Cheating Via the Internet at College 467
Electron Barrage writes, "An anonymous professor writes that last year about half of the seniors at his US university were suspected of cheating, mostly due to the Internet and community sites such as Wikipedia. He guesses that perhaps 25%-30% were actually guilty, a huge increase from earlier levels. According to this professor, it's nearly impossible for the universities to keep up with the new forms of cheating enabled by the Net. Will academic institutions learn to deal with this new reality? It sounds a little dubious from this professor's viewpoint." The article mentions the anti-cheating services Turn It In and iThenticate (while decrying their expense), but expresses worry over the new countermeasure represented by Student of Fortune.
cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
as the "web 2.0" empowerment of individuals continues unchecked, people's reputation will come less from the judgement of university systems, but rather from people's actual connections and accomplishments.
the idea of "cheating" will go away, because no one will care what some big, lumbering organization (the university) judges about what you've learned. people might actually be able to go learn what they want from free public resources instead of being trapped in painfully boring situations to get a degree - where they are so unmotivated they cut and paste text from web pages.
Whaaaa? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't be the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Universities are a lot more than classes. There's research going on, and mentoring. Really gen ed courses and freshman classes (the ones some unmotivated person might take and cheat on) are probably the least important thing that happens at a university. Educated people deserve their titles and authority because they actually know what they're talking about. And if they aren't popular with the masses or don't have connections... so what? Majority rule is retarded rule (example: youtube, digg, myspace)
Professors are Enabling This (Score:3, Insightful)
Further, professors are enabling this by making assignments that people CAN cheat on. If professors would stop being so lazy by reusing exams, paper writing prompts, homework assignments, etc., and started using creativity and more in-class, blue-book style written-answer testing rather than relying on the old "ABCD, or E" Scantron multiple choice exam crutch, I think schools would see cheating levels drop, or see the cheaters fail out. While it's tough to do this when it comes to assigning a research paper, perhaps if the professor would think of a creative enough topic and assign a different topic each year, there wouldn't be such an opportunity for students to cheat. Just think, instead of writing a paper detailing the intricacies of the American Civil War in expository form, have students write the paper in narrative form as a merchant in Quebec observing the war from afar. Such an obscure paper would be easy for someone well-versed in the history presented in the class to write, but nearly impossible for someone to locate on a cheating site for duplication.
The answer: professors need to stop being so damned lazy, and then perhaps their students will follow suit.
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it would be wonderful if employees would look at more than our paper credentials, and learning was free. I just doubt that the internet would help much more than a proper academic system would.
Re:Whaaaa? (Score:3, Insightful)
Price (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend of mine took the same program, but was a few semesters behind, her tuition during the last semester was almost exactly double what I had been paying, not to mention the hundreds of dollars for overpriced books, parking pass fees, various other student fees, etc.
Such a system ensures that the rich will continue to get richer, and the poor will get poorer. Is student X that went to school Y really smarter? A better worker? Or was it just that student A who went to school B couldn't afford that Ivy-League education. Was student X really a good learner in class, or could he afford to take the same class several times until he eventually passed. Nowadays, maybe the case is that student X could pay somebody to do the work for him, whether online or otherwise.
Sorry, but today's post-secondary education system is a joke, with the institutions reaming students for every little dollar and cent they can. And for the record, the best damn prof I had was not some expensive PHD who spoke self-rightous gobbledekgook and looked down on the whole class (while being 20 years out-of-date and not really teaching anything relevant), he was a gentlemen with a good class mannerism, lots of current industry experience in the given field, and the ability to work with and communicate with students.
The real question should be: Is this caused by an increase in cheating students (and the resources to do so), or is it caused by an industry that has become stagnant, boring, and oftimes irrelevant?
I happen to love my field (IT). There were some courses that I loved. There were many courses that I wandered through (accounting, basic computing courses for the people that *didn't* like IT but wanted a job), and many that were irrelevant (outdated computing languages that almost nobody used... except for the college's sponsoring industries). There were also a lot of courses I wish I could have taken, but lacked the money. One of these days I'll probably have to go back to uni, and I greatly loath the concept of paying for dull, vaguely-related courses taught by barely-competent profs. I wouldn't download my answers or my essays - despite the boredom and irrelevance there is some sense of personal accomplishment to finishing useless courses - but I can definately see the motivation behind some that do.
The college is the problem too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Invalidating their grades with automatic F's, not only in the class they cheated in, but all the classes they have taken within that school year, would be the solution. One can figure if one has cheated in one class, one has possibly cheated in others too.
