Facebook study groups = cheating?

[Taualumna]

Applause and cheers greeted first-year Ryerson student Chris Avenir yesterday as he stepped out of the engineering building. He had just contested an academic misconduct charge and possible expulsion for his participation in a Facebook study group.

Toronto Star

Dude should have made his group invite only and unsearchable.

[Senusret I]

^^^ I agree with that, but I also wanted to point this out:

Ryerson's academic misconduct policy defines it as "any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, including actions that have a negative effect on the integrity of the learning environment."

Any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage -- wouldn't that include tutors?

[nittanyalum]

Originally Posted by Senusret I

Any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage -- wouldn't that include tutors?

That's a good question and it sounds like one of many gray areas they'll have to clarify in their policies. But my read of the article is that the specific problem here is that they were told to do their work independently and they were openly sharing answers on the facebook group.

[UGAalum94]

I seems to me that all the students who posted the information should be facing misconduct or academic honesty charges.

I suspect what you'll see instead is that 10% part of the grade being redistributed to other assignments and the students won't get any credit for the homework in the future.

If you're supposed to work independently and you are getting academic credit for the work and you instead share answers, hey, kids, you're cheating.

I wonder what colleges are going to do as technology makes it easier and easier to cheat. I wonder if the day will come where everything that counts in the grade will be done in proctored situations?

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I seems to me that all the students who posted the information should be facing misconduct or academic honesty charges.

I suspect what you'll see instead is that 10% part of the grade being redistributed to other assignments and the students won't get any credit for the homework in the future.

If you're supposed to work independently and you are getting academic credit for the work and you instead share answers, hey, kids, you're cheating.

I wonder what colleges are going to do as technology makes it easier and easier to cheat. I wonder if the day will come where everything that counts in the grade will be done in proctored situations?

Colleges are constantly making adjustments for the technology age and instructors and faculty are updated everytime there's a new "cheating technique." For instance, when camera phones first became big, some high school and college smartasses decided to take pics of exams and send them to classmates. The classmates would either come to the exam late or say they were sick and had to take the exam at another time.

In response, faculty members implement strategies such as telling students that if they're more than 5 minutes late, they will have a big fat ZERO on the exam. Or telling students that the only thing that they can have in their hands is their exam and their pencil/pen and that all bags should be away from them. However, a lot of faculty are still going on the honor system which assumes that students are generally honest enough not to cheat on proctored exams or take home exams. I've even known faculty to leave the room as students take exams, knowing that those who feel the need to cheat are usually going to get average or below average grades anyway.

As a technology flashback of sorts, I remember hearing of "computer savvy" graduate students of the 1980s getting caught cheating on in-camera preliminary examinations. Switching the disk that the university gives them with their own disk that has detailed notes. Of course, these people got caught everytime. Plus, it's really pathetic because if studying didn't work out by the time you take an exam of that much weight, you're S.O.L regardless of how desperate you get.

[skylark]

Honestly, in both college and law school I've seen things like this happen with informal groups... the only thing that this kid did that was different was make it a public Facebook group.

I think that he is a product of the academic culture on most campuses that perceives this sort of group "brainstorming" to be non-cheating. I doubt if it was something that was clearly expressed to be done independently he would have kept it public. My own guess is that the professor probably had some standard "do your own work" clause on his syllabus or something.

I think that campuses need to have uniform policies for all classes so that students know what is okay and what is not. Like, unless it says "group project" you are to assume that nothing you do that counts toward your grade should be collaborated on. It needs to be the same rule from class to class because it is pretty unreasonable to expect every student to re-memorize syllabi for all new classes every semester... it just isn't going to happen.

Unless you have a clear rule that applies across the board, you're never going to keep people from doing this kind of thing.

ETA: And I disagree on the "average to below average" statement on "cheaters." I saw plenty of top-notch people in high-stress-not-enough-time situations "collaborate" with each other because there wasn't a clear rule against what they were doing... even though it was pretty obvious that what they were doing was unethical. I'm currently thinking of three of the top five grade-earners in my law school. They just never labeled what they were doing as "cheating" and nobody else called them on it either.

[UGAalum94]

I think a lot of people will do what they can get away with, but it doesn't mean that they aren't cheating or that it's a communication problem that can be shifted onto someone else. I'm not saying that you're doing that Skylark; it just seems to be the default position for anyone who gets caught: "oh, I didn't know I couldn't; I thought I could work in a group on the final exam or bring in notes from home. I thought a facebook group to share answers was cool."

The universal default position should be that you do your own assignments from memory (or materials agreed on by the professor) when you are getting graded on them unless the instruction specifically gives directions that allow collaboration or supplemental materials.

And I guess that more instructors and schools need to start busting people and giving them zeros and bad academic standing.

DSTCHAOS, I know that schools have been making adjustments, but I don't know how much further they can take it other than just making everyone complete any work to be graded under the watchful eye of an instructor. I think a lot of campuses have gone to Turnitin.com for any out of class papers already, but we may be at the point that I think the only thing to do is not to grade the out of class work. It makes sense. Either you know it and can do it in front of a teacher in a new situation or you probably don't know it. Giving grades for homework in college seems like of lame anyway.

Skylark, I agree about who cheats these days. A lot of the kids I know about are intelligent, high achievers who didn't want to put the time in but can't stand to make a bad grade. And I think schools have gotten soft on punishing people so there's not much risk.

