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

[8filltheheart]

1 hour ago, Bootsie said:

I agree.  I think the focus on standardized testing is a major factor in this.  The focus becomes on getting ready to earn a certain score on an exam rather than learning.  And, it isn't just students cheating in this system.  There have been a number of instances in which teachers have cheated in order to make sure their students do well on standardized tests and parents have cheated to get their kids SAT scores to get them into college.  There is a focus on--how do I get the score I need--not a focus on how do I learn the material being tested.  Even short of cheating, the focus is on how to make sure students pick the right answer.  I had a friend teaching high school math to students at a school which had a high rate of failures on end-of-the-year exams.  One problem was that most of the students could not read--so they could not do the word problems.  She had to attend a two-day seminar on strategies to help these students pick the right answer without reading the math problem!  

 

Fixing k12 education should be a priority, but  issues are so complex that it isnt a bandaid fix from the top. Their solutions have not improved educational outcomes. It really needs to be fixed from the bottom to rebuild the foundation.  But, I dont see a realistic path there.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

11 hours ago, lewelma said:

I think this is really true. My understanding is that the liberal arts university education in the USA was derived from the British upper class education of the 1800s. And that it has not changed that much. My dad (a university professor) firmly believes that universities are there to help make you a deep thinker and that they should NOT be professional degrees that are targeted to jobs. But I'm starting to wonder if his view of them is old fashioned, and not one that the younger generation shares. They really just want to punch their ticket to get a job, and if the ticket is a university education with a bunch of stuff not directly related to their future job, then they will just get through it the fastest way possible, which is often by cheating. 

I'm reading a book about the advent of land grant universities in the US. It starts with a discussion of the debate over what the purpose of colleges were -- curriculum like theology, law, philosophy & classical languages or curriculum like science, engineering, & agriculture. This debate was happening in the 1790s-1860s as technical institutions were being established. 

Sometimes I think we need a more diversified set of terms for post-secondary education. College is used to cover many paths that sometimes don't overlap much.

[Brittany1116]

5 hours ago, Bootsie said:

So, is part of the issue we are raising a generation of kids who, if they don't find value in something, dishonesty, cheating, and stealing are OK?  So, I don't find value in going 20 miles per hour in a school zone when I personally don't see any children out--so it's OK to speed.  I don't see value in the services the federal government provides, so it is OK to cheat on my taxes?  I don't see value in wearing a mask during a pandemic, so its OK not to wear one?  I don't see value in copyright laws, so it is OK to plagiarize?  I don't see value in my employer making more money--that isn't relevant to me--so it is OK for me to steal out of the petty cash fund?  

It's a matter of values and personal integrity. I was annoyed by some of my required courses but never cheated because 1. I didn't need to, but also, 2. It was morally wrong. Because yes, I have seen a lot of the under 30 crowd make tiktoks and reddit commentary etc about turning a blind eye to theft in the workplace, from customers or employees. 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Among the reasons why students cheat, let's not ignore the students who feel entitled to do what they want because that's what they want. Maybe it's entitlement or not needing to work hard during high school or having lawnmower/snowplow parents who eliminated any obstacle in front of them.

Some students don't go to college for the intellectual challenge, but for the credential, networking, lifestyle, parental expectation, or social scene.

I don't know how large a group this category is, but it's not zero.

[Bootsie]

2 minutes ago, Sebastian (a lady) said:

Among the reasons why students cheat, let's not ignore the students who feel entitled to do what they want because that's what they want. Maybe it's entitlement or not needing to work hard during high school or having lawnmower/snowplow parents who eliminated any obstacle in front of them.

Some students don't go to college for the intellectual challenge, but for the credential, networking, lifestyle, parental expectation, or social scene.

I don't know how large a group this category is, but it's not zero.

I am missing the link, somehow, though.  I get that some students don't go to college for the intellectual challenge.  But, what I don't understand is how that (at least in their minds) justifies dishonesty, cheating, stealing.  

[skimomma]

More pondering on student services, background, and privilege.....

I confess that as someone who did not find college easy and with little family support, I sometimes struggled to empathize with students when I was faculty.  One student I had really helped me understand how student services might not reach everyone.

I was teaching a general freshman engineering class, the second in a two-class series.  It was the first time I taught this particular class so I was floundering myself and it was the largest class I had ever taught to date.  The content was not a problem but managing such a large class that used several different software packages, having 14 sections to align with, and a very complicated learning platform had me nervous.  Even the wireless mic for the class was a constant problem.  The class was so large, I never got to the point of knowing each student's name.  But during the first tightly-timed, technologically difficult, in-class lab practical, early in the semester, one male student started crying when time was up.  The rest of the class filed out and he sat at his computer sobbing.  

I, of course, went up to him and sat down to try to calm him down.  He explained that he barely passed the first class in the series and could see he was going to have the same problems.  He had done the practical and felt like it was correct but he didn't know how to save his work to the desktop to upload it to Canvas properly (they were on guest accounts that timed out) and that his work was lost and he had nothing to upload.  I assured him we would work this out and to not panic.  We made an appointment for him to come to my office to retake the practical with me directly supervising so his work would not be lost.  This turned into a weekly meeting when I learned a few things about him.  He was a first generation college student and his childhood home did not have a computer.  He was from a very small farming community and his schools also lacked technology that most of us take for granted.  He simply did not have the skills to figure out how to use a computer, let alone the crazy circus we expect students to be able to manage for every course.  

We met once a week and I walked him through Canvas, file management, troubleshooting, etc....  I helped him figure out how to use the online textbook for Calculus.  He had failed the previous semester because he could not even INSTALL the textbook, let alone manage the homework platform.  He did not even know how to attach files to an email!  

There was (and still is) no help center or class for this type of need.  He was too embarrassed to ask for this type of help from friends.

I ran into him three years later.  He was elated.  He said he was graduating, with honors, and had a job and it was all because he got that little bit of help.  It was a warm fuzzy feeling that every teacher loves but it was also eye opening how easy it could have been for a very smart young person to fail.

I am now seeing it first hand (please don't quote).  My own dd, who does make her own doctor appointments FTR, is struggling in college.  She was homeschooled and that masked what is now becoming obvious.  She likely has ADHD and struggles with executive functioning.  Without the scaffolding I provided as her one-on-one teacher/handholder, managing all things organizational is very difficult for her.  Luckily, she attends a local school and more than once dh and I have stepped in the help her with everything from successfully getting the proper software on her laptop to working out difficulties with Canvas.  Her grades are good.  She is not having difficulty with content.  But without our help and privilege, she would likely drop out of school.  She still might.  And I pretty much guarantee she would have by now had she gone away to school.  It is just too stressful for her.  We are all hopeful that the sheer amount of busywork and the management that requires will decrease as she progresses through her degree sequence.

Again, I don't know how to fix this.  I see the challenges on both sides.  I see how this can push some (not most, however) students to take unethical shortcuts.  

[73349]

On 6/2/2022 at 1:37 AM, 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. 

 

On 6/2/2022 at 8:38 AM, maize said:

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.

I think some of what we are seeing here is simply about money.

Students from families with more money go to K-12 schools with higher standards. That's a good thing (for them) until at some point it isn't, and many high-performing students at high-performing schools are miserable (while even the highest-performing students at low-performing schools don't have equitable access to education).

Parents with more money are more likely to expect their children to attend college whether they have an academic bent or not, and their children do not depend on merit scholarships for a chance to attend mid-tier schools. When high schools and colleges increase student-instructor ratios and section sizes, they disincentivize assessment of complex understanding whether in person or online. Some parents and students value grades more than learning.

And there are rewards for it. Businesses use college as a weeding service even for positions that don't require college-taught skills, yet often fail to screen out candidates who do need the college-taught skills and managed to get through college without them (as by having groupmates do all the work on projects). My poor DH has to work with these people.

Students who cheat do so for different reasons, just as students who drop out do so for different reasons. Just as with other undesirable behaviors, deterrence is best as a combination of making it unattractive, difficult, and unrewarding compared to the alternatives. If preventing, catching, and punishing cheating is harder for instructors than cheating is for students, then cheating will happen more.