However, for the above to be done, students need to be drilled during freshman orientation. They need to be explained the institution's cheating policy, and what constitutes cheating and what is "fair". Fair is when you cite your sources. At least then, you're being honest about where you obtained your information. Copying and pasteing isn't real work. You're suppose to paraphrase in your own words. (Maybe it's the secondary schools' fault for not better preparing students in regard with this matter.)
Lack of Respect for Academic Integrity (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like there is a growing lack of respect for academic integrity now of days. Most of these cheaters have only one goal in college: graduate and make big bucks at all costs. They don't care about academic integrity; they just care about the fat paychecks that they think that they'll receive after they graduate. It's not about learning; it's about getting through school at all costs.
It does no good for somebody to have a college degree if he or she didn't learn anything in the entire process. That is the trouble with cheating. Sure a cheater may be able to bypass an exam, a class, or even a few semesters. However, he or she wouldn't have learned as much (if anything) during school, and the cheater won't be effective when he or she goes to work. Imagine if the engineers that built our transportation systems, buildings, and other structures that we rely on, cheated through school and on the engineering licensing exams? Imagine if our doctors cheated their way through school? Cheating may be the easy way out of a test or class, but it is very detrimental to the cheater in the long run, even if the cheater never gets caught. And, in some extreme cases, cheaters may cost other people money, or even lives.
Students need to learn the value of their education. Undergraduate school is a greuling, grinding, seemingly never ending stream of courses (I'm a sophomore CS major now), but cheating is just a quick fix (if not caught) that certainly doesn't help in future courses, future jobs, and especially for future academics. College is hard. Cheating is a terrible way of dealing with college academics, and it is certainly an ineffective way to learn something.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no - you're going way too far here. Your point is valid, but not the main issue, at least as I see it.
The issue is that handed-in work - i.e. papers, exercises, and so forth, written alone and submitted later on - have become easy to cheat with. This was always true, and always will be true, and yes, the internet does make this far easier. But this has always existed.
The solution is very simple, and I am amazed that TFA didn't at least mention it. The solution is not to base grades on such handed-in work. Instead, base grades on performance that you can ensure is the student's own. Higher (and lower) education have a name for this: exams. Conduct an exam under carefully-controlled conditions, and no cheating is possible.
Of course, this is also getting harder and harder; recently I have heard of a students going to the restroom and using their cellphones to IM questions&answers, things like that. But this can also be solved - have short enough exams so that going to the restroom isn't allowed. You may need to have several mini-exams during a semester; this is more work for the professor and his TAs, but seems the right thing to do to me.
Higher (and maybe lower, as well) education needs to wake up to the newly-connected world we live in. Once not under supervision, a student can get help from any number of sources - friends, internet, whatever. Once we stop expecting to grade work they do in such uncontrolled circumstances, we are free to let them learn however they want, outside of the classroom. The professor teaches his class; later on, students are free to use wikipedia, group study, or whatever, to get more of a feel for the subject matter. Whatever and however they want. This wouldn't be cheating. (And, btw, if they choose wikipedia and it happens to contain false information, they will have learned a valuable lesson.) Then, when they take an exam under supervised conditions, the professor can ensure no cheating takes place, and their actual knowledge is tested.
Note: It may be a challenge to adapt this principle to certain academic fields, in particular those most used to grading papers and not exams. I don't deny this may take effort on the professors' part. Change isn't always easy - but it is necessary.
Part of the cheating problem is that the system... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get a problem wrong, you get it wrong. If it's a complex problem involving many steps (such as in physics), you could get the first half right, but the second half wrong. If you were to turn this into a TA, the TA would be able to mark the paper saying you are good here and this is where you fell apart. With an automated grading system, however, wrong is wrong. It becomes frustrating to the student to understand where they went wrong. As a way to alleviate such frustration, many turn to cheating with solution manuals and simply plug in the answers from the solution manual so they can get a high score on the homework.
And even worse, I have a friend who recenetly graduated from another university, and he said they used another automated homework system there. He said that there was a program floating around that would take your homework, and automatically solve the problems and fill in the solutions for you. Taking out the hassle of looking up the problem in the solution manual.
As for scantron tests, still feel it is an approiate format to test studens in when the class size is large and the question pool is diverse enough. Granted due dilligence is taken so that students don't cheat during the test.
Grump
Re:how credible is this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hum, I would say they are least hurt. They obviously have no interest in learning, so have lost nothing.
