit-and-miss on attendance even though attendance is absolutely necessary for labs.  In one of my course evals, the student wrote 'She really tried to help us succeed.  I should have come to class.'  In the end, 3 students passed.  The A student had never missed class, the B student had missed once, and the C student had missed twice (the B and C weren't due to penalties because they had missed - it's possible to have an A with an absence).  Everybody else had missed 3+ of the 16 class meetings, and many had missed 5-6.  At the same CC, I taught a Saturday lecture section.  Some students dropped, but I also had a group that formed a Friday nigh study group that was open to all and met all semester.  Those students absolutly rocked the material.  It was chance that caused the numbers to skew so wildly towards students failing in one class and students earning As in the other, but what policy could be implemented that would help with what most classes were - a mix of both student populations?  One group really wanted to learn, and the other group wanted to pass a class where they hadn't learned anything.  

There is a mindset some students have that is exemplified by a memorable interaction I had with a student who came the first 2 weeks and then showed up one other time in week 4.  I hadn't administratively dropped them from the class.  The week before the final they called and asked what they could do to pass the class, since there clearly wasn't time to do all of the work.  I said 'Well, we could do credit by exam - the final is cumulative, so I could give you whatever grade you earn on that.'  The student replied that having not attended class there was no way that they could pass the final.  When I said that if they didn't do the work and couldn't pass the final to show knowledge of the material, what would they want me to base a passing grade on? they seemed taken aback, as if they had never thought of grades being linked to any measure of 'interaction with knowledge' before.  

Edited June 2, 2022 by Clemsondana

[teachermom2834]

Very minor point but one that I see come up alot that plays into the “why” cheating is the grade inflation and that somehow we got to where students really think that if they don’t get all As or 100s they might as well have failed. And I know people are going to say that is because med school is so competitive or college admissions are so competitive but that is not the type of people I am aquatinted with at all. 

When I was growing up having a 3.5 GPA was considered pretty good in college. Now students who are cheating and plagiarizing and skipping assignments are emailing their professors to challenge why they got a B instead of an A at the end of the semester. 

My dh has to block off a weekend every time grades are published to explain grades. He is a very generous grader. He has to answer questions like “You have a B because you only handed in 75% of the assignments and you had a 65 average on the tests.” Or “You have a C because you didn’t do any of the labs and missed half the homework’s.” Or because they had a bunch of zeros for cheating! There seems to be an expectation that if they do the class at all they should get a good grade and if they don’t drop and show up for the midterm and the final they should pass. 

Things are messed up in many ways. My husband works hard to help people get through his class but he really is met with alot of nastiness and unreasonable demands from his students. It is sad because it is clear something has broken down before they ever got to him. 

[maize]

5 hours ago, lewelma said:

Is cheating on the rise, and if so, why? Not the two simple answers  that 1) kids are lazy and want something for nothing, as that has likely been true forever. And not the 2) its easier now, because I know that back in the day all the fraternities cheated by keeping test banks when the tests were reused every year. I think that it is just a escalating war as it has always been. 

 

I see no evidence that cheating is really on the rise.

Or that it is more common at the CC level.

Several of my siblings are Stanford graduates, and they reported the fraternity test banks as a big reason kids wanted to join particular fraternities. 

Cheating has a long and not-very-hidden history at elite schools.

[KSera]

1 hour ago, 8filltheheart said:

Regardless to the arguments to the contrary in this thread, most cheating comes down to students simply not doing the work and wanting an A. Partying, poor time management, taking classes they are uninterested in, being overwhelmed, enrolling in too many hrs......unlimited reasons. But, being unable to finish the test is not the primary reason for poor grades or impetus for cheating.

To be fair, that hasn’t been the reason test timing was discussed in this thread. I don’t think most people participating disagree that all of those things are reasons that students cheat. There were some people suggesting that a solution to that was to design the tests to be very tightly timed to make it harder to cheat. That was where people had an issue with the test timing. One person did say at that point that perhaps that would make students even more likely to cheat, but in general I don’t think anyone is thinking that the reason students are cheating is because of test timing. It’s for reasons like you say above and others discussed in the thread. 