Edited June 3, 2022 by 73349

[Clemsondana]

@skimomma's post made me think about how all of this is interacting with tech, in a couple of directions.  I was a first-gen college student, and there were certainly things that others knew that I didn't.  But, very few people had computers, and very little was online.  Students may have chosen not to read the syllabus that was handed out on the first day, but every student in the class had the same opportunity to read it - it was physically in their hands.  Some students had the advantage of having a computer and being able to type papers in their own room - when my junior-year roommate had a computer, all 4 of us shared it for most of the year until my dad's office got new computers and I got an ancient laptop that ran word and excel, very slowly.  🙂  Before that, we used a computer lab.  But, other than convenience, there wasn't much advantage to be had, besides maybe being able to type.  Now there are expectations that students can navigate platforms and various technologies easily, and some kids are at a serious disadvantage.  But, the flip side to that is that if there is something that you don't know, you have to ask.  I recently had a real-life discussion about kids being unwilling to ask for help.  There are lots of really friendly, helpful people - classmates, roommates, professors, people who work at university help desks, university librarians - that can get students headed in the right direction.  I wrote on a different discussion that I had noticed that students were moving through college less as a cohort due to AP/DE stuff and it might be isolating.  Everybody was lost about something when we were freshmen, and we helped each other - one student knew where to buy scan-tron forms, another had found where we paid for the breakage card for chem lab, and somebody else found where they put the old tests on reserve at the library.  Saying 'I can't figure out how to get this book/program to download' wouldn't have been a big deal, and if somebody had made the statement that they'd never had access to this sort of thing before, other students would have helped - if nothing else, they'd have let you set your up side-by-side with them.  But, students don't want to ask and they wind up in holes they can't get out of. 

At the same time, though, students also don't pay attention or don't want to have to play around with online programs to figure things out.  At our co-op, several of the instructors use Canvas. I tell students on the first day  that my class is most easily accessed in 'module' view because it's sorted by week - the video (a repeat of the in-person lecture), homework, and quiz for week 1 are all together - with projects scattered in mostly chronological order, all of it sorted into modules that take 3-5 weeks to complete.  This year I had students email asking about due dates rather than looking them up in canvas.  When we had covid day in January and I told them to watch the video since we couldn't have in-person lecture, I had a student have no idea where to go to find the video.  I had complaints that I had too many assignments due on the same day, despite them being posted for a month and me sending weekly reminders that students should do 1-2 things each week so that they didn't all pile up.  My students are still in high school and I think that part of my job is to help with these growing pains, but I think that some of the kids carry these same issues into college, where it generally isn't the professor's job to help with growing pains to the same extent.  When I sigh and grit my teeth before sitting down to deal with the frustration that it may take to set up a new class, some students look at it, decide that it's a pain to deal with, and just...don't deal with it.  I've had students say that they don't read messages and mute announcements.  I know that, when Covid first hit, I made the statement that everybody was trying so hard to make you feel connected that I was getting inundated with emails - multiple emails from every group in the church and from every company I'd ever associated with.  I just started deleting them, unread.  I'm wondering if efforts to 'help' students are causing a similar effect - they're just tuning it all out as background noise and end up missing important, helpful content.

And, we talk about tech making it easier to cheat - I think it both makes it easier and makes it feel less real.  Students copy and paste paragraphs into answers, and it feels different than actually copying answers by hand.  When I gave in-person quizzes, I occasionally had 'wandering eyes' cheating.  When I switched to online, I had a lot more 'google the question' cheating.  It may also just make it easier to catch cheating.  When a struggling student answers a question with content that I know is at the graduate level, I'm pretty sure that they copied it from somewhere.  If they were just old-school copying from their textbook instead of whatever google popped up, their answer would have looked like everybody else's and I wouldn't have known.  At any rate, I see a mix of 'desperation cheating', where a student doesn't know the answer and panics, and 'I shouldn't have to do this much work' cheating (when the assignment is 'read any news article about a scientific topic and write a paragraph or 2 about it - describe it, tell why it's interesting/important, or critique it's findings' I struggle to believe that the student has no option but to copy and paste whole paragraphs into their reflection).  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

I am missing the link, somehow, though.  I get that some students don't go to college for the intellectual challenge.  But, what I don't understand is how that (at least in their minds) justifies dishonesty, cheating, stealing.  

I'm thinking of students who are used to having obstacles swept away from their path, used to getting what they want. I think many of these types also cheat in high school. 

[maize]

Re: students who don't ask for help.

I was this student. My reluctance to ask for help was a combination of personality (I was naturally shy/socially anxious) and my circumstances growing up. I had undiagnosed ADHD, and like many ADHD kids was constantly in trouble with adults. I never met expectations, and was regularly reprimanded. Teachers usually thought I was lazy and not trying--they could tell I was intellectually capable of doing the work, so clearly I just wasn't making an effort. Executive function difficulties were not on most people's radar at the time. When 99% of individual interactions with teachers and authority figures are negative, kids don't get the message that these people are there to help and are on their side. I figured if I was confused or stuck I just had to bumble through as best I could.

[lewelma]

I'm currently taking a couple of classes up at the university to get a Masters. Last night we were talking about the upcoming test, and all agreed that it was really not a learning opportunity. It was to be 1 essay 1 hour done online, and not really in keeping with a class that was based on presentations and papers. I told them that as far as I know, I have never taken a essay test under time pressure in my life, and if so, it was 35 years ago. I also told them that I have had clinical OCD associated with timed tested, and that the electronic format was likely to trigger it.

Well, after dinner, one of the students came up to me and said, "look I'll take the test first and just tell you what the essay is a couple hours early so you can prep. I don't care if its cheating. Doesn't matter to me. Really, just tell me even closer to the day and I'm happy to do this for you." She is very focused on learning, and is an excellent student. She is 29 and a content writer for an online magazine, so this assessment style was no big deal to her, and she recognized that I had a problem. Her ethics were to value people over institutional norms. Very interesting. But even more interesting was that I have been trained to value institutional norms more than my own learning, so turned her down even though it would have helped my learning to be able to have 3 hours for the essay rather than one. More time to think and develop deep arguments.

I wonder if each of us are a product of our times. 

Edited June 3, 2022 by lewelma

[Bootsie]

16 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I'm currently taking a couple of classes up at the university to get a Masters. Last night we were talking about the upcoming test, and all agreed that it was really not a learning opportunity. It was to be 1 essay 1 hour done online, and not really in keeping with a class that was based on presentations and papers. I told them that as far as I know, I have never taken a essay test under time pressure in my life, and if so, it was 35 years ago. I also told them that I have had clinical OCD associated with timed tested, and that the electronic format was likely to trigger it.

Well, after dinner, one of the students came up to me and said, "look I'll take the test first and just tell you what the essay is a couple hours early so you can prep. I don't care if its cheating. Doesn't matter to me. Really, just tell me even closer to the day and I'm happy to do this for you." She is very focused on learning, and is an excellent student. She is 29 and a content writer for an online magazine, so this assessment style was no big deal to her, and she recognized that I had a problem. Her ethics were to value people over institutional norms. Very interesting. But even more interesting was that I have been trained to value institutional norms more than my own learning, so turned her down even though it would have helped my learning to be able to have 3 hours for the essay rather than one. More time to think and develop deep arguments.

I wonder if each of us are a product of our times. 

I am curious why you think it would help your learning to have 3 hours for the essay.  I can see how it might impact your performance, but I am not seeing the connection to learning.  If it is learning that you value, and you think that spending three hours on the topic would increase your learning beyond what spending 1 hour would, would it make any difference to your learning to have your performance measured on the first hour, but you continue to work for two more hours than if your performance was being measured over three hours?

[regentrude]

35 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I'm currently taking a couple of classes up at the university to get a Masters. Last night we were talking about the upcoming test, and all agreed that it was really not a learning opportunity. 

It is an interesting expectation that tests should be learning opportunities. 

I can see *preparing* for tests as a learning opportunity, but the test itself? Usually those are just an instrument for judging performance. 

Eta: iow, most instructors consider tests a summative assessment, not a formative one.