IMHO, the people who loose out the most are the community at large ( i.e. the economy ) when an army of university educated but in-effective graduates get into the work place.
Sites offering to do your course work for a few dollars don't help either. This is a society problem, not the fault of Wikipedia. Our children expect so much for so little effort.
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
They have their share of problems, but there is a reason people will continue paying the ridiculous amounts of money they cost - no amount of CSS and JavaScript can ever replace a solid, well-rounded education. I'm sure that in prepping you for that cool tech job it's a giant waste of time, that results in an arbitrarily valued piece of paper that has nothing to do with the on-the-job skills; but university isn't about that.
Re:professors are often too lazy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's simply false. Grading all those things is far easier than grading even a few papers, assuming you're paying attention to what your students are writing. Short assignments, quizzez, and most tests (those that don't involve serious essay writiing) are extremely easy to grade. But grading papers requires you to (1) Wade through the often terrible writing of your students, (2) figure out what they're trying to say, and (3) assess their ideas fairly and critically. Even if a paper is well written, you often have to read it multiple times in order to grade it fairly. If you're grading students on their writing as well as on their ideas, which you ought to be, you have to read it several times in order to grade it two ways.
I think that this is misguided. Yes, good questions can probe for understanding; but the job of assignments in a college course is (ideally) about more than testing what students know. Good asignments push students to develop original ideas and go beyond what the lecture and assigned readings provide. Papers are about challenging students to think and learn, not just assessing their knowledge. Good professors (and graders, if they have any leeway) grade for originality, creativity, and quality of thought. Students who write papers that simply regurgitate lecture and assigned reading ought to receive middling grades at best.
Re:Why is Wikipedia different than an encyclopedia (Score:3, Insightful)
The first is the practice of cut-and-paste without attribution; this is considered a fairly serious matter in academia, considering that academia typically has a publish-or-perish mentality under which having your papers cited is important. Online resources are far easier to cut-and-paste than paper documents. This is particularly true for Wikipedia in so much as citations are theoretically present already.
The second is that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, considering that the whole reason for its existence is as a community-edited model. Ergo, vandalism can occur much more easily than it can be in any remotely reputable encyclopaedia. So even if you ARE willing to cite it, you shouldn't use it unless you're specifically using it as an example of, say, online culture, rather than as a source of reliable information.
The third bit is that an education is not merely about information recall, but information processing. In other words, mere practice with a search engine is no substitute for the analytical skills to decide what the hell is going on in a situation and to assess possible courses of action. Raw data and rules, if you've never actually done anything with them, are useless. After all, in the Real World you're not there to regurgitate facts or theories; you're supposed to use them. If you're spending all your time searching on fundamentals because you don't know what the hell you're doing, you don't deserve the job.
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
As I mentioned in another thread, this doesn't make sense. The problem is that 'handed-in work' and exams don't actually serve the same purpose. Professors don't want students to write papers in order to demonstrate their knowledge; they want students to write papers because that format promotes original thought and the development of new ideas. You can't replace this function with exams.
No, it isn't necessary in these fields. Just the opposite -- maintaining the status quo is necessary. Do you expect students to learn how to do serious research in an exam room? Do you expect them to learn how to conduct themselves in their fields -- that is, fields in which research and writing are the primary modes of academic activity -- by filling in scantrons?
Your point might hold if the purpose of taking a class were to get a grade that fairly represents the work you did. But that's misguided. It's like saying that the purpose of getting on a highway is to go 70 miles per hour; therefore, we must make sure everyone goes 70 miles per hour even if they have to go in the wrong direction! It just doesn't make sense. The purpose of taking a class is to learn as much as possible about the subject being taught, including how the real work of that subject is conducted by professionals in the field. (After all, these classes are about training future experts and professionals, among other things.)
Testing is often among the worst ways to do this. The notion that one learns more about, say, ancient Greek philosophy cramming for an exam than by researching and writing 25 pages on the influences of various presocratics on Platonic thought, is preposterous. The idea that, in a course on the practical use of statistics in the election process, one should test students rather than making them run their own polls, is misguided. Students learn by doing, and in most academic fields, doing means research and writing. Many college courses need fewer tests, not more.
OR a stealth promotion for SoF? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are an unacceptable number of spelling mistakes in the "professor"'s blog. Unless "s/he" was really tired!
My most recent uni (in Australia - as of 2005) paid for the plagiarism check sites AND USED THEM and that seemed to (1) somewhat deter people from copying large chunks of text from Wikipedia and (2) force people who really wanted to cheat (or "had" to, for language/visa reasons) to pay for papers to be custom-written for them. If you're GOING to cheat it is much safer to contract locally with someone who knows the school, faculty standards, local standards, etc.