[DSTCHAOS]

Oh.

Beyond using software to detect plagiarism and making sure students don't cheat on in class exams, there isn't too much that can be done. The rest is a level of trust in people and faith in the academic process. There will always be professors who give take home exams and out of class assignments. They trust that the good students will still stick out and the grade distribution will not really be impacted by cheaters.

As an aside: Many cheaters are extremely bold and don't think to cover their tracks at all. And they don't even use technology to cheat.

[skylark]

Well, I think that a lot of how something gets portrayed is based on whether others can point to a clear rule and say "hey, you're totally cheating." One of the people I'm thinking of is actually a really smart really high-achieving friend and I actually told him (nicely) that what I thought he was doing was wrong. Because it is a public forum and not hard to figure out what school I'm talking about, I'll skip the details and just say that the end result was that he was word-for-word typing someone else's thoughts into an essay exam worth 100% of a semester grade. He responded that he thought the professor was inviting the issue by not making it explicit that you were not supposed to do what he was doing, and until the professor changed the system to make the rules more clear, he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing.

Based on the rule cited in this case, I think that their description of what is prohibited needs to be more specific.

[pinkies up]

This is really stupid. People have interdependent study hall all the time. We had a test bank when I was in school. Don't colleges want to foster academic growth and socialization? In order for them to even do the work, they had to know some of the information. Please, people are out walking the streets for "crimes" bigger than this.

[tld221]

i had a class where exams were online, using blackboard. the website only let you do the exam within a 24 hour period, but let you save your work and come back. now the professor did this on trust and faith that we wouldnt cheat, saying "he would be able to tell if we cheated or not."

would the professor have been able to hold any of us liable on cheating?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by skylark

Well, I think that a lot of how something gets portrayed is based on whether others can point to a clear rule and say "hey, you're totally cheating." One of the people I'm thinking of is actually a really smart really high-achieving friend and I actually told him (nicely) that what I thought he was doing was wrong. Because it is a public forum and not hard to figure out what school I'm talking about, I'll skip the details and just say that the end result was that he was word-for-word typing someone else's thoughts into an essay exam worth 100% of a semester grade. He responded that he thought the professor was inviting the issue by not making it explicit that you were not supposed to do what he was doing, and until the professor changed the system to make the rules more clear, he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing.

Based on the rule cited in this case, I think that their description of what is prohibited needs to be more specific.

Being more specific certainly wouldn't hurt, but your friend was clearly lying to himself. And he tried to shift the blame for cheating onto someone else which may be an even bigger problem in the long run.

His complete lack of ethics was someone else's fault in his mind. Obviously the stakes are different, but I wonder if he feels entitled to break laws that he doesn't feel have been explained to him sufficiently as well.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by pinkies up

This is really stupid. People have interdependent study hall all the time. We had a test bank when I was in school. Don't colleges want to foster academic growth and socialization? In order for them to even do the work, they had to know some of the information. Please, people are out walking the streets for "crimes" bigger than this.

Are you under the impression he was facing criminal charges?

A test bank of released tests is probably fair game; stealing test and using them would not be.

Colleges want to be able to assess what individual students know and are able to do and also to what proficiency. When students submit the work of others as their own, which is the problem here and elsewhere, it corrupts the entire system and probably, over time, devalues the worth of a degree since some folks (and I'd say more and more folks based on surveys over time) don't actually possess the skills employers are looking for.

Despite the junk people are spewing about "learning to learn" etc, in a lot of fields employers actually want to you to be able to do the work well relatively independently from the get go. If you needed a facebook group to do your math homework, what does that say?

[skylark]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Being more specific certainly wouldn't hurt, but your friend was clearly lying to himself. And he tried to shift the blame for cheating onto someone else which may be an even bigger problem in the long run.

His complete lack of ethics was someone else's fault in his mind. Obviously the stakes are different, but I wonder if he feels entitled to break laws that he doesn't feel have been explained to him sufficiently as well.

A lot of people are like this, sadly. If you don't make it impossible for them to explain how they are not in violation of a rule, they don't think they are. What threw me was that in all other respects, he is one of the most ethical people I know. Seriously.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by skylark

A lot of people are like this, sadly. If you don't make it impossible for them to explain how they are not in violation of a rule, they don't think they are. What through me was that in all other respects, he is one of the most ethical people I know. Seriously.

No doubt a lot are that way, and I think more are getting that way as we focus more on achievement than we do on character as they grow up. Now, I can't point to a golden age of good character or anything; I just think that if you ask our grandparents what might happen to such a person, they'd have a different sense of him basically being at least a partial failure as a human being because he was willing to cheat and if you asked college kids today, they basically expect a certain amount of corruption.

To tell you the truth, I think the interest and emphasis on "gamesmanship" rather than "sportsmanship" in athletics sort of goes along with it. It's a cultural issue in which we now basically celebrate the ways that people seek to get an edge whether it's actually ethical or not.

I can't tell you how bizarre it is to me that kids cheat to maintain the grades to be in "honor" societies, but as you said, I don't think they think cheating generally reflects on their character. They don't see it as being a fundamental lie.

ETA: I'm not trying to present myself as squeaky clean, but for the most part I was blessed by not caring about my grades enough to be tempted to cheat. If I hadn't done the work, I'd just turn in what I could pull off on my own.