[Bootsie]

33 minutes ago, Clemsondana said:

My point isn't to complain that different policies aren't implementable.  There are lots of options!  But, none of them will meet the preferences of every student.  Like, I didn't enjoy tests themselves, but I much prefer being left alone to ponder material for a while and then apply it to being barraged with lots of small assignments.  Others see no benefit to anxiety-producing tests.  I think that's why there is so much frustration on these threads.  Some approaches are hard for an instructor to implement at scale but may work great in small classes.  Some approaches make students feel 'put on the spot' and can work great in classes where students know each other or are confident but might cause another population to quit showing up due to anxiety about being in the spotlight (I had a grad school class like this - I learned more in that class than any class I took in grad school, but unprepared students didn't come and it was very stressful for everybody, but a nightmare for the sensitive).  

 

Another example is "students want to work together.  don't see it as cheating--set up so that it is collaboration"; then see how many people, just on this board, complain about group work, having to carry the load for the group, or getting a poor grade because of other group members.  

There is also a trade-off between a short-term benefit and long-term education.  It can be much more efficient to give students a set of questions and a set of answers and make sure they know that set of answers when the teacher's success is based upon how students do on that particular set of answers.  I think much of the standardized testing has led to teaching the test, rather than teaching material and how to learn.  This encourages a mindset that education is about spitting back answers successfully (so the secret to success is knowing the answers to pre-determined questions). 

The same thing happens with short-term benefits from a carrot/stick approach versus the long-term benefits.  One of my children had an award-winning second grade teacher--her classroom management skills were superb.  She used strong reward systems for everything.  Kids did beautifully in her classroom--what a success!  Until the next year, when the child was not rewarded for doing a problem, or answering a question, and didn't get a prize at the end of the week for not speaking out of turn, or.... It is a problem when student are at the university and have been conditioned to do homework or come to class for an immediate reward, rather than because of self-discipline and a realization (perhaps from experience) that if they don't do the work they won't learn the material.   

[Bootsie]

41 minutes ago, teachermom2834 said:

My dh has to block off a weekend every time grades are published to explain grades. He is a very generous grader. He has to answer questions like “You have a B because you only handed in 75% of the assignments and you had a 65 average on the tests.” Or “You have a C because you didn’t do any of the labs and missed half the homework’s.” Or because they had a bunch of zeros for cheating! There seems to be an expectation that if they do the class at all they should get a good grade and if they don’t drop and show up for the midterm and the final they should pass. 

 

I had a colleague who had a student who should up for 0 classes, took 0 exams, and completed 0 homework assignments, but did complete the course evaluation.  Thinking that the student must have mistakenly registered for one class but attending another class, my colleague contacted the student to make sure the registration error was corrected.  The student responded that he had been busy all semester and knew he hadn't done any of the work but was hoping that the extra credit for filling out the course evaluation would be enough for him to at least pass the class!

[Serenade]

2 hours ago, fourisenough said:

Replying to question posed much earlier in the thread:

The primary reason that despite the nurse shortage in the US it is very difficult to get into a nursing program (whether ADN, BSN, or 2nd degree BSN) is this: accreditation requires that nursing clinical instruction maintain a 1:8 teacher-to-student ratio. This means it’s expensive and difficult to educate nurses. Even at a huge state university (40k undergraduates), the college of nursing might enroll only 60-80 students annually. There can be no 400 student lectures for nursing; it’s small-batch, largely hands-on instruction during the clinical phase.

This is interesting and explains something I was wondering about.  At the university my younger son is attending in the fall, the most competitive degree program to get into is nursing.  Mechanical Engineering is a close second.