Re:Professors are Enabling This (Score:5, Insightful)
IAAP, for what that's worth.
I may be wrong, but your post reads like a rationalization from a "guilty" student. Do you have any IDEA how much time it would take to put together a quality course, with nothing but original materials? Not to mention grading students' work? I mean REALLY grading it - paying attention to the individual foibles of each student and trying to treat them like distinct human beings and not just a row of numbers on a grade sheet?
I hate to break it to you, but most of what you in lecture does not originate with your professor. Your prof is there to EXPLAIN it to you, not to CREATE it for you. When your professor publishes original work in their field (i.e. something similar to an assignment for which they get "professional" credit), you bet your ASS they would get in trouble for "borrowing" without citing sources. Their lectures and your assignments therefore belong in very different categories, as far as the standards applied.
I usually tell my students, at the beginning of a course, that I will pull in materials from many different sources in order to create the course lectures and assignments and to give them the best educational experience possible. I explain what I expect from them in terms of academic integrity, and if I catch them cheating, they suffer the consequences. I put my heart and soul into teaching my courses, and when students turn in copied or plagiarized work, that is a slap in the face, especially considering all the effort that I put into the course.
Yes, there are lazy teachers, and that DOES exacerbate the problem, but not in the way that you claim. Lazy teachers are actually much LESS likely to notice cheating. If students run into many teachers like this, and notice that cheating carries no consequences, they may start to feel that it's an under-the-table "accepted" practice, and just part of "the game." THAT is what really damages the credibility of professors, the academic institutions, and formalized learning in general.
Re:Price (Score:2, Insightful)
In the classical tragic sense. There's nothing to laugh about in it, but plenty to cry over.
The real question should be: Is this caused by an increase in cheating students (and the resources to do so), or is it caused by an industry that has become stagnant, boring, and oftimes irrelevant?
The real question should be: What the hell has tertiary higher education got to do with industry?
KFG
Re:Universitys are taking the wrong approach (Score:2, Insightful)
With the new information economy you can get answers in seconds on the net instead of hours in a book. The people who are successful are the ones who build apon the ideas of others while having enough sense to use their bullshit meter. Students are making a logical shortcut if they build apon one persons ideas from a peer reviewed site like Wikipedia.
What did you build your ideas apon? I guess the dictionary was not one of your sources.
If someone writes a paper with stolen passages from the internet from multiple sources they have to at least understand the topic and if they attempt to conceal it they have an even better understanding of the material.
The dark side growing in you, I sense. Why not simply properly attribute all of of your Internet sources, instead of trying to pawn them off as your own? Research does build upon the ideas of others, but for research to actually add the base of knowledge, there needs to be someting original contributed by the researcher.
Who cares. As long as they have enough information to make the leap to more complicated subjects then they can fill in the blanks with the internet for all the things they dont quite grasp.
As the anesthesia mask is placed over your face for a serious operation, thinking that your surgeon "filled in the blanks" in her grasp of anatomy with information gleaned from the Internet is a comforting thought for you?
Re:You know what's worse? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the tensile strength of this steel tube I'm holding?
The answer cannot be found in any reference work.
KFG
Re:stupid cheating (Score:2, Insightful)
I think your second question holds the answer to the first: You can't paraphrase or dumb it down unless you've first understood what it means. Which implies learning.
And if I paraphrase, how does it make my work any less "cheating" than someone who copies word for word from the same source?
Precisely because it means you've understood what you were writing about. (or it doesn't - if your paraphrased version is inaccurate, then you've not understood the subject) Copying word for word implies no understanding at all. Heck, I can't even be sure you really know the language if you've copied word-for-word.
What exactly is the definition of learning when you're not allowed to use sources with the actual information on the topic without being considered a cheater?
Of course you're allowed to use sources. Nobody's expecting you to go out and perform new and original research on the topic, are they?
Sadly, most school assignments are basically reduced to rewriting what you found out either through the textbook or through online sources instead of encouraging you to think about what you've learned and make decisions based on that information.
Well, you have no disagreement from me on that. My point was just that the former activity is not as mindless as it might seem.
But encouragement is most definitely something which is often lacking. For instance, the common plague of book reports. Most students start writing them in the form of a simply synopsis of the book. Because that's what they're usually first told to do. And a lot of students never develop past that point into doing real thinking, that is, analysis, criticism, etc. Not because they can't (Everyone has an opinion!) but because it either never occured to them, or because they didn't have enough self-confidence to do so.
