ASA Connect

The question I would like to ask is ,How often do the students come to you for clarification and how well do you accept them?

The question I would like to ask is ,How often do the students come to you for clarification and how well do you accept them?

I think that a problem nearly as big as your cheating students is the lack of support for a faculty member doing his job.

Not sure what the solution to that is.

Maybe talk to the dean or department chair in advance of the class and find out how they feel and what they would want to see you do. If possible, get in writing (at least an email summary) of what steps they are OK with for cheating.

I like the idea Stephen suggested of being less draconian in punishment, although I understand the feeling we faculty have that any cheating is a slap in the face to the school and instructor. I think that people cheated on (in marriage as well as in classes!) often feel the cheating to be far worse than the cheater did.

I don't know that I would continue working in an institution that would fire me because I did a good job rooting out cheating. Have you looked at other possible employers?

Ed

The question I would like to ask is ,How often do the students come to you for clarification and how well do you accept them?

There are many possible solutions to this problem. These are only partial solutions, and you may or may not like some of them. But at least consider them.

1. Write the exam in such a way that it is difficult to cheat. You've written before about giving each student a different subset of the data. It takes time and energy, but wouldn't that be better than the time and energy you have already expended devising your traps?

2. When you catch student cheating, just give them a warning. If you catch them again, then give them a penalty, but not so much of a penalty as to ruin their career. Maybe require them to complete an independent test or assignment that no one else gets. I've always thought that cheating policies are much too draconian.

3. Do what Deming did. Tell everyone at the beginning of the class that they are all getting A's. That removes the incentive to cheat. I know that you can't do this, but it is worth noting anyway. I love teaching, but I hate grading. Not because it takes too much time, but because it doesn't help the students learn any better. If anything, the anxiety that grading produces makes it harder for students to learn.

Because of how I am teaching, it's all done online. I give them several days to do the exams too. 

When I teach certain classes in person, I'll make say 2 versions of the exam. Same questions. Just different orders. 

Since I just change some numbers on my exams, like X1= 5.54 on an early exam and X1 = 4.55 on the later exam, it's easy to see who cheated. 

I have videos for all of my students to watch. I allow them to use those videos and notes, calculator, etc, to do the problems. Plus, about 30% of the exam is opinion based. So, it's less stress than it could be. I give partial credit if the numeric answer is in the ball park. So, it's possible for a student to get every math problem wrong, and still get about a 70%. 

The previous time I spoke up about students cheating, I warned the class about what happened. I was berated for that. The students that did cheat, literally just changed the name on the top of the exam. Everything else was verbatim. I told the dean, I'd give credit to the person that did the work, if the other person admitted they cheated and fail the student on that exam that did cheat. (I could have failed them for the course and possibly had them kicked out of the university with their transcripts locked. So, I figure I was lenient. ) 

There are many possible solutions to this problem. These are only partial solutions, and you may or may not like some of them. But at least consider them.

1. Write the exam in such a way that it is difficult to cheat. You've written before about giving each student a different subset of the data. It takes time and energy, but wouldn't that be better than the time and energy you have already expended devising your traps?

2. When you catch student cheating, just give them a warning. If you catch them again, then give them a penalty, but not so much of a penalty as to ruin their career. Maybe require them to complete an independent test or assignment that no one else gets. I've always thought that cheating policies are much too draconian.

3. Do what Deming did. Tell everyone at the beginning of the class that they are all getting A's. That removes the incentive to cheat. I know that you can't do this, but it is worth noting anyway. I love teaching, but I hate grading. Not because it takes too much time, but because it doesn't help the students learn any better. If anything, the anxiety that grading produces makes it harder for students to learn.

I'm going to ask a question. Why are you working for these people? You have valuable skills and talents that could be put to productive use. Why waste them furthering the aims of people whose values you quite reasonably despise?

As a person in a leadership position, you might be in a position to try to change things. But you aren't. So why not simply leave? I think it's greatly self-damaging to continue to work for these people. In order to justify continuing working for them, you have to lie to yourself that you are trapped, that you somehow can't help it. To do that, you have to continually demean yourself and your skills and your self-worth and your sense of integrity. If there's anything lowering your value, it's that. Why not take this as an opportunity to work for people you can respect?

As Josh Groben and Cirque de Soleil once put it in "Let Me Fall," you have to trust that "The one I want, the one I will become will catch me."

W. Edwards Deming had a lot to say about this whole situation. He opposed grading in school, saying grades simply make people game the system to focus on getting better scores rather than learning. He opposed ranking schools, saying that ranking encourages schools, among other ills, to artificially up their graduation rates and other numbers rather than to focus on giving students a good education. 