[Serenade]

1 hour ago, Clemsondana said:

  In the end, 3 students passed.  The A student had never missed class, the B student had missed once, and the C student had missed twice (the B and C weren't due to penalties because they had missed - it's possible to have an A with an absence).  Everybody else had missed 3+ of the 16 class meetings, and many had missed 5-6.  

 

I think attending class is one of the simplest high payout things students can do, even kids who struggle academically.  My older son with ADHD and I were recently discussing this.  He has many poor study habits 🙂, but he does one good thing.  He goes to every single class and shows up on time.  I'm sure that with him, this makes the difference of a letter grade, because simply going to class exposes a student to the material and begins the process of knowledge absorption. This is a kid who routinely puts off studying until the last minute, and generally, his grades go down as the semester progresses, because he has such difficulty balancing many assignments at once, and he refuses to get help with his executive function issues.  Yet he always goes to class, and that has enabled him to maintain a GPA just shy of Dean's List.  FWIW, he is often borderline between grades, and he has often felt that teachers round up rather than down because he attends class and shows interest.  

[EKS]

11 hours ago, Frances said:

Unfortunately, the ridiculous complexity of the numbers in many of the problems detracted from mastering the fundamental concepts. 

Yes!  Not only that, but when they give tests using it, different students get different numbers.  Frequently some will be easy and others will be really hard.  This is extremely unfair, especially for students who don't know that there are calculators out there that can lessen the burden in this regard (like by doing fractions for you).

[Farrar]

I'm going to go a different direction with the reasons I think cheating is on the rise. I don't disagree with the ones named, but I would put out there...

* The pandemic, coupled with social media and breakdowns in a number of societal institutions has led to a greater sense of disconnection. That includes students who don't see the point of much of anything, who don't feel engaged in a deeper level. And I don't think schools are doing a very good job of addressing this disaffection. And I also think that harsher penalties aren't a great solution because they reinforce that disconnection. I thought the solutions by the professor in the article were good ones because they were designed to give kids a second chance and re-engage them while still drawing some boundaries and penalties. But as he pointed out, those took a lot of his time. But that's just it... any fix for this core issue will take TIME. And time costs money.

* Secondarily, there's been a rise in expectations at the same time as there's been all that lack of engagement. Kids feel a lot of pressure. I think this is playing into it.

[EKS]

10 hours ago, lewelma said:

One of the biggest differences is how kids earn As, Bs, and Cs. In the USA, it is percent correct, so 90%-100% is an A, etc. But in NZ, it is based on levels of thinking from Blooms Taxonomy, it is NOT a percent correct system.

The grading scale used in the US with the percentages is idiotic for most applications.  It is honestly only good for things where questions are either right or wrong and there are a lot of them.  So spelling or math fact tests.  Everything else it just doesn't work for.

People, including education professionals, don't seem to have a clue about why it's ridiculous.  For example, when I got my master's degree in education, they used rubrics to grade everything.  You could get 1-5 points for each of, say, five parameters, and then the score would be reported as a percentage and that would be your grade.  The categories were more fleshed out than this, but essentially, it boiled down to this:

5 = Outstanding

4 = Very good

3 = Good

2 = Fair

1 = Poor

The grading scale was even shifted up a bit from standard, so failing started at 69%.  An A started at 93% and there was no +/-. An 80 was in the C range.  

Here's the thing.  The people who designed these courses were educators, and apparently it never occurred to them that a person could get all 3s, which supposedly meant "good," and still get a F!  The majority of the rubric was giving feedback on failing work!  

I absolutely think that we should get away from the percentage grading system except when it makes sense.  But this would require educators to actually think deeply about grading and most don't seem to have thought about it much at all.

 

[Dmmetler]

9 hours ago, Clarita said:

My husband got his bachelors in computer science and I got my bachelors and masters in electrical engineering. Both disciplines have certification programs that can get you in the field. However with just certifications there is going to be glass ceiling because a certification program teaches you very different things than what a Bachelor's program teaches you. (Essentially a certification teaches you how to use a hammer and a Bachelor's teaches you the theory behind tools.)