And that's a real tragedy. Brains mean nothing if you don't have the confidence to use them. There are just way too many people out there stuck in the trap of acting dumb because they've no confidence in their reasoning, and lack confidence because they act dumb.
Re:You know what's worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bosses rarely ask you to write a history of the Brazilian economy. But they frequently say things like this:
"Bob, the client wants to evaluate the feasability of building a bridge across the river near their Saskatoon branch. We'll need to identify potential sites within a few miles of the facility, analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each site, and do a rough estimate of the costs in both time and effort. You have three months."
If you've never written an evaluative argument before, that's going to be really freaking hard. And DON'T wave the "Engineers don't need to write" flag at me - if you're going to be building a bridge, I want to know that you can convey complicated engineering problems to your bosses, who will not be engineers, clearly enough that they can make sane decisions about whether and how to do the job.
Now. I teach writing. When a student cheats by plagiarizing from the Internet, they're cheating themselves of the experience that they'll NEED in order to undertake REAL writing assignments later on. If that bridge collapses because my student wasn't able to communicate clearly to the boss (and the boss's boss) through writing, then I bear some of the responsibility for that. So yeah, when students cheat in my class it's a problem.
As for the "realism" of the assignments, my claim is this: writing is writing. Argumentation is argumentation. If you learn to write, and to argue, then you can do it about any topic from bridge-building to palaeography to proteomics and back again. So don't write plagiarists a pass if you want your bridges sturdy.
The Internet is Blameless (Score:2, Insightful)
The Internet has not instilled an expectation for "guiltless and effortless cheating" in students.
The author has simly drawn a mental graph with "the rise of the internet" on one axis and "his personal experience with copy and paste plagarism" on the other. Of course the two variables are going to be linked - because of the increasing prevalence of computers and availability of information - not "because the of the Internet".
He is also fantasising about a utopia where your average student will not cheat given the chance:
"How can we... weed out the cheaters and liars from the honest students"
The reality is that it's a dog-eat-dog world and that people take calculated risks (e.g. plagarism) to succeed.
Cheating has always been around, and is merely a sympton of the mentality of those who are driven to succeed and who understand that the educational "system" will probably screw you as much as you screw it.
"What about morals?!" I hear you ask.
I only have two areas of evidence (personal experience and academic studies found on the Web), and they both point to the fact that the vast majority of people have *very* flexible moralities.
You can't end cheating but what u can do is make it less likely by thinking carefully about the nature of assigments and test questions.
Re:Price (Score:3, Insightful)
Employers will benefit since increased supply of workforce drives down wages and allows for more outrageous employment contracts - non-compete agreements and such - as well as lets them abuse the employees more since it will be harder for them to find another job. Employees will be harmed for the same reason, and have added insult of being forced to pay for something that will harm them, at least in the short term.
The problem, nowadays, is that "benefits economy" does not mean "benefits people" but "benefits the rich".
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of all the my college bound friends, I know no one who values their experience as a student as one that has taught them anything. In fact, I never once in high school was told to go to college because of its benefits in higher learning, but to increase my chance of getting a higher salary. And I know no one outside my inner circle who gathers together and collaborates on topics of intellectual interests, and many of those people don't go to college because "chasing the paper gets in the way of chasing the knowledge". We've tried to find as many people to join us in our discussions, but most are too concerned with their careers and are most likely to tout how stable/high their projected salaries will be than how they'll benefit mankind.
However, some of my friends do value the chance times they get to speak candidly with professors about topics of study, and on the few occasions they get to collaborate with them. But in those few opportunities, those professors have commented on how no one cares about the context of their studies, only to pass their classes.
So I have to say no, most college students don't want to learn, they want some sort of assurance that they can afford a house two cars, and a semi-rewarding/easy job. And personally I find that to be defeating to those of us who would like to work with institutions to further intellectual goals. Unfortunately it is the tuition of the sheep that pay for the research that gives a university it's name.
I agree with the parent of this thread in that true intellectual collaboration is happening more virally out on the web. And that is perhaps for the best, because that can include more people who may not be able to join well known institutions in furthering research and goals of their interests.
However, some of my friends do value to chance times they get to speak candidly with professors about topics of study, and on the few occasions they get to collaberate with them. But in those few opprotunites, those professors have commented on how no one cares about the context of their studies, only to pass their classes.