And he opposed students rating professors while in school, saying that professors should only be rated by alumni 10 or more years after graduation, because only then will students be in a position to know the value of what the professor is teaching. How can students possibly know whether the material will help them in life, or what its value will prove to be, while they are taking the course? All they can tell is things like whether the professor has a pleasing lecture style. One might as well rate medicine by how pleasing it tastes while one is taking it. The best medicines long-term are often not the ones that taste the pleasantest at the time they are administered. As with medicine, so with learning, and with professors. 

This is not to say you are obligated to be a purist about these things.

But once you are in a situation like the one you report, where students are openly engaging in and the administration is openly condoning out and out fraud to the point of punishing those who report it, based on student comments complaining about objections to cheating, this is ust not a healthy place to be. Look for another job. Whether you give the administration another chance and report this first or not is up to you. Looking doesn't hurt even if the administration comes through this time and you decide to stay. 

I don't in any way recommend lawyers as a way to resolve disputes. But this time, you might want to consider talking to one.

My comments here are entirely my own.  

Because of how I am teaching, it's all done online. I give them several days to do the exams too. 

When I teach certain classes in person, I'll make say 2 versions of the exam. Same questions. Just different orders. 

Since I just change some numbers on my exams, like X1= 5.54 on an early exam and X1 = 4.55 on the later exam, it's easy to see who cheated. 

I have videos for all of my students to watch. I allow them to use those videos and notes, calculator, etc, to do the problems. Plus, about 30% of the exam is opinion based. So, it's less stress than it could be. I give partial credit if the numeric answer is in the ball park. So, it's possible for a student to get every math problem wrong, and still get about a 70%. 

The previous time I spoke up about students cheating, I warned the class about what happened. I was berated for that. The students that did cheat, literally just changed the name on the top of the exam. Everything else was verbatim. I told the dean, I'd give credit to the person that did the work, if the other person admitted they cheated and fail the student on that exam that did cheat. (I could have failed them for the course and possibly had them kicked out of the university with their transcripts locked. So, I figure I was lenient. ) 

There are many possible solutions to this problem. These are only partial solutions, and you may or may not like some of them. But at least consider them.

1. Write the exam in such a way that it is difficult to cheat. You've written before about giving each student a different subset of the data. It takes time and energy, but wouldn't that be better than the time and energy you have already expended devising your traps?

2. When you catch student cheating, just give them a warning. If you catch them again, then give them a penalty, but not so much of a penalty as to ruin their career. Maybe require them to complete an independent test or assignment that no one else gets. I've always thought that cheating policies are much too draconian.

3. Do what Deming did. Tell everyone at the beginning of the class that they are all getting A's. That removes the incentive to cheat. I know that you can't do this, but it is worth noting anyway. I love teaching, but I hate grading. Not because it takes too much time, but because it doesn't help the students learn any better. If anything, the anxiety that grading produces makes it harder for students to learn.

I'm going to ask a question. Why are you working for these people? You have valuable skills and talents that could be put to productive use. Why waste them furthering the aims of people whose values you quite reasonably despise?

As a person in a leadership position, you might be in a position to try to change things. But you aren't. So why not simply leave? I think it's greatly self-damaging to continue to work for these people. In order to justify continuing working for them, you have to lie to yourself that you are trapped, that you somehow can't help it. To do that, you have to continually demean yourself and your skills and your self-worth and your sense of integrity. If there's anything lowering your value, it's that. Why not take this as an opportunity to work for people you can respect?

As Josh Groben and Cirque de Soleil once put it in "Let Me Fall," you have to trust that "The one I want, the one I will become will catch me."

W. Edwards Deming had a lot to say about this whole situation. He opposed grading in school, saying grades simply make people game the system to focus on getting better scores rather than learning. He opposed ranking schools, saying that ranking encourages schools, among other ills, to artificially up their graduation rates and other numbers rather than to focus on giving students a good education. 

And he opposed students rating professors while in school, saying that professors should only be rated by alumni 10 or more years after graduation, because only then will students be in a position to know the value of what the professor is teaching. How can students possibly know whether the material will help them in life, or what its value will prove to be, while they are taking the course? All they can tell is things like whether the professor has a pleasing lecture style. One might as well rate medicine by how pleasing it tastes while one is taking it. The best medicines long-term are often not the ones that taste the pleasantest at the time they are administered. As with medicine, so with learning, and with professors. 

This is not to say you are obligated to be a purist about these things.

But once you are in a situation like the one you report, where students are openly engaging in and the administration is openly condoning out and out fraud to the point of punishing those who report it, based on student comments complaining about objections to cheating, this is ust not a healthy place to be. Look for another job. Whether you give the administration another chance and report this first or not is up to you. Looking doesn't hurt even if the administration comes through this time and you decide to stay. 

I don't in any way recommend lawyers as a way to resolve disputes. But this time, you might want to consider talking to one.

My comments here are entirely my own.  

Because of how I am teaching, it's all done online. I give them several days to do the exams too. 

When I teach certain classes in person, I'll make say 2 versions of the exam. Same questions. Just different orders. 

