My Cheatin Heart?

Last night we watched 60 minutes. It described the cheating that goes on in a very large, residential school which uses the honor code. It seems cheating on tests and papers run rampant there. This for a long time has existed, but only recently the university has become aware of it. Now graduates may lose their diplomas if evidence shows they cribbed as a student, a computer programs determines if papers were original, and present students are expelled.

As I watched this fascinated, it occured to me how apparantly easy it might be for me to cheat! I could pay Russell to give me a hand with my Unizul chapters and Unk could do my ACCS papers and take a nap when he proctors my exams. Who'd ever know? Yet another temptation in life for my cheatin heart to deal with... and I've not yet won victory over the first 90 and 9!

Surely DL must offer many occasions for cheating?

 

you might be onto something...

I suppose that cheating will always be around, unfortunately. But you are right, it would be fairly easy to cheat in DL. I recently read an article that many universities were going back to the honor system because it often led to a sense of outrage by the students themselves about cheating. Apparently, that isn't always true.

I couldn't sleep if I cheated, but it is something to think about for sure.

clint

 

Is it legal in Oregon to proctor an exam if you're not a proctologist?

 

Invitations to cheat

Institutions invite dl students to cheat when they try to run dl programmes as if the students were on a campus and in daily contact with faculty (which is not really a secure system inhibiting cheating).

The drive under student pressure or 'sympathy' for students under pressure to make exams less difficult propels faculty to invent alternative exam regimes. Hence, they introduce 'continuous assessment', which in dl is an invitation to cheat and once it becomes norm, dumbs down the standards (Internet searches produce unoriginal work, let alone personation).

They switch to group assessed work, even though it means some groups have to 'carry' students who don't/can't/won't work, in case the group mark drops (I read recently of one 'bright' - self assessed - student moaning about a member of their team who was lowring their group mark below '93'!).

They allow a choice of questions - aiding question spotting as students can rely on something being asked for which they are prepared and narrows their proficiency across the subject. They also allow open book exams because in the 'real world' they could look up 'what they don't remember' though they remember where to look it up. Some real world.

Pilots should carry flying manuals with them in case they have to bank quickly or land in a crosswind. I would prefer them to know this before they fly me and their test should seek out if they don't remember.

DL will remain a questionable mode for as long as exam regimes are softened - even abandoned as some universities have done for their so-called MBAs.

Exam regimes should measure output performance not input characteristics. Sure this is tough on students. Sure, some students cannot cope with the exam regimes. Tough. Note everybody can't be what they aspire to be. Trying pretend that they can is OK as a motivator, but bending standards to make it so is detrimental to standards and ultimately self-defeating (in some cases also dangerous).

 

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Boy did I have a funny reply connected with...well, never mind

 

Professor Kennedy: How would you impose a strict regimen on DL examinations? Are there alternatives to proctored exams, or is "live" supervision the only workable method?

 

I'm sleeping just fine!!!

But, of course, I've never cheated or lied in my entire life.

 

"But, of course, I've never cheated or lied in my entire life. "

And you just told another lie.

Tim

 

I can honestly say that I never cheated on an exam, and I always did my own research papers (I actually enjoy the research and writing process). I've saved all my papers on disk and hard drive, and more than once I've been asked by co-workers if they could "borrow" one of my papers for a "reference point".

At that point, I become guilty of lying, because I tell them I don't have anything saved for them.


Bruce

 

Interesting topic

My wife is currently going to a regular B&M RA campus. She is a straight-A typical overachieving non-traditional student and has not missed a single class period. She has been asked to do things that are considered cheating multiple times in the past year and a half. We are both shocked as neither of us ever saw stuff like this happening even five years ago, but now she has had multiple requests to give people copies of tests/quizes/notes, put people's names on homework that she alone completed, etc.

With that happening in the RA B&M world, I am glad that every exam I have taken for my DL degree has been proctored by third parties that have no stake in whether I pass or fail. For that matter, I think that every testing session has been video tape recorded.

 

I went to a military high school that went in the opposite direction. We had an Honor Code that stated "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do".

That was taken so seriously that, during exams, the teacher would leave the room after the exams were handed out, and not return until the time limit was up. We could have coached each other, but I think it's a testament to the school & the system that I never saw a single incident of cheating at anytime during my HS years.


Bruce

 

At Stanford, proctoring was not allowed. The professor and his/her assistants were required to leave the examination room. To stay would have been a violation of the Honor Code (not trusting the students). Cheating was rampant, especially in premed classes.