So I have to say no, most college students don't want to learn, they want some sort of assuance that they can afford a house and two cars, and a rewarding/easy job. And personally I find that to be defeating to those of us who would like to work with institutions to further intellectual goals. Unfortantly is the tuition of the sheep that pay for the research that gives a University it's name.
I agree with the parent of this thread in that true intellectual collaberation is happening more virually out on the web. And that is perhaps for the best, because that can include more people who may not be able to join well known institutions in furthering research and goals of their intrests.
Re:Price (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Free tuition for residents (with some limitations and restrictions) would mean no more worries about the given amount one would have had to pay back not only for the principal borrowed to pay for tuition, but the interest too, concerning student loans.
2. Just because the workforce is increased, doesn't mean everyone is going to be vying for the same job. Hopefully with making tuition free, it will give some/most students a chance to learn what they want without worrying about the cost.
I figure some/most students take classes to ensure they're going to get a job to help pay off their student loans that paid for tuition. If paying for tuition isn't an obstacle anymore, students can more freely choose what they want without worrying about having a good-enough income to pay it back later.
Re:Price (Score:2, Insightful)
Interestingly, one of the reasons this is affordable (apart from high tax rates) is because the percentage of people who do go to university is quite a bit lower than in, for example, the UK, much less the USA (which I think has the highest rate of university attendance in the world, or close to it). I suspect one of the reasons for this is that skilled labourers are paid quite well, after they've earned qualifications in their trade, and even unskilled labourers can earn a good income.
I know some people who are motivated to study because it will increase their earning potential, but I'd say most people (including me) are studying what we're interested in, because we want to learn about it, and not because we'll earn more when we're finished. This is probably especially true amongst PhD students, since a master's degree is sufficient for most jobs (most companies looking for graduates aren't interested in people with only a bachelor's degree).
One of the main reasons all jobs pay well is because of the unions, and when you add in the high taxes (I expect to pay at least half my income in tax, of one form or another), as well as the state support for the poor and unemployed, everyone has a decent income. Unfortunately, immigration and ageing are putting pressure on the system, and people of a certain political persuasion want to allow high levels of immigration, claiming it will somehow solve the ageing problem, but really, I suspect, knowing that it will lead to the collapse of the welfare state. (Others of a different persuation just support high immigration for emotional reasons, without understanding the economic effects.)
Being familiar with the educational system in the UK, I know that it's increasingly moving towards a fee-based model because of the high and growing proportion of the population going to university, without a corresponging increase in tax rates. I have no doubt that this ongoing shift towards a system where everyone in the UK will have to go to university in order to get a well-paying job will eventually lead to very high fees, like in the USA. I hope the same thing doesn't eventually happen here in Scandinavia too.
Blaming the tool? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it makes cheating easier, and in any case it's far far simpler to point to a 'technology' and say "IT IS TEH EVIL".
More problematic and complex to point to:
- over crowded classrooms, and overstretched teachers who are unable to catch what is usually rather obvious
- social promotion and a complete lack of punishment of any kind ensures that what kids learn is that they are suckers if they DO the work; cheaters never get punished, downgraded, kicked out - cultural relativism has ensured that there is always an explanation, always an excuse, and never any shame. Heaven forbid we shame anyone or make them feel bad.
- ultimately, a culture of opportunism and "me first" that's become endemic. Not that it isn't always present in the human animal, but as our culture atomizes (perhaps the real way the internet is making this worse...) there's logically a greater and greater emphasis on narcissism and self achievement at ANY cost.
No, no, it MUST be the internet that's doing it. Sigh.
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of it's true (Score:3, Insightful)
The program is a game that does a lot of random number generation and text processing. It operates essentially like a shell does.
I noticed a sharp increase in downloads every fall and spring of the source code for the game. I received two emails from professors (who will remain anonymous) that students were taking my project and, with very few modifications, were submitting it as their project for a semester.
I love everything being open source, but if people are to cheat using my stuff then that is not acceptable. I decided to hide the source code on the sf.net download page and only have a universal binary for Mac OS X (Windows, you are coming when I get your pch crap done, I also have plans to make a Linux version).
The downloads stopped except for the people who actually wanted to use the program for fun. While I want my app to be open source, it makes me angry that people would use my work as their own. I absolutely hate cheating, so much so that I am willing to stop source code downloads in my projects.
It is sad, really, but if that is what must be done to stop people from stealing my work, violating the GPL, and being bastards in general, then I will have to open up the source for the project only during the summer.
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Student of Fortune / Who really loses from this (Score:3, Insightful)
"Unique, practical assignments" are not the principled answer. The princpled answer is: whenever cheating if discovered and can be properly documented [original sources identified, etc.] the students should be expelled from the school.