In electrical engineering the ceiling is much clearer in that typically you'll need the BS degree to get an engineer title and certification just gets you a technician title (moving from technician to engineer depends on the company some decades of experience as a technician can get you the title, others absolutely require the degree). In computer science the same does occur but they don't have a a title that they use across different companies for it. I've still seen instances where a person with a BS in computer science vs a person who has certifications have different job titles and not in the same ladder. 

I think also it's important to recognize some of these STEM majors are geared towards professional training more than "life-long learning". The goal of my BSEE is to train me to do a job. I did use a lot of the academic things I learned in college.  

As to the weeding, most of the weeding I saw were people not willing to do the amount of work required not that they flunked out.

My DH complains that he hates IT degrees for that reason. At most schools, they are a bunch of certifications with a LA core that adds up to a BS. If you just want coders, or web designers, or sysops, they're fine. But he needs software engineers. And they need to be able to solve problems and understand how computers think first, and code second. So, he wants CS majors, Engineering majors, math majors, accounting majors, statistics majors, or hard science majors, because they can generally problem solve and think, and they can learn to code. (Accounting is a big plus because his team is writing software for point of sale systems, and accountants know what needs to happen to make said software legal. I'm sure he would love a tax lawyer for the same reason). 

[Dmmetler]

28 minutes ago, EKS said:

Yes!  Not only that, but when they give tests using it, different students get different numbers.  Frequently some will be easy and others will be really hard.  This is extremely unfair, especially for students who don't know that there are calculators out there that can lessen the burden in this regard (like by doing fractions for you).

And if you put in something correct, but not in the expected  format (or perhaps didn't completely simplify), it's right or wrong, where a human grader would be able to see that yes, you are on the right track, and could correct that last step. 

 

For S, who's math class used MyMathLab and regularly ran into such issues, the professor eventually started having her print the problem set, do it on paper and turn that in, because she would get about 90% of the problems about 90% correct, which often led to scores in the 10% range with a computer grading, and the 80% range with a human doing so. 

[EKS]

20 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

And if you put in something correct, but not in the expected  format (or perhaps didn't completely simplify), it's right or wrong, where a human grader would be able to see that yes, you are on the right track, and could correct that last step.

Yes! 

Here's a recent example of that happening to me.  This was just practice, but if it had been on an exam, I would not have gotten credit as the instructor for this class will not regrade the automatically graded stuff.

[skimomma]

2 hours ago, maize said:

 

Several of my siblings are Stanford graduates, and they reported the fraternity test banks as a big reason kids wanted to join particular fraternities. 

 

I have been following this thread with much interest as a have a child currently pursuing a STEM degree that is struggling to make the jump from home-based one-on-one education to large-lecture course management.  And because I spent 13 years as faculty at a STEM university teaching engineering courses.  I see both sides of the discussion and have absolutely zero idea how to fix it all.

But, I have seen the above called "cheating" a few times in this thread and have some thoughts.  First, it is and was true that IME greek (and other) organizations do maintain collections of past work, exams, textbooks, etc.....  I do not see this as cheating.  If an exam or any other work has been returned to students, I do not see reviewing this material as cheating.  In fact, the STEM university I graduated from often had these materials available at the department level to anyone who requested it.  Sure, one could copy homework solutions from these collections but homework was almost never graded for credit so what would be the point?  I know I found it helpful to look at different approaches, including *wrong* ones to strengthen my understanding of the material.  And any faculty recycling exam questions after returning those exams to past students has got to understand that it means some people will come to the exam having seen those questions before.  I mean, we encourage our high schoolers to take practice (past) SAT/ACT/AP exams.  How is this different?  

One of the classes I taught had a large individual project component.  I changed it slightly every year....just enough that any student that attempted to start with a past completed project to try to "cheat" actually would have to demonstrate a higher level of competence than starting from scratch.  I knew that people were sharing old files so I worked that into the approach.  Go ahead!  I could also have just created completely unique projects every year and achieve the same thing.  But if I just used the same project year after year.....well, that's on me....I would be begging people to cheat.