Edited June 3, 2022 by regentrude

[KSera]

17 hours ago, maize said:

There is a sense of entitlement-to-help-and-personal-accommodation that parents in the higher tiers of society (more likely college educated themselves) are far more likely to teach their children--and then have reinforced by teachers, administrators, and other adults in the child's life. Children from working-class or blue collar homes are far less likely to get messages growing up that adults in positions of responsibility are on their side and are interested in helping them.

This makes it far less natural for, say, first generation college students to utilize office hours when they don't understand something, or to seek out professors for mentorship.

There is a whole challenge of navigating an unfamiliar world and unfamiliar expectation--as well as unfamiliar opportunities that they don't know how to take advantage of. 

I do think there are significant barriers for many students that are not being adequately addressed.

I am very much aware of this with my own children. Two of mine have disabilities that receive accommodations. Extra time on tests and a quiet testing environment are the ones they use and the ones that benefit them most. They qualify for many more services than they make use of (they don't use note takers for example). But I am very aware that the only reason they are able to get the accommodations they need are because they have a parent with the time, knowledge and financial resources to know there was a problem and be able to get and pay for testing to address it. There have to be a whole lot of students who could succeed if they had similar, but they don't.

15 hours ago, lewelma said:

I agree, but I do wonder if it is the realm of the rich, to have this liberal arts core with literature and beauty and thinking. 

I think so. College is so expensive, it's not practical for people to spend the money to get a degree that doesn't lead to employment unless they are well off enough to do so. I know people who speak down of any education that isn't specifically a "liberal arts education" but I don't see how that is practical for the majority of people.

14 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

This is the problem. Many, many jobs could be done with either short certification programs or on the job training. I think we are seeing some of that here with some tech companies no longer requiring degrees. I am really hoping to see more change in that direction.

There are many that can, but many, many that can't. Doctors, nurses, Speech, OT, PT, dentists, and many other health care careers obviously need degree training. Law, teaching, scientists, etc, etc. There are some tech jobs that can be done with short certification, but those are mostly lower level jobs. People can self educate long enough to eventually move into higher level tech jobs, but people with degrees will get there faster. I'm in agreement that not everyone needs to go to college, and I think it's counter productive for so many jobs that really don't need someone to have a college degree to require one, but I think it's worthwhile for a great number of people in society to be college educated. I would hate to see that become something only for the richest and most privileged who can afford to do so (which in a lot of ways is how it is now with how expensive it has become, even while at the same time even more jobs require college degrees--which means there are lots of people getting degrees who can't afford it. I would rather see it be made more affordable than to make the degrees unnecessary and have only the privileged be college educated.)

[Roadrunner]

29 minutes ago, KSera said:

I am very much aware of this with my own children. Two of mine have disabilities that receive accommodations. Extra time on tests and a quiet testing environment are the ones they use and the ones that benefit them most. They qualify for many more services than they make use of (they don't use note takers for example). But I am very aware that the only reason they are able to get the accommodations they need are because they have a parent with the time, knowledge and financial resources to know there was a problem and be able to get and pay for testing to address it. There have to be a whole lot of students who could succeed if they had similar, but they don't.

I think so. College is so expensive, it's not practical for people to spend the money to get a degree that doesn't lead to employment unless they are well off enough to do so. I know people who speak down of any education that isn't specifically a "liberal arts education" but I don't see how that is practical for the majority of people.

There are many that can, but many, many that can't. Doctors, nurses, Speech, OT, PT, dentists, and many other health care careers obviously need degree training. Law, teaching, scientists, etc, etc. There are some tech jobs that can be done with short certification, but those are mostly lower level jobs. People can self educate long enough to eventually move into higher level tech jobs, but people with degrees will get there faster. I'm in agreement that not everyone needs to go to college, and I think it's counter productive for so many jobs that really don't need someone to have a college degree to require one, but I think it's worthwhile for a great number of people in society to be college educated. I would hate to see that become something only for the richest and most privileged who can afford to do so (which in a lot of ways is how it is now with how expensive it has become, even while at the same time even more jobs require college degrees--which means there are lots of people getting degrees who can't afford it. I would rather see it be made more affordable than to make the degrees unnecessary and have only the privileged be college educated.)

And nobody is telling them not to, so hopefully when they arrive there, they actually want to learn instead of cheat in order to get their papers. Because you know the worst thing? Incompetence. I don’t want a nurse or a doctor or a speech therapist or a dentist or an accountant who cheated through college. I am thankful for board exams and CPA certifications and bar exams that at least weed out the truly incompetent.  

But I think two year technical degrees that are devoid of “extras” can fill in the role for others. My cousin went to a nursing program in Europe instead of the last two years of high school. 
 

We also should have a definition of what is under the college umbrella as somebody suggested. Is there no difference between degrees? Should there be no difference between a BA that is mostly technical and BA that the type discussed earlier by lewelma? I think there should be. 

[KSera]

4 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

And nobody is telling them not to, so hopefully when they arrive there, they actually want to learn instead of cheat in order to get their papers. Because you know the worst thing? Incompetence. I don’t want a nurse or a doctor or a speech therapist or a dentist or an accountant who cheated through college. I am thankful for board exams and CPA certifications and bar exams that at least weed out the truly incompetent.  

I'm pretty sure no one is arguing for cheating. We're talking about ways to combat it mostly along with reasons it might be so bad.

[NorthernBeth]

9 hours ago, Bootsie said:

I am missing the link, somehow, though.  I get that some students don't go to college for the intellectual challenge.  But, what I don't understand is how that (at least in their minds) justifies dishonesty, cheating, stealing.  

I think because they are there for  " the piece of paper".  They need the degree to get the job.  The requirement seems totally arbitrary and unfair to them  Since it seems unfair, they have no qualms about cheating.   I am not saying ALL students feel this way.  But I think many students who DO  cheat may have that attitude toward cheating, which makes it justifiable in their minds.  If the system is unfair, then it is totally fine to cheat the system.   

This is my thought anyways.

[lewelma]

5 hours ago, regentrude said:

It is an interesting expectation that tests should be learning opportunities. 

I can see *preparing* for tests as a learning opportunity, but the test itself? Usually those are just an instrument for judging performance. 

Eta: iow, most instructors consider tests a summative assessment, not a formative one.

Ah, must be because of the type of test. This is a class that is all about evaluating your own perspectives and deeply-held assumptions. No content really. The prof told us that the general topic of the essay questions would be "what is the state of environmental management today?" But that is not the question. I can do some thinking about this topic, but it is pretty broad and based on ontological and epistomological frameworks, deeply held assumptions about values, and the importance of power in decision making.

When I get the question, it would actually be useful to me and my understanding of the field to have enough time to write deeply and well. In a class like this, the process of writing itself would be a learning exercise, which is why he kicked around giving us a week to do the essay. Three hours would give me 2 hours of thinking about a complex topic with a prompt to focus my thoughts. If I was given more time (like a day), the test could be a learning opportunity rather than an assessment opportunity. I think it will be very difficult to "judge performance" as you say on a test like this.  In an hour, my focus will just be on coming up with the easiest thesis to defend, and writing it as fast as possible. Worthless really. 

[lewelma]

5 hours ago, Bootsie said:

I am curious why you think it would help your learning to have 3 hours for the essay.  I can see how it might impact your performance, but I am not seeing the connection to learning.  If it is learning that you value, and you think that spending three hours on the topic would increase your learning beyond what spending 1 hour would, would it make any difference to your learning to have your performance measured on the first hour, but you continue to work for two more hours than if your performance was being measured over three hours?

I answered this question above. But as to 'performance being measured', that is where I think all of the students in this class are in agreement, if the assessments do not help with learning then they are not worth their time. They will work 100 hours on a difficult research paper, but an hour test without content to study. Worthless. 

And then what seems to be happening is that if the class as a whole feels that they are not done well by, then it is ethical from this generation's point of view to subvert the assessment.

Edited June 4, 2022 by lewelma

[lewelma]

Oh, and one more thing. The students are very aware that they must get a B+ in this class to be allowed to do the second year of the masters (the thesis year). So if they do poorly on a 1 hour test (that has no content), they may not be allowed to do a 1 YEAR writing project.  This also seems very unfair to them, which is also why some are willing to subvert the test. 