Why is cheating so common? Because there are no consequences if the student is caught. The school's (university-level) I've taugh at were all too afraid of lawsuits and their reputations to do anything serious about cheating. If they would just follow their own disciplinary procedures (academic probation after a first offence, expulsion after a second), word would get around very quickly and the rate of cheating would go way down.
-JS
Work with it, not against it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, there's 2 places where you can cheat in college: exams, and homework. Exams shouldn't be an issue if the school handles them correctly (They don't, but thats their problem). Don't crowd the classes as much, have the room in which its being held be "wave proof" (no cell phones, no wifi), and so on. Have TAs look around for people using point to point wireless devices and old school cheats (like someone using a Nintendo DS's pictochat or something to give answers), but that last one is the same as it was 20 years ago.
The rest, is homework. Really. we're talking about college here: students should be given homework that are relevent. If anything can be straight copy and pasted from some web site, then it is not relevent: in the real world, they would have been able to copy and paste it -TOO-. "Googling" answers is a useful real life skill. I remember when my girlfriend started college (as a CS major). She couldn't find stuff on the net if her life depended on it. I had to push her a bit
So when making homework, always have the internet in mind. Yes, it forces schools to redesign some of their content. I'm sorry, but the world changed, if school doesn't, students will not be prepared for the world.
Re:Price (Socailism) (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Free tuition for residents (with some limitations and restrictions) would mean no more worries about the given amount one would have had to pay back not only for the principal borrowed to pay for tuition, but the interest too, concerning student loans.
You are aware that is socialism?
Here is what happens with socialism. The government ends up regulating it, not the market place. You can graduate as an engineer and get paid less than general labor building homes. So what happens is a lot of people graduate, but end up doing something else. It lowers the wages of the degreed people, as the market gets flooded with them. I knew a person in socialist country that had a degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Astrophysics, but worked as an underpaid intermediate programmer for wages less than the national average. (The person was talented and sociable too but didn't want to move).
The trouble is everyone wants Harvard, MIT or Yale. The truth is they churn out for money egotistical self-import types that really know no more than local college graduates. My experience, from a business perspective, is the best workers come from lesser expensive local community colleges. Too many MBA's tend to run down companies in wages, dysfunctional politics and just plain bad decision making.
But to this thread. There is nothing new here. Plagiarism has been going on from the day the first writings. Even before the Internet students would go to different libraries searching out books to copy from that were not in their library, but the smart ones gave the professor what he/she wanted to hear. Two things the post secondary education gives you, 1) You learn how to learn on your own and 2) You have to give the professor who has the power to flunk you what he wants (puke learning). The truth is very little "research" goes on, so if being original in sending a paper to a professor you have to make it real good or bye-bye. Conformance is part of the experience.
Re:stupid cheating (Score:1, Insightful)
Une fibre optique est un fil transparent très fin qui a la propriété de conduire la lumière et sert dans les transmissions terrestres et océaniques de données. Elle a un débit d'informations nettement supérieur à celui des câbles coaxiaux et supporte un réseau large bande par lequel peuvent transiter aussi bien la télévision, le téléphone, la visioconférence ou les données informatiques.
Le principe de la fibre optique a été développé dans les années 1970 dans les laboratoires de la firme Corning.
agerie.
Now I'd be willing to bet the above paragraphs are a general overview of what fiber optics are, though it's Greek (or French) to me. How much do you think I learned?
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be an idiot. Many before you have benefitted greatly from college. Do not think you are better than it, in fact, don't worry about that at all. Rather than narcissistically denying its value, focus on what you want college to do for you and work hard.
The "concerned professor" can't write. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's C- work. This was written by an undergrad, and a second-rate one.
(If this really was written by a tenured faculty member somewhere, that school has serious problems.)
Re:cheating vs. really wanting to learn (Score:1, Insightful)
a. 60
b. -60
c. 120
d. -120
In a single question you had to figure out which formula or method to use, know the formula, and then do your math correctly. If you didn't know your stuff going into the exam you were doomed, which I suppose was the point.
I guess my point here is that multiple-choice or essay doesn't matter. What matters is how the exam is put together and how it is graded.
Re:Price (Score:1, Insightful)
Ahahaha.
To put it another way, anybody whose family agrees to cooperate with the government's idea of how much spare cash they have lying around to donate to the cause can afford to go to any university.