Towards the end of my teaching time, I too had a suspicion that cheating was on the rise.  Most of the assessment in the classes I taught were pretty cheat-proof.  I caught a few blatant examples but it would be hard to cheat without being caught unless someone was straight-up impersonating another student.  However, there were a few assignments in which cheating would be easy.  So, I tested the suspicion.  I placed an embedded indicator within cheatable exam questions to see if students were sharing files with each other either during the online exam or from/with earlier sections.  I expected a high level of cases over the approximately 500 students who took the exam.  I found exactly *one.*  And that one happened to copy from another student who got the solution very wrong.  I did not turn in the two students involved as my plan from the beginning was simply to see if cheating was happening.....and they got zeros anyway.  It would probably have been considered entrapment anyway.  I'm not sure what I would have done had I kicked up a large percentage and it would have likely opened a big old can of ethical worms which I should have thought about before doing it.  This anecdotal story means absolutely nothing other than my suspicion was incorrect.

[skimomma]

22 minutes ago, EKS said:

Yes! 

Here's a recent example of that happening to me.  This was just practice, but if it had been on an exam, I would not have gotten credit as the instructor for this class will not regrade the automatically graded stuff.

This exact thing has made calculus so much more difficult for my child than it needed to be.  I think more time was spend trying to master the format of answers than learning the actual material.  I imagine this contributes to a lot of failure.

[KSera]

3 minutes ago, skimomma said:

This exact thing has made calculus so much more difficult for my child than it needed to be.  I think more time was spend trying to master the format of answers than learning the actual material.  I imagine this contributes to a lot of failure.

Yep. Happened to one of my kids. I honestly think they shouldn’t use these programs unless/until they get a lot better at recognizing different variations of the same answer. They are just awful for a large number of kids. This is another one of those places where processing speed makes a big difference. Fast processors may be able to bang through and do more problems when they keep getting ones wrong due to the formatting errors, but for kids where the homework is already taking them hours, it just becomes impossible when the software continues to add more and more problems each time they input an answer “wrong”. With hand grading, most of these would either not be considered errors at all or would be a very minor deduction that would still allow the student to do decently on the assignment and without all the extra work and frustration from the software. 

[Bootsie]

39 minutes ago, skimomma said:

IBut, I have seen the above called "cheating" a few times in this thread and have some thoughts.  First, it is and was true that IME greek (and other) organizations do maintain collections of past work, exams, textbooks, etc.....  I do not see this as cheating.  If an exam or any other work has been returned to students, I do not see reviewing this material as cheating.  In fact, the STEM university I graduated from often had these materials available at the department level to anyone who requested it.  Sure, one could copy homework solutions from these collections but homework was almost never graded for credit so what would be the point?  I know I found it helpful to look at different approaches, including *wrong* ones to strengthen my understanding of the material.  And any faculty recycling exam questions after returning those exams to past students has got to understand that it means some people will come to the exam having seen those questions before.  I mean, we encourage our high schoolers to take practice (past) SAT/ACT/AP exams.  How is this different?  

 

I do not consider having access to former exams that a professor has returned to students cheating, either.  I always expected if I had handed an exam back that those questions were out there.  In fact, I used to put copies of all of my old exams on reserve in the library, so that ALL students could access them, not just those who were in a fraternity or some other group.  If a students really wanted to go through and memorize 1000s of questions, hoping the same ones would appear, I hoped they must be learning something.  And, I could reasonably reword, rewrite questions for an exam each semester. 

The problem I have now is that as soon as I hand out an exam in the classroom for students to take, I must assume that it is available anywhere in the world, because of the ability for technology to quickly spread the information.  Technology, coupled with the increase of asynchronous testing (either because it is being done online within a time window or because more students have reasons not to take an in-person exam in the classroom simultaneously with other students), means that giving Test #1 and thinking it is reasonable secure until I return the test is no longer possible.