[Clemsondana]

26 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Oh, and one more thing. The students are very aware that they must get a B+ in this class to be allowed to do the second year of the masters (the thesis year). So if they do poorly on a 1 hour test (that has no content), they may not be allowed to do a 1 YEAR writing project.  This also seems very unfair to them, which is also why some are willing to subvert the test. 

Not knowing the system in NZ...is there a requirement that there be a normal distribution, or some other reason why the majority of students couldn't get a B+?  In the grad programs that spouse and I were in (different fields, different Us) students had to earn a B or higher in every class.  I certainly had some weird ones - one professor had us work with 3D models of DNA to understand chromatin, and then we had to be able to identify them by touch (inside a box where we couldn't see them).  The modeling was great for giving us a sense of scale for how things fit together.  The test was...bizarre. 

But, it sounds like your class has spent hours thinking about and working with the topic, and you'll be asked to write about some aspect of it.  Here, it's entirely possible that everybody who has put in the work would pass, and the professor is just assessing that everybody has given thought to the content can an come up with something reasonable.  I don't remember many people not earning the required Bs in grad school.  I also know that, as much as I've talked about high schoolers and undergrads cheating, I didn't hear talk about it in grad school.  I can't say that there were never wandering eyes on a test, but definitely nothing pre-planned.  I can't imagine that a grad student who cheated wouldn't have been expelled - I doubt they would be given the warning or second chance that is more common for undergrads.  This is what I was alluding to earlier, when I said that undergrads will decide what is important, and if they don't feel that the class is covering content that they will need in the future (whether it is or not - they don't always know what's coming in subsequent classes) then it's fine to cheat.  

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, Clemsondana said:

Not knowing the system in NZ...is there a requirement that there be a normal distribution, or some other reason why the majority of students couldn't get a B+?  In the grad programs that spouse and I were in (different fields, different Us) students had to earn a B or higher in every class.  I certainly had some weird ones - one professor had us work with 3D models of DNA to understand chromatin, and then we had to be able to identify them by touch (inside a box where we couldn't see them).  The modeling was great for giving us a sense of scale for how things fit together.  The test was...bizarre. 

But, it sounds like your class has spent hours thinking about and working with the topic, and you'll be asked to write about some aspect of it.  Here, it's entirely possible that everybody who has put in the work would pass, and the professor is just assessing that everybody has given thought to the content can an come up with something reasonable.  I don't remember many people not earning the required Bs in grad school.  I also know that, as much as I've talked about high schoolers and undergrads cheating, I didn't hear talk about it in grad school.  I can't say that there were never wandering eyes on a test, but definitely nothing pre-planned.  I can't imagine that a grad student who cheated wouldn't have been expelled - I doubt they would be given the warning or second chance that is more common for undergrads.  This is what I was alluding to earlier, when I said that undergrads will decide what is important, and if they don't feel that the class is covering content that they will need in the future (whether it is or not - they don't always know what's coming in subsequent classes) then it's fine to cheat.  

Ah, but you see I think you are missing the point. They are angry not about the B+ requirement, that is just an interesting side note that a 1 hour test should not be linked in any way to assessing your capability of doing a one year thesis. No they are angry that the test is a waste of their time because it is in no way valuable to them. They are happy to work and work hard, but they are completely non-apologetic about subverting an assessment they deem worthless.

They are also willing to give students who they see as having a legitimate complaint a leg up on the assessment by giving them not the answer, but the question a little bit early. So not just me, but another student with dyslexia. They do not feel that formal recognition of disability is a requirement. They are creating a devolved system which undermines traditional authority. And I think this generational change in values and perspectives will eventually change the assessment approach of universities. 

 

[Bootsie]

7 hours ago, NorthernBeth said:

I think because they are there for  " the piece of paper".  They need the degree to get the job.  The requirement seems totally arbitrary and unfair to them  Since it seems unfair, they have no qualms about cheating.   I am not saying ALL students feel this way.  But I think many students who DO  cheat may have that attitude toward cheating, which makes it justifiable in their minds.  If the system is unfair, then it is totally fine to cheat the system.   

This is my thought anyways.

I am hearing this line of reasoning more and more and, frankly, this to me is more disturbing than simply cheating in a college class.   This mentality and behavior will be demonstrated other places.  If they do not personally think the tax system is fair--cheating is justified.  If they do not personally think insider trading laws are fair--cheating is justified.  If they do not personally think vaccine mandates are fair--cheating is justified.  If they do not personally think the standards for "organiic" label on their company's product are fair--cheating is justified.  If they do not personally think the standards for getting a drug approved are fair--cheating is justified.  

[Bootsie]

7 hours ago, lewelma said:

Ah, must be because of the type of test. This is a class that is all about evaluating your own perspectives and deeply-held assumptions. No content really. The prof told us that the general topic of the essay questions would be "what is the state of environmental management today?" But that is not the question. I can do some thinking about this topic, but it is pretty broad and based on ontological and epistomological frameworks, deeply held assumptions about values, and the importance of power in decision making.

When I get the question, it would actually be useful to me and my understanding of the field to have enough time to write deeply and well. In a class like this, the process of writing itself would be a learning exercise, which is why he kicked around giving us a week to do the essay. Three hours would give me 2 hours of thinking about a complex topic with a prompt to focus my thoughts. If I was given more time (like a day), the test could be a learning opportunity rather than an assessment opportunity. I think it will be very difficult to "judge performance" as you say on a test like this.  In an hour, my focus will just be on coming up with the easiest thesis to defend, and writing it as fast as possible. Worthless really. 

As a professor, I do not see these types of assignments worthless. I am a person who likes to think deeply and I know I would walk out of the test and ponder the question for the next day or two (the learning process you describe isn't precluded just because I wouldn't be evaluated on it).  But, there are times people have to think on their feet and come up with an answer quickly and defend their response.  It may be in a job interview.  It may be to represent your field and school at a social event.  It may be to ensure that when class discussions are held the student has a reasonable amount of terminology at the tip of their tongue to be able to enter into the discussion.  In may be to develop critical thinking skills of applying content to a new situation.  It may be about developing critical thinking skills of judgment--yes sometimes being able to choose which is the simplest thesis to defend and defending it well is a useful skill.  

That's off the top of my head... and I am sure that as I think about this over the next few hours I will come up with better, more complex, more in-depth evaluation.  I just don't relate to the notion that students are a better judge of the value of an assignment/assessment than professor and if they don't value it as worthwhile, cheating is justified.  

[Clemsondana]

7 hours ago, lewelma said:

Ah, but you see I think you are missing the point. They are angry not about the B+ requirement, that is just an interesting side note that a 1 hour test should not be linked in any way to assessing your capability of doing a one year thesis. No they are angry that the test is a waste of their time because it is in no way valuable to them. They are happy to work and work hard, but they are completely non-apologetic about subverting an assessment they deem worthless.

They are also willing to give students who they see as having a legitimate complaint a leg up on the assessment by giving them not the answer, but the question a little bit early. So not just me, but another student with dyslexia. They do not feel that formal recognition of disability is a requirement. They are creating a devolved system which undermines traditional authority. And I think this generational change in values and perspectives will eventually change the assessment approach of universities. 

 

I understand the point - I just wonder where they are comfortable drawing the line.  Students said that they shouldn't have to learn to calculate a dose by hand because it's a waste of time since there's an app. Students have told me that they shouldn't have to learn anything about the chemical structures of fats because they won't use it in day-to-day nursing work (we were learning the structure of cis and trans fats, so it's not as if a patient might never ask 'What is this trans-fat stuff we are supposed to avoid eating?').  I was confident that I'd never do a titration in my day job, but I had to learn to do them in chemistry and the concept, if not the math, shows up in one of the labs that I teach.  When I was in 3rd semester calculus I couldn't fathom why anybody in biology ever had to learn about flux through a doughnut...and then one day I sat in on training to learn about flow cytometry and how the cell sorter worked...and I was glad that at least some biologists understood it well enough to see how it could be used.  If students don't need to do anything that they don't see the purpose in, then it seems like all cheating, no matter what the assignment, is justifiable.  If you already know how to write a lab report, or if you are confident that you'll never have to write one because you want to work in pharmaceutical sales, not research, then go ahead an cheat - it's not meaningful for you.  If the computer hardware class starts off with a review of circuits so that the professor can make sure that everybody is on the same page, and you've already taken a circuits class, go ahead and copy the homework from somebody else - you aren't actually learning anything.

