Validating Students Work in DL

Apologies if this has been done to death.

Validating students work for internet only courses is currently a serious topic of discussion here in the UK.

One newspaper reporter enrolled their dog on an DL course which has put the frightners on a number of Universities looking at degree level courses were the student never has any personal contact with the University.

Are there views or links to articles on this?

 

Imagine what human resources would say when they see a dog coming for an interview!

 

I don't see that as being any different from a person enrolling in a bricks and mortar school using another person's name. The end result would be the same - HR or the employer would know the first day or so that there was something dreadfully wrong.

Did the report indicate how much the tuition was in dog biscuits?

Bill Hurd

 

I remember when Brutus, a really nice dog, took Freshman Chem with me. That was at University of California, Berkeley in 1958....not DL and no-one cared.

 

I expect they'd say, "Finally, someone I can trust!!!"

 

The problem remains...how can I verify that someones work is genuine if there is no real contact?

 

I suspect that none of the other students cared because they were just assuming that he'd lower the grading curve. You didn't let him copy off your paper did you? What grade did he end up getting?

 

I think that Bill Hurd's response was completely reasonable. (Although I must admit that I seemed to enjoy the other responses even more.)

 

Evaluating student work and validating that the student getting the credit did the work are recurring questions in distance learning.

There are many answers. Some distance learning courses require one or more proctored examinations.

Good instructional design will avert potential cheating problems. If students do only one writing assignment in a course and it's a common topic -- sure, they could buy a paper and the instructor wouldn't know. (But they might be cheating their way to a poorer grade than if they did the work themselves; most of the samples I've seen from buy-a-term-paper sites are lousy.)

If students write many papers, if assignments are unique to the course, if they frequently re-write, developing a paper in stages -- instructors get to know their writing and it becomes more doubtful that they could get someone else to do it for them.


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Kristin Evenson Hirst
DistanceLearn.About.com