Prof. Kennedy would have had an infarction.

 

Not really surprising, considering that Stanford is most certainly a "civilian" college. In a military environment, there is something that compels students to be honest. I can't explain it, it just is.

It may have helped that if a cadet in my HS was expelled for an Honor Code violation, he was literally "drummed out" in a very public and very humiliating ceremony.


Bruce

 

DL exam regimes should be above suspicion

Uncle Janko wonders about an alternative to proctoring, which I assume is the equivalent of invigilation in the UK system. I do not know of an alternative and would not consider it necessary. Invigilation is the independent supervision of an examination to see that the standards and rules of the examination regime are carried out so that the conduct of the examinees are the same as close as can be in one centre as in any other under the same regime. EBS has over 300 examination centres across the world and it is an essential aspect of the EBS exam regime that it is identical across all its centres.

Gert expresses concern for my health if I saw the 'professor or his her assistants' leaving the examination room because the students have to be trusted under an 'Honour' code. I would be most concerned if any faculty connected with the examinees was in the examination room during an examination. They are not independent and would contaminate the integrity of the exam. They are not allowed under EBS exam rules to visit the room during the exam. The invigilators must be independent and disinterested managers of the exam.

As for 'Honour' codes, this really is naive if you apply it across the world. And you certainly cannot in justice apply different codes in different countries without severe doubts as to your non-racist procedures. You avert these problems by applying the same tight standard at all centres. Until the DL community face up to the damage that slack exam standards do to the image of DL as a viable learning process, it will remain easily dismissed by the traditional campus institutions (even though many campus exam regimes are of doubtful integrity - including those operating an Honour code).

 

Professor Kennedy: As far as I know, proctoring and invigilation are the same. I would share your skepticism about honor codes. We had one at my undergraduate college. Most exams were "take home," and we had to write out this pledge on the back of the exam booklets. I guess I was too blase to cheat, and I do not recall others cheating, but I am quite sure that I would not regard an honor code as any sort of guarantee in this year of grace.
The only conceivable objection to proctored/invigilated exams that I can think of would arise if the exams had to be supervised at a college or university, and the distance learner was doing DL because of remoteness from a tertiary institution in the first place. Most references to proctoring that I have seen, however, offer a variety of venues, so that someone in a rural area (such as the Carpathian peasant) could go to the local high school, library, or a clergyman in town for proctoring.

 

Above suspicion

EBS arranges examination centres to meet demand and tries not to shunt people to inconvenient locations, so with 8,000 students around the globe we cannot alway suit everybody. In many countries the British Council (a government agency) selects the venue based on their local knowledge, which may include a non-university or college site.

The venue location is less important than its suitability to operate to the same standards as everywhere else. That is what dl exams should aim for - a universal high standard above suspicion. The dl community has a long way to go, and some of the things I read here about 'easyness' and 'speed' do not encourage my optimism, though I understand the self interest of those who search for these characteristics.

 

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Ya but did the teacher stand just outside the door with an M16?

 

Bruce on cheating: "Not really surprising, considering that Stanford is most certainly a 'civilian' college. In a military environment, there is something that compels students to be honest. I can't explain it, it just is."

John: Hey, wait a minute. Total disagreement. Some of the biggest, juiciest, most widespread cheating scandals of the last half century have been at the military academies, each with strong honor codes.

The huge cheating scandal at West Point in 1951 and an even huger one in 1976 are well documented, as are others (1989, 1995) that didn't get quite as much publicity.

The big one at the US Naval Academy in 1993 got a lot of press, because it was so widespread. On a single exam (electrical engineering), 134 cadets had advance knowledge, and apparently many more knew but didn't report (which is, of course, also an honor code violation).

Perhaps the biggest was at the Air Force Academy since it exposed honor code violations at many levels. One cadet stole a key and gained access to a locker where exams were stored. He persuaded 10 or 12 cadets to 'go into business' with him, selling advance copies. Dozens and dozens of cadets bought them. And hundreds more knew it was going on but did not report it. Even some faculty apparently had either knowledge or involvement.

The figures from surveys are devastating. One asked the 3,100 "top" high school students, as listed in "Who's Who Among High School Students," if they had cheated. 78% said yes.

The estimable General Omar Bradley said it so well half a century ago:

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.... The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

 

If I recall, the large, residential school was the University of Virginia – the same institution Ted Kennedy chose for law school after he was expelled from Harvard for cheating.

 

Now that is worth remembering and repeating!!!

It seems even more true today than 50 years ago when he said it.