When I was in grad school, the faculty were explicit about us needing to be able to think our feet as far as being able to talk about our own research and think logically.  There often wasn't one right answer, but they knew that people who continued in the field would give presentations where they needed to be able to assess new information and answer questions on the spot.  There was a time for longer thought - students took months to write their proposals and dissertations.  But, they also wanted to make sure that we could give elevator presentations.  Not knowing what the faculty member is looking for, I'm hesitant to write it off as having no purpose.  I'm never thrilled about a class where the assessment comes down to one assignment since every type is more challenging for somebody. 

And, while there could be accommodations for students with disabilities, there is sometimes purpose in having an assignment that forces students to strengthen a skill.  I so struggled with the handful of oral presentation assignments that I had in college that I nearly didn't go to grad school because I knew that there were lots of presentations (I had some mild health issues that made fear of fainting, combined with vertigo, almost panic inducing).  This only got better through repeatedly having to give talks - for the department, for my committee - such that, by the end of grad school I was only mildly terrified when giving a talk at a conference where I knew that future Nobel recipients would be in the audience.  I don't know if your career path ever has situations where people in the field may need to throw together a report or recommendation quickly or get paperwork dealt with on short deadlines.  Sometimes assignments are just arbitrary, and sometimes a faculty member is wanting students to do a thing for a reason - it's hard to know, sometimes.  

Edited June 4, 2022 by Clemsondana
Edited for spelling...because while I did debate about whether to go to grad school, grade school (aka elementary) was not optional.

[BusyMom5]

9 hours ago, lewelma said:

Ah, but you see I think you are missing the point. They are angry not about the B+ requirement, that is just an interesting side note that a 1 hour test should not be linked in any way to assessing your capability of doing a one year thesis. No they are angry that the test is a waste of their time because it is in no way valuable to them. They are happy to work and work hard, but they are completely non-apologetic about subverting an assessment they deem worthless.

They are also willing to give students who they see as having a legitimate complaint a leg up on the assessment by giving them not the answer, but the question a little bit early. So not just me, but another student with dyslexia. They do not feel that formal recognition of disability is a requirement. They are creating a devolved system which undermines traditional authority. And I think this generational change in values and perspectives will eventually change the assessment approach of universities. 

 

My first thought when reading this was how are students a good judge of what they will need to know in their future job?  Or what things they need to have mastered and what things they can just look up on Google?  Very scary in some professions!

My probably unpopular opinion is that there are too many students in college who shouldn't be there.  Colleges aren't even trying to weed out those with poor potential- instead they keep encouraging them more and more!  They also don't tell people that a particular job isn't a good fit for personality and ability.  I have a good friend who is a professor for student teachers, and she says the last 5+ years she gets students who have no business working with children.   They should have been counseled to change degree programs,  but no one wants to tell anyone no. This was her last semester,  in large part due to these awful students.  She says the last few years have been bad, but this last cohort has her worried about the state of education.  Another person in my life has a goal to be a specific medical technician.  Its a lofty goal and programs are competitive to get into.  This person spent over 4 years getting 2 years of CC courses- failing multiple classes and poor grades in others.  She isn't really suited to this job- personality or ability-wise (I would not want her to do mine).  She has a lot of other skills and abilities,  but no one is counseling her into jobs that are more suited to her.  Its sad and frustrating! If she cheats,  its bc she can't do the work but wants the degree- which she won't be able to do the job correctly. 

 

[lewelma]

10 hours ago, Clemsondana said:

 Sometimes assignments are just arbitrary, and sometimes a faculty member is wanting students to do a thing for a reason - it's hard to know, sometimes.  

Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I already have a PhD in ecology, so don't need another degree in environmental management. I'm doing it because it is fun, and I want to learn and meet new people. My career plan is to volunteer for an environmental advocacy group to write submissions for bills that are being developed.

So this last week, I've just been listening to the other students to try to get a deeper perspective on cheating from good students, not the ones cheating to avoid the work. Keep in mind, the good student here was helping someone she thought needed help (me) rather than cheating to improve her own grade. 

As for the assignment, the professor is new and still finding his feet (although he is very good). He made the mistake of telling the class that he thought the assignment would be better over a week than in a one hour exam slot. He told us that the problem was 2 fold. 1) The course last year had an exam (he took over from a different prof who we have heard was not very good), and he told us it was a lot of bureaucracy to change it. And 2) he told us that he heard some other professors discussing cheating and that papers writers might be hired. (The students questioned if these were undergrad or grad students, and he didn't know.) So the other professors were using this kind of exam to be verification that the papers written throughout the term were likely written by the student. So he kind of felt that maybe he should do the same. But had no strong feelings or any evidence that anyone was buying papers in his grad classes. 

Well, that discussion did not go over well. Not only did the prof admit that the exam type was a bad choice for this kind of class, he also basically insulted every student in the class saying that he needed to check for cheating. At least that is the way the students saw it. 

Edited June 4, 2022 by lewelma

[Bootsie]

9 hours ago, lewelma said:

Well, that discussion did not go over well. Not only did the prof admit that the exam type was a bad choice for this kind of class, he also basically insulted every student in the class saying that he needed to check for cheating. At least that is the way the students saw it. 

So, the graduate students were insulted because they thought that the professor thought he needed to check for cheating, so the students think that is justification for cheating?  Maybe the professor knew more than the students thought.

This, I think, is much of the point of the blog.  Cheating, especially with electronic and asynchronous assignments is rampant; it is not the case that there is one situation every few years.  Several people have commented that graduate students wouldn't cheat--but immediately someone gives an example of graduate students willing to cheat in their class that semester.  Two of the most egregious cheating situations I have dealt with have been graduate students.  DH had a huge cheating scandal that involved almost an entire class of graduate students when he taught at an Ivy-caliber school.  

Then a professor designs a test to minimize cheating.  It does not matter that the students was not attempting to raise her own grade; she would be participating in academic dishonesty if she gave another student the questions.  it doesn't matter if her motive was to help the other student, subvert authority, or value friendships.  If she works for a company in a few years and receives a copy of the quarterly financials several hours before they are made public, and she has a friend she know is dyslexic and could really use more time than others to look over the financial statements,  so she takes it upon herself to help her friend by sharing the financial statements early it is called insider trading--she didn't give her friend the answer to buy or sell the stock, she didn't benefit financially herself, she was helping--but it is illegal (in most parts of the world) and unethical.  Many universities and programs have something in their mission statements about developing "ethical leaders"--passing an ethics course is one thing--but I think taking a firm stand on cheating is even more important.

 

[lewelma]

What I am fascinated by is the generational shift in mindset.  The younger generation does not value the power dynamic associated with student/professor. Even this professor who is only 32 has brought it up, that he is uncomfortable being the judge of the work and has said that he is happy to work with the student to develop a way to get the assignments done if the listed schedule will not work.  He set a test only because he accepted a class run by an older professor, but has decided that it is not an appropriate assessment and will be dropping it next year for more research projects, presentations, reading logs, etc. I think eventually as the younger generation becomes the professors, the assessment types will change. This is already happening in my younger boy's courses.

It is actually fascinating to be a fly on the wall in this class while this thread is running. Because I don't need the degree, the university has no power over me, so I can listen from a sociologist's point of view and not feel involved. I'm definitely seeing generational change and it will be interesting to see where it goes in the future.

[Clemsondana]

This is interesting because, while I'm seeing more cheating, I'm also sometimes finding out about it because the students are reporting it.  They don't necessarily say 'Sally plagiarized the lab report and also looked on Joe's paper during the quiz' but they'll tell me (sometimes directly, sometimes through their parents - I'm teaching high school freshmen who sometimes know that I socialize with their moms) that I should watch the back row during quizzes or that they were hearing some of the boys talk about cheating on a particular assignment.  Former students say that they hide/toss their homework so that their younger siblings have to do it themselves, since that's how they'll learn it.  I've had students who earned less-than-awesome grades on a test tell their parents 'But at least I didn't cheat'.  I've had students complain about it happening in their DE classes. 