If the government decides your parents are rolling in it, but your parents decide that they don't care to fund your education, then you will just have to figure out a way of getting hold of something over 3,000 a year (interestingly, the '3,000' figure has morphed into '3,170' at my university. Not sure why. Maybe they're charging administration costs, or maybe the extra 170 is for wear and tear on the Visa card reader).
Other factlets from the academic world - noone's very clear on where all that cash goes. It doesn't seem to make it into the wallet of the department doing the teaching, like you might expect. However, universities are picking up administrative and managerial staff like some kind of disgusting skin disease, which is absorbing the cash quite nicely without having any discernable positive effect on what probably ought to be the main focus of university - eg. teaching and research.
University staff are sick to the back teeth of the current system. It's not laudable, it's not positive and it is not helping the state of research in the UK. Fees are not in line with the actual costs. How do you justify charging people 3,000 a year for a purely research degree, like a PhD? You're only providing them with occasional access to a PhD supervisor! In general they are not following any taught courses -- if anything they are teaching them. And then of course they eventually get their PhD, following which they start a postdoc at which point the university pays them for doing pretty much what they were doing before, ie. contributing research output that counts to the one metric that matters to research groups in the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise.
Whilst I agree that the four-year no-retakes approach makes sense, the funding model of the British system is absolute bollocks. The problem here is that half the nation goes to university, and because we are a deeply stupid nation, we somehow believe that those taking courses on the metaphysics of underwater basket-weaving at the University of Used To Be A Polytechnic will provide benefit to the nation equal to those studying engineering at a top ten university. We therefore arrange the funding in order to avoid politically-incorrect offence to the poor basket-weavers. Insane.
Re:Define cheating... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You know what's worse? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ooo, this one's interesting. But actually, I have already thought about this. Let me go through and actually answer all those rhetorical questions you pose. (That's the danger with asking rhetorical questions - if your audience answers them in a way you didn't anticipate, they rapidly become unpersuasive.)
> When you share your ideas with others, do you own those ideas?
Nope. You can't own ideas; they're non-tangible. Perhaps you are thinking of Thomas Jefferson's Letter to Isaac Mcpherson [uchicago.edu], wherein he states "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."
> Does it matter if you wrote them down first?
Again, no.
> Does it matter where you drew inspiration for those ideas?
Depends on how you mean "matter." If you're trying to imply that drawing inspiration from older works makes the derivative work less valuable, then clearly the answer is "no."
> While you and I might agree that plagiarism is lying, theft, and wrong, would it shock you to
> learn that not everyone thinks as we do?
I teach rhetoric and composition for a living. That's ALL about disagreement. Furthermore, I'm not stupid. Of course people think differently from one another; and what a dull, lifeless world it would be if we didn't!
> Is it equally shocking that after a whole freaking class period on the topic, others still do not agree?
Since we've established that I'm not shocked by the existence of disagreement, I am also not shocked by the fact that my students disagree with me about plagiarism. What I do find irritating (and puzzling!) is that when they're clearly told "X is plagiarism; don't do it; if you do you'll get punished," they apparently lack the self-interest to avoid the punishment. I think perhaps that they're still learning that (shock!) rules really do apply to them, they're not exempt.
> Do you attribute this to a lack of moral values or understanding?
If by "this" you mean "the student's disagreement," then neither. I attribute it to broad cultural forces that have de-emphasized the importance of personal responsibility, and also to their youth. Young people do stupid stuff, because they haven't learned better. IF, however, the word "this" refers to the infringing behavior, then it depends on the student. I've seen some who simply didn't understand; and others who consciously set out to subvert the system for their own personal gain.
> As more and more members of society become literate writers, and as our capacity to both capture and
> share these writings increase, the total space available for new and original work decreases.
Two points. First, I find your assumption that there is a finite amount of knowledge highly dubious. There are three types of knowledge: that which we know and understand; that which we know of but do not understand; and that which we do not know at all. In the first type, we often discover that something we thought we understood we actually didn't. EG: Newton's laws of gravity turned out not to account for all observable phenomena, and so Einstein was led to re-consider the problem. The second type is often easier to see -- we know there's something going on, but don't fully understand it. EG: we know what the human genome does, but there remains a huge amount that we don't know about how exactly it works, hence the field of proteomics. The third type is the most troublesome of all. We don't know what we don't
Re:Some of it's true (Score:3, Insightful)
You could embed some comments asserting your authorship in the middle of the code. I wouldn't be surprised if the cheaters just lop off headers at the top and don't look inside the code. But the professor will, or at least should, look at all of the code.