Since I just change some numbers on my exams, like X1= 5.54 on an early exam and X1 = 4.55 on the later exam, it's easy to see who cheated. 

I have videos for all of my students to watch. I allow them to use those videos and notes, calculator, etc, to do the problems. Plus, about 30% of the exam is opinion based. So, it's less stress than it could be. I give partial credit if the numeric answer is in the ball park. So, it's possible for a student to get every math problem wrong, and still get about a 70%. 

The previous time I spoke up about students cheating, I warned the class about what happened. I was berated for that. The students that did cheat, literally just changed the name on the top of the exam. Everything else was verbatim. I told the dean, I'd give credit to the person that did the work, if the other person admitted they cheated and fail the student on that exam that did cheat. (I could have failed them for the course and possibly had them kicked out of the university with their transcripts locked. So, I figure I was lenient. ) 

There are many possible solutions to this problem. These are only partial solutions, and you may or may not like some of them. But at least consider them.

1. Write the exam in such a way that it is difficult to cheat. You've written before about giving each student a different subset of the data. It takes time and energy, but wouldn't that be better than the time and energy you have already expended devising your traps?

2. When you catch student cheating, just give them a warning. If you catch them again, then give them a penalty, but not so much of a penalty as to ruin their career. Maybe require them to complete an independent test or assignment that no one else gets. I've always thought that cheating policies are much too draconian.

3. Do what Deming did. Tell everyone at the beginning of the class that they are all getting A's. That removes the incentive to cheat. I know that you can't do this, but it is worth noting anyway. I love teaching, but I hate grading. Not because it takes too much time, but because it doesn't help the students learn any better. If anything, the anxiety that grading produces makes it harder for students to learn.

Because of how I am teaching, it's all done online. I give them several days to do the exams too. 

When I teach certain classes in person, I'll make say 2 versions of the exam. Same questions. Just different orders. 

Since I just change some numbers on my exams, like X1= 5.54 on an early exam and X1 = 4.55 on the later exam, it's easy to see who cheated. 

I have videos for all of my students to watch. I allow them to use those videos and notes, calculator, etc, to do the problems. Plus, about 30% of the exam is opinion based. So, it's less stress than it could be. I give partial credit if the numeric answer is in the ball park. So, it's possible for a student to get every math problem wrong, and still get about a 70%. 

The previous time I spoke up about students cheating, I warned the class about what happened. I was berated for that. The students that did cheat, literally just changed the name on the top of the exam. Everything else was verbatim. I told the dean, I'd give credit to the person that did the work, if the other person admitted they cheated and fail the student on that exam that did cheat. (I could have failed them for the course and possibly had them kicked out of the university with their transcripts locked. So, I figure I was lenient. ) 

There are many possible solutions to this problem. These are only partial solutions, and you may or may not like some of them. But at least consider them.

1. Write the exam in such a way that it is difficult to cheat. You've written before about giving each student a different subset of the data. It takes time and energy, but wouldn't that be better than the time and energy you have already expended devising your traps?

2. When you catch student cheating, just give them a warning. If you catch them again, then give them a penalty, but not so much of a penalty as to ruin their career. Maybe require them to complete an independent test or assignment that no one else gets. I've always thought that cheating policies are much too draconian.

3. Do what Deming did. Tell everyone at the beginning of the class that they are all getting A's. That removes the incentive to cheat. I know that you can't do this, but it is worth noting anyway. I love teaching, but I hate grading. Not because it takes too much time, but because it doesn't help the students learn any better. If anything, the anxiety that grading produces makes it harder for students to learn.

I think Dr. Gracely makes an excellent and important point: what is really disturbing isn't that some students try to cheat and then get mad about the consequences when they get caught (that has been happening since there have been students and teachers), it's that the department views the instructor as the problem and punishes him/her.

If your employment prospects elsewhere are good, then take this as a sign that your values and those of your current employer are not compatible and leave the organization. Compromising so fundamentally on your values, especially on something as obviously wrong as cheating, will only leave you feeling deflated.

I am not a full-time (or even part time) professor, I am a grad student, although I have done a lot of teaching and have encountered situations similar to those that you describe. I have also taken a hard line (relative to other instructors or professors) approach to cheating and it has probably cost me in terms of teaching assignments. As a TA I saw too many professors ignore or tolerate cheating and I lost all respect for them, so I refused to go down that path.

Another constituency whose interests we should recognize are the students that DON'T cheat, the ones who come to class each day, pay attention, do the homework and really try to master the material. They know what is going on, they know who is cheating, and they generally stay silent. But they hate it when cheaters are treated leniently (or not punished at all) and it undermines the "values" that so many universities claim to espouse.

This may not help you in your dilemma but if nothing else, understand that there are many people, students and teachers, who support your actions and abhor the attitude of your dept chair. Good luck.