My classes have a lot of different types of assignments - homework, short quizzes, longer tests, lab reports, small projects, article reviews - some of which are open book, some are not, some of which are easy and some are not, and some of which you get credit just for putting in an honest effort at doing it and some of which have to be right.  I've seen no correlation between the type of assignment and the rate of cheating.  The type of cheating changes - the 'wandering eye/copying from your neighbor' only occurs on in-class quizzes or tests if I give those, while plagiarism (copying and pasting entire paragraphs from websites) happens on all sorts of assignments.  This is the type of cheating that has increased the most as tech use increased among my students.  In my experience, the non-cheating students are really upset by students who do cheat.  It's terrible in classes that use some sort of distribution to figure out final grades.  My class is not that way because I want it set up such that every student can earn an A, but students don't like the idea that other students may be getting unearned grades.  

I see working with a student on schedule adjustments as really different from being OK with cheating.  At our co-op/online classes, instructors have different philosophies. I'm the biggest softie about late work compared to the others.  My reasoning is that I don't want to have to judge excuses and want to give every opportunity for students to succeed.  I think it comes from teaching freshmen, who are often overwhelmed by their first year of high school classes.  I do point out to them that they can't expect this from everybody, and even some of my good students have learned the hard way that for some instructors the due date is inflexible (and, to be fair, for some classes it's necessary - I have on assignment that I don't accept late because the class uses each others presentations to learn content...3 weeks is plenty of time to make a 4-slide powerpoint).  What I've found is that, for the most part, it doesn't make much difference...students who get far behind can't actually do the work at double pace to catch up.  I think it's beneficial for them to see that early on, too - that not having a harsh penalty for late work doesn't make it a good idea to get behind (and it helps in the rare situation where they truly need more time due to some sort of crisis).  But, I also seem my job differently at the high school level than I did when I taught bio for nurses, and, for that matter, when I taught a CC class for non-majors that I jokingly called 'biology appreciation'.  Part of the goal of the nursing classes was to establish a culture of being on time, because it matters in that field.  Sort of tangential, but sort of related...a few years ago one of my kids had a workout in a gym that shared a parking lot with a beauty school.  I was often there when students were arriving, and the woman who ran the school stood in the parking lot with a watch, calling out that students had 1 more minute to be inside, and writing down names of students who were late, sometimes reminding them that they were only allowed one more tardy.  It seemed extreme, but I figured that it was a soft skill important for that particular job - nobody wants to make a haircut appointment with somebody who shows up late and is behind all day - so they built it into the training.  

[daijobu]

3 hours ago, lewelma said:

What I am fascinated by is the generational shift in mindset.  The younger generation does not value the power dynamic associated with student/professor.

 

I wonder if this is related to our youth culture, where we celebrate and expect our young students to make great achievements.  

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-30-under-30-lists-mis_n_4791178

"...but more recently, our cultural obsession with youth has shifted to focus more on success. "

"...the media loves to focus on the achievements of young people -- and to tell us all the amazing things about being in your 20s."

Young kids are celebrated for "creating nuclear fusion reactors" in their backyards, when the truth is at odds with what is reported.  

https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/1876

"Then why did the media get so excited? Because the juxtaposition of the terms "fusion reactor," "school lab" and "13 year old" make an irresistible mix when assembled into a headline. And because it's always exciting to pretend that a young student with his Christmas money can achieve what multibillion euro projects have yet to demonstrate."

The reality that the real breakthroughs come from ladies older than me, like Jennifer Doudna introducing the world to CRISPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna after working in  labs for decades before her breakthrough.  

 

[lewelma]

29 minutes ago, daijobu said:

I wonder if this is related to our youth culture, where we celebrate and expect our young students to make great achievements.  

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-30-under-30-lists-mis_n_4791178

"...but more recently, our cultural obsession with youth has shifted to focus more on success. "

"...the media loves to focus on the achievements of young people -- and to tell us all the amazing things about being in your 20s."

Young kids are celebrated for "creating nuclear fusion reactors" in their backyards, when the truth is at odds with what is reported.  

https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/1876

"Then why did the media get so excited? Because the juxtaposition of the terms "fusion reactor," "school lab" and "13 year old" make an irresistible mix when assembled into a headline. And because it's always exciting to pretend that a young student with his Christmas money can achieve what multibillion euro projects have yet to demonstrate."

The reality that the real breakthroughs come from ladies older than me, like Jennifer Doudna introducing the world to CRISPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna after working in  labs for decades before her breakthrough.  

 

Interesting point. Do you think that the internet has just augmented what has always been true of youth rebellion and youth believing they know more than their elders?  I'm sensing that the shift in mindset is away from judgement because of the focus on mental health. 

Tests = judgement . Tests = power.

These are things that the younger generation no longer value, which is why I think cheating is on the rise. 

[Clemsondana]

Sigh...I had decided that there wasn't much else to say in this thread, and then this morning I opened facebook and one of the top posts was from RetractionWatch, which sometimes posts science mistakes but is often posting about falsified data.  I think it's where I first learned about Brain Wansink, whose papers, which seem to be full of dodgy data and analysis, have influenced US nutrition policy in ways that, true or not, are likely to remain for decades if the rate at which we normally get bad and outdated science out of health policy is any precedent.  Fear of leading future research and medical treatment astray was one of the reasons that our faculty were so opposed to cheating - they were old-school, many retiring not long after I graduated, and their belief that poor classroom integrity would carry over into poor research integrety likely influenced their policies. 

Still, I was done, and then I got a text from the mom of a former student who is finishing up college classes this year, saying that her kid wanted to show me something.  Kid is in the first week of an online upper level entomology course and they have to post comments...and another student had basically copied her kid's paragraph, just changing a few words.  So, her kid was reporting it so that she didn't get in trouble, and is left wondering why anybody would do that on an assignment that seemed to basically be a reflection on what they thought was interesting about the topic.  I get that students may not find that to be a helpful assignment for them so maybe that makes it OK, but I use these sorts of easy assignments to get students to at least figure out what they know, and also so that whenever possible I can choose examples that fit their interests.  It's not unusual for me to start a class with 'I've gotten a lot of comments about X, so I looked up an example and...' or 'For those of you who have been writing about Y, this bit of material will show you how complex that topic is!'.  Sigh...2 reminders of academic integrity issues before 9 am today, even if neither of them involves one of my current students.  

[Dmmetler]

I posted in length on this on the afterschooling board, and then thought it might be relevant to this thread, so I brought it over here. I think it might explain a lot of what college profs are seeing. 
 

 

M (my bonus kid who went back to school for 9th grade due to COVID and other reasons) didn’t pass geometry second term, so has to do credit recovery, and the school sent her home with a chromebooks and a log in for a virtual class. She’s been coming to my house so I can help her with it during the day, and 2 days in, I hate it with a passion.
 

As far as I can tell, this software exists to have kids cheat their way through it and get credit quickly. As in, if you just hit enter, leaving the box blank, it will give you a correct answer, and you could just copy that and paste it into the answer box, yet the assignments are scored. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it looks like they’re about 75% of the grade for the module. 

 

What’s more, I see no way to  actually watch the videos and  do the problem sets in a reasonable amount of time. And that’s with me sitting with the kid to keep her on task, because, darn it, she got stuck with three math classes last year due to failing math in online school, and I’d prefer to avoid that again9! Four questions in every subtopic are short essays (three problem solving/written explanations/proofs, akin to AoPS, but not as well written, each unit has 10-12 subtopics and a test, and during the school year, it’s probably a unit a week over 18 weeks, but over the summer, it’s more like one a day. 
 

So, you’ve set a perfect storm where kids are told they have to get through this content quickly and get a passing score, or else, with 0 instruction except for videos (most of which open Khan academy). And the system is set up to facilitate not doing the assignments and just copying/pasting  the correct answer to get a quick 100% on the assignments, and unless I am missing something, you can get a C by just copying and pasting, even if you bomb the tests.
 

If this was what schools used when online (and even if it were only a unit a week in a semester, it would be a lot if you have 5-6 classes with a similar workload), no wonder they’re cheating up a storm-they were in a situation where the whole system not only allowed it, but encouraged it! 

[Clemsondana]

10 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

If this was what schools used when online (and even if it were only a unit a week in a semester, it would be a lot if you have 5-6 classes with a similar workload), no wonder they’re cheating up a storm-they were in a situation where the whole system not only allowed it, but encouraged it! 

In my volunteer work, which is with elementary school kids, I see similar things.  I remember helping one kid do some sort of 'learn about Lincoln for President's Day' type of assignment.  I don't remember who we were supposed to learn about, but I tried to help the kid find a reasonable source.  Then I started talking about reading the paragraphs and kid said that they were supposed to copy and paste the answers that they found...which seemed crazy, and kid could have been lying, but from the look of the assignment, the only reasonable way to do the assignment involved using copy and paste.  It certainly wasn't reasonable to have a kid that age do real research to answer the questions and turn in the next day.  It was something like an online worksheet with questions like 'What city was famous person born in?' for part of it - questions that might be appropriate if the student was given a few paragraphs that included the information.  But, given the questions and the internet...the best way to do it was to copy the questions into a search engine and then copy the answers into the right spot. 

I may have ranted to the afterschool supervisor that this is why students fail my high school class...because I ask a simple question like 'The number of electrons that an atom has determines _____?' which, for my biology class for students who haven't had chemistry, is covered in lecture and the book by saying that the number of electrons determines the type and number of chemical bond(s) that the atom can form.  And, yes, that's a less than ideal answer, but I don't have time to teach a chemistry class in the first week of high school freshman biology, so it's enough to cover what I need for them to know and can be built on when they take chemistry.  But, some students search the question and then give me a page-long answer about orbital theory and then complain that I'm asking college level material...all because they chose to google the question instead of using either the textbook or the linked video or one of the other, level-appropriate sites that I recommend.  Being explicitly taught to do this is mind-boggling.  

I have a friend whose kid's friend experienced something related with IB biology.  They were supposed to design an experiment, and they had a very limited amount of time to do it.  When nothing grew, there wasn't time to redo the experiment.  So, the student decided to make up data.  When my students design an experiment, I tell them to write with the data that they have.  If the data is really nothing, then write the report based on that and why it didn't work, and then tack on a page at the end showing what your expected results are so that I can see that you know how to label the axes on the graph.  And then the college chem labs that give old, dirty tubes and then grade based on percent yield...

There are definitely lots of things that teach kids terrible habits and put them in a situation where what is allowed, and even expected, in one class can get them kicked out of school in another.  I've said, in other contexts, that sometimes the most important lessons learned in a class have nothing to do with the actual content, but I'm always hoping that those lessons are about study skills, perseverance, use of tech, or time management, not bad research habits and cheating is good.  

[ieta_cassiopeia]

On 6/8/2022 at 12:52 AM, Clemsondana said:

I may have ranted to the afterschool supervisor that this is why students fail my high school class...because I ask a simple question like 'The number of electrons that an atom has determines _____?' which, for my biology class for students who haven't had chemistry, is covered in lecture and the book by saying that the number of electrons determines the type and number of chemical bond(s) that the atom can form.  And, yes, that's a less than ideal answer, but I don't have time to teach a chemistry class in the first week of high school freshman biology, so it's enough to cover what I need for them to know and can be built on when they take chemistry.  But, some students search the question and then give me a page-long answer about orbital theory and then complain that I'm asking college level material...all because they chose to google the question instead of using either the textbook or the linked video or one of the other, level-appropriate sites that I recommend.  Being explicitly taught to do this is mind-boggling.  

 

I remember being taught on several different occasions that, in the absence of more specific instructions from the teacher, that the best answer possible in one's own words should be given. Different students will, of course, parse that sort of advice differently - especially since it was not until about age 13 when I was taught to ask the teacher for length/content recommendations if they were not explicitly provided. Since a lot of my peers never appeared to learn the part about asking the teacher about anything, the temptation to cheat would seem obvious - though by the time the internet was common among my peers, we'd reached a level of education where this level of explanation was routine rather than the exception.

[lewelma]

My son's exam opened today, and below is part of what was written. The bold and pink are theirs.  I thought it very interesting that they directly attacked what some of the posters on this thread were discussing about fairness, equity, and diversity. I do like how they mentioned 'think tanks' in the second paragraph. lol

 

This is an open book, non-invigilated exam, designed to run for three business days. Technically, this gives students a time of (more or less) one question to work on and answer/ per day. This is because the questions invite students to engage with the topics in a reflective manner to exercise critical thinking skills. 

On the other hand, nothing precludes students to open the exam, complete it in a couple of hours and submit it, if they wish. The point is to be more open and inclusive to various ways of learning and performing on an open book exam.  The exam is open for this period of time for matters of equity and diversity, making the assessment more inclusive to students in various circumstances (incl. health or wellbeing priorities).

 

2) Intelectual terms: this exam is asking students to reflect on each question, and the exam submission is an individual process.  Turn-it-in analysis will be switched on, so please cite and quote your literature references according to the APA Style 2006. 
While the exam is an individual assessment, nothing precludes students to take initiative in organising collective think tanks and discuss answers at a high level and discuss literature references and key theories or examples. Yet, each answer is open-ended and individual and should be written and submitted individually by each student. Turn-it-in is required because of this, to ensure that students submit individual, original answers. In other words; your intellectual contributions.

[Roadrunner]

6 hours ago, lewelma said:

My son's exam opened today, and below is part of what was written. The bold and pink are theirs.  I thought it very interesting that they directly attacked what some of the posters on this thread were discussing about fairness, equity, and diversity. I do like how they mentioned 'think tanks' in the second paragraph. lol

 

This is an open book, non-invigilated exam, designed to run for three business days. Technically, this gives students a time of (more or less) one question to work on and answer/ per day. This is because the questions invite students to engage with the topics in a reflective manner to exercise critical thinking skills. 

On the other hand, nothing precludes students to open the exam, complete it in a couple of hours and submit it, if they wish. The point is to be more open and inclusive to various ways of learning and performing on an open book exam.  The exam is open for this period of time for matters of equity and diversity, making the assessment more inclusive to students in various circumstances (incl. health or wellbeing priorities).

 

2) Intelectual terms: this exam is asking students to reflect on each question, and the exam submission is an individual process.  Turn-it-in analysis will be switched on, so please cite and quote your literature references according to the APA Style 2006. 
While the exam is an individual assessment, nothing precludes students to take initiative in organising collective think tanks and discuss answers at a high level and discuss literature references and key theories or examples. Yet, each answer is open-ended and individual and should be written and submitted individually by each student. Turn-it-in is required because of this, to ensure that students submit individual, original answers. In other words; your intellectual contributions.

Meanwhile my friend’s students complain if they can’t locate the answer word by word in the book. Basically if they have to think based on what they learned, they write letters saying he is testing on material that hasn’t been taught. They expect every question to basically quote the textbook. 
 

This exam you describe above sound pretty cool. I don’t  know if such exams are a norm anywhere in our colleges. Maybe just tippy top schools. I don’t know. 

[Brittany1116]

38 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Meanwhile my friend’s students complain if they can’t locate the answer word by word in the book. Basically if they have to think based on what they learned, they write letters saying he is testing on material that hasn’t been taught. They expect every question to basically quote the textbook. 
 

This exam you describe above sound pretty cool. I don’t  know if such exams are a norm anywhere in our colleges. Maybe just tippy top schools. I don’t know. 

Many public schools have been teaching kids to do that. I know of several homeschool parents in different states who are running into this problem now with the kids they pulled from public in the last few years. The kids have no reading comprehension or recall; they are trained only to look up key words and phrases in the content. If there isn't a ready and matching multiple choice answer, then the problem is the work, not the kid. Sounds like a result of teaching to a standardized test. 

[Clemsondana]

I think that some of this has to be specific to the type of class.  As much as we want to have students doing high level complex thinking about many topics, some classes really are teaching simple facts that students need to be able to recall quickly.  I'm friends with multiple people who teach anatomy in college, intended for medical students.  There are things that they just need to know instantly...I don't want a doctor needing to work collaboratively to recall what bone is broken or why particular enzyme levels are elevated when a patient has liver damage.  

But, in other fields or classes, much of a student's work can be done collaboratively due to the nature of the material.  Spouse is an engineer and had classes where most of the work was through projects that were done in a group.  We were recently talking about this in another context - spouse was talking about the unfairness of the fact that groups tended to sort based on ability such that their group grabbed the 4 best students (all of whom are now very successful in the field) and you get a product that is more than just the sum of the work that the 4 could have done individually (and if you assign groups you wind up in the situation that dmmetler described above).  But, back to the topic, much of the work in those classes was done as collaborative projects.  

But, even those of us saying that cheating is a problem aren't opposed to open book work, projects, or collaboration.  We mostly just feel that the assessment needs to be appropriate to the goals of the class.  In college, students in my major took some serious labs where our entire grade came from various lab reports, with some labs that took multiple weeks to complete and reports that would have many different graphs.  Although we each did our own work, we could certainly talk about the reports and we had a week or more to complete each one.  I don't think that there were any tests or quizzes in that class.  We also had to do research for a professor, who assigned a grade for that.  There were no reports or tests in that, either, although we all had to present our work in some format, such as a lab meeting.

I teach 2 classes at my co-op.  One is a traditional biology class with open book work and closed-book tests/quizzes.  The second is a class that explores all sorts of interesting topics in biology - sometimes molecular details, sometimes how ethics relates to science and culture, sometimes looking at how to do research in complex systems and the types of things that can be confounding factors.  In this class, students write a weekly paper about what they've learned - just a page is required, although some students routinely write 2-3 pages as they ponder the topics.  The classes are for different populations (the second class is for upperclassmen), serve different purposes, and cover different types of material.  There isn't much to ponder about the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes or the parts of the cell, but when that is fairly automatic knowledge we can take time in the second class to ponder the interactions between us and our microbiome, how the number of bacterial cells outnumbers the number of human cells, and how the byproducts released by different populations of bacteria might be affecting our physical and mental health.  I routinely have parents tell me that dinner table conversation comes from the things that we discuss in Bio 2, and the assessment reflects this.  For Bio 1, I've had students thank me for helping them learn challenging material or preparing them for college, but I don't think I've ever heard of philosophical discussion coming out of that class.  

[Bootsie]

12 hours ago, lewelma said:

My son's exam opened today, and below is part of what was written. The bold and pink are theirs.  I thought it very interesting that they directly attacked what some of the posters on this thread were discussing about fairness, equity, and diversity. I do like how they mentioned 'think tanks' in the second paragraph. lol

 

It sounds to me as if they have run into situations in which they do not think it is equitable or fair for some students to have 3 hours for an exam and others have 4.5 or 6 hours for an eam (which extends past the time others have had to compete the exam).  This is perhaps a work around to "be in compliance" without providing any students more time than others have.

[lewelma]

Because of this thread, he has been asking his friends about cheating. He was curious about his 3-hour stats exam which was taken online with no proctoring. It had computer graded multiple choice and numeric answers, and human graded sentence style explanations. Apparently, there were different questions on all the exams and also similar questions but with different numbers for calculation.  And the question order was shuffled. So with 50 questions it would be hard to do it together. It was not super time pressured. Everyone had 3 hours (he had 3 hours 30 minutes), but most people finished before the 2 hour 30 mark, including him. 

 

[lewelma]

20 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

It sounds to me as if they have run into situations in which they do not think it is equitable or fair for some students to have 3 hours for an exam and others have 4.5 or 6 hours for an eam (which extends past the time others have had to compete the exam).  This is perhaps a work around to "be in compliance" without providing any students more time than others have.

No one here gets time and a half or double time. The most you can get is 10 minutes extra for every hour. They would rather employ reader/writers and keep the time almost the same. So the above is not true for this class. 

This class is human geography, and part of what they study is power dynamics and inclusivity. So I'm guessing that the professors practice what they preach. 

 

[lewelma]

Here is one of the essay questions on the test (please don't quote!). He has to answer 4 of 5 essays. To give you a feel for how it requires the critical thinking mentioned above (and clearly goes beyond the lectures). This is a first semester 100 level class. 

In the module on planning and place, we discussed Jane Jacobs' activism and work with communities. Drawing on Jacobs' approach, identify planning strategies that could support urban adaptation to climate change with reference to Christchurch city at a neighbourhood scale. Elaborate on how this approach can contribute to urban socio-ecological sustainability more broadly. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by lewelma

[Roadrunner]

49 minutes ago, lewelma said:

No one here gets time and a half or double time. The most you can get is 10 minutes extra for every hour. They would rather employ reader/writers and keep the time almost the same. So the above is not true for this class. 

This class is human geography, and part of what they study is power dynamics and inclusivity. So I'm guessing that the professors practice what they preach. 

 

If you only have an extra 10 minutes, kids with documented learning disabilities could take you to court. They are entitled to accommodations. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Roadrunner

[lewelma]

2 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

If you only have an extra 10 minutes, kids with documented learning disabilities could take you to court. They are entitled to accommodations. 

Not in NZ. 10 minutes per hour extra is the standard accommodation for documented learning disabilities. Plus a reader/writer, technology, separate room, breaks, etc depending on need. I have known of only one person to argue for time and a half specifically on a hand-written, high-level math exam where they couldn't find a writer who could write for the kid with dysgraphia. 

 

 

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, lewelma said:

Not in NZ. 10 minutes per hour extra is the standard accommodation for documented learning disabilities. Plus a reader/writer, technology, separate room, breaks, etc depending on need. I have known of only one person to argue for time and a half specifically on a hand-written, high-level math exam where they couldn't find a writer who could write for the kid with dysgraphia. 

A significantly more nuanced approach. Here, extra time seems to be the most often granted accommodation (probably because it's cheap) even though it may not be the most effective. Students with documented challenges are entitled to accommodations but not any particular accommodation.

[regentrude]

1 hour ago, lewelma said:

Not in NZ. 10 minutes per hour extra is the standard accommodation for documented learning disabilities. Plus a reader/writer, technology, separate room, breaks, etc depending on need. I have known of only one person to argue for time and a half specifically on a hand-written, high-level math exam where they couldn't find a writer who could write for the kid with dysgraphia. 

Interesting. Standard here is 1.5 x time, and occasionally double time. (I only once had a student who received tripe time accommodation.... can you imagine spending six hours on a final exam?) They all get separate rooms/cubicles and distraction free environments. Some of the students also receive a scribe, but that is rare.
In my class of 400-500, about 15-25 students received extended testing time. Maybe 2-3 of those get double.

[shawthorne44]

3 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

A significantly more nuanced approach. Here, extra time seems to be the most often granted accommodation (probably because it's cheap) even though it may not be the most effective. Students with documented challenges are entitled to accommodations but not any particular accommodation.

We got testing for DD.   I really suspected a vision problem, but we had to get the general tests first, which found a vision problem and also without asking gave DD 2X on testing.    We hadn't asked for that and they were a bit shocked that we really didn't care.  

The Vision tests found dyslexia and fortunately her problems were all curable with vision therapy.    How did I not know that Dyslexia was sometimes treatable?   DD's was that she saw two of everything so the letters were blurry.   To read, she'd spread them out and just read the left one.   Which explains why she could read, but hated it.  

The thing is her dyslexia is cured now.   Halleluiah!   But they told me that the testing documentation is good from now on.  Seems off.  
 

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, shawthorne44 said:

We got testing for DD.   I really suspected a vision problem, but we had to get the general tests first, which found a vision problem and also without asking gave DD 2X on testing.    We hadn't asked for that and they were a bit shocked that we really didn't care.  

The Vision tests found dyslexia and fortunately her problems were all curable with vision therapy.    How did I not know that Dyslexia was sometimes treatable?   DD's was that she saw two of everything so the letters were blurry.   To read, she'd spread them out and just read the left one.   Which explains why she could read, but hated it.  

The thing is her dyslexia is cured now.   Halleluiah!   But they told me that the testing documentation is good from now on.  Seems off.  
 

Having a reader for folks with a similar issue would work too and conserve energy. The big testing companies, however, from which many districts take their cues, generally allow one major  accommodation. Time, or reader/scribe, or adaptive technology. Not all of the above or any combo thereof.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Sneezyone