In comments on and earlier post, I mentioned that I no longer take extraordinary measures in anticipation of students taking an exam in an earlier sitting passing on information or answers to students taking the same exam in a later sitting. Commenter Martin wondered if I wasn’t being naïve:
there has been no evidence of such answers-from-the-earlier-sitting cheating in the whole time I’ve been at this university.
Janet,
how do you know this, what do you do to look for this? I’m sceptical, because we’ve had incidents where students doing the same exam in different countries on the same day but in different time zones have passed on details of the exam, even though there is no formal contact between the students during the semester, so the idea that students at the same campus don’t know that they are getting the same exam seems unlikely
Martin’s suggestion, that lack of evidence of cheating is not conclusive evidence of a lack of cheating, is a fair one.
Folks from an earlier sitting of an exam might well be sharing information about that exam with folks who have yet to take it. Short of making all the students for multiple sections take an exam at the same time (which I can’t — the university sets the exam schedule based on the regular class days and times, and multiple sections wouldn’t fit in a single classroom to take the exam in a single sitting) or imposing Cheney-esque surveillance measures, it would be hard to close off this possibility completely.
What I can say is that, if this mode of communication is at work, it does not seem to be exerting a significant influence on the exam grades. The scores from all the sittings of a given exam end up being roughly the same, with no marked increase (even on particular exam sections) in points scored by students in later sittings. Moreover, there are very few final exam scores that are higher than expected on the basis of other relevant data (essay grades, level of class participation, time spent asking me questions in office hours and via email and the level of those questions, etc.).
Possibly this means that people are attempting to use information passed on to them from students in earlier sittings of the exam but are not successful in their attempts.
Indeed, one reason that I’m not particularly concerned about the possibility of cheating of this sort is that I have set up my exams in such a way that the incentives for cheating are pretty low.
I give my students detailed exam review sheets well in advance of the exam. These are pretty explicit about the material that will be covered on the exam, and include both study questions and sample test items. They also spell out the format of the exam (what types of items and approximately how many of each). Thus, there are no shocking revelations as far as content or format when students see the actual exam.
When there are essay questions, I include them verbatim on the exam review sheet. (Actually, I usually include three essay questions on the review sheet and let students know that two of those questions will appear on the exam; of those two, they can choose which one to answer. I then use a random method to determine which of the three questions on the review sheet gets dropped from the exam. This means that students have to think more, in the studying, than they have to write on the exam — they have to be prepared to deal with at least two of those essay questions, since only preparing for one risks preparing for the one essay question that doesn’t end up on the exam.) If they want to, they can go ahead and write out answers to the essay questions as part of their exam preparation.
And indeed, they can avail themselves of those pre-written essays if they want, since I let my students come to the exam with an 8.5″ by 11″ page (front and back) of notes that they prepare themselves. They can put anything they want to on this page — essays, definitions, diagrams, whatever they think it will help them to have in front of them while they’re taking the exam. What I’m testing for, after all, is not their powers of recall but their understanding of the material.
Given the transparency about the material covered, the exam format, even the essay questions, plus the students’ abilities to make and use their own “cheat sheets”, it’s not clear what kind of grade-alterting evidence students in later exam sittings might get from students in earlier exam sittings. “Dude, the answer to the second multiple choice question is C!” is only helpful information in the case that your informant is correct about the right answer to that multiple choice question. “Dude, there are questions about Kuhn and the theory-laden nature of observation!” is something already revealed on the exam review sheet.
Sure, it’s possible I have a master criminal or two in my midst, but given that they’d seem to be adopting a cover that involves writing really good essays and asking really thoughtful questions in class, it strikes me that they must be covering their criminal enterprise by learning the material really well.
My feeling is, if they are willing to waste their $40,000 they paid in tuition to cheat in the final – that’s their loss, let them cheat. At some points you have to assume that students are adults and that they have to realize that cheating on my exam is just a waste of their time and money. Thus I never go through any sort of extensive anti-cheat measures. My guess is that the students who cheat are the ones who end up getting poor grades anyway, so I’m not sure how much it helps. Plagiarism, however, is another issue altogether…
Janet,
thanks for explaining. I’ve done a fair bit of work looking at cheating and plagiarism and you’re doing exactly the type of things I usually recommend, i.e. set the assessment up so that cheating doesn’t actually help, I’d be pretty sure that some students do it, but as you indicate it doesn’t avail them of anything :-), if anything. I wish some of my colleagues had thought through their examination assessment process as much as you clearly have.
Mysteryprof,
2 points, first we have a responsibility to the community and to the university to ensure that when we pass a student as being competent at whatever minimum level we have established, that it is actually true that they have reached that level, if they have cheated then there it is highly likely that they haven’t reached the level
Second, serious plagiarism is cheating, I don’t really understand the divide that people have their heads over this issue. Where the plagiarism is inadvertent because the student doesn’t understand the rules on how to quote is one thing, but in any situation where they do understand the rules, plagiarism is just a form of cheating
cheers
Martin
Now that’s good teaching. I’m almost 20×3, and my powers of recall (never great) are significantly impacted.
The way you are setting up your exam prep for your students implies that they will master the content, not the tiddly details.
One of my pet peeves — the “match the quote to the author” multiple choice question format. What does that mean to the student’s mastery of the material?
Probably not totally relevant, but frankly I’m still in a little shock.
Graded exams Friday evening before heading out for weekend. Noted some really strong efforts (take-home exam), some really lame, nothing special. Then: two word-for-word identical, typos-and-all, answers with *many* unique characteristics compared to all other answerers of that Q, even down to the same joke-aside-to-the-professor.
Ack, really? Check. Yep, really, and true for about four Qs (of 27) on this short-answer format take-home final (given this way because somewhat akin to Janet, I also want them to demonstrate knowledg even if they have to use a book or the net for some facts/help. Anyway..).
I’m still in shock; some details adding to shock are unpostable b/c of identification possibilities in public.
I send email to the two: “I need to speak to you regarding your final; are you around next week?”
From A: detailed reason, perfectly fine, why no. Also unbloggable.
From B: “Yes. If this has anything to do with similarities between A’s paper and my own, I want to talk with you privately.”
Well, there goes any possibility that I was wrong, huh? Wow. And what a response to send!
Oh, and: fuck.
From B: “Yes. If this has anything to do with similarities between A’s paper and my own, I want to talk with you privately.”
Wow… is “B” as stupid as they sound? Or is s/he waiting to get their lawyer involved? Or would they just prefer to grovel privately?
so in Ewan’s comment above who cheated?
A
because they don’t want to discuss
B
because they knew there were similarities
not A
since they are oblivious to the possibility of cheating
not B
since they are willing to discuss
At caltech all our exams are take-home. We trust our students
I consider B to be self-evidently culpable; I sadly really don’t think I can post guesses etc. here yet as to individual degrees of culpability or whatever, on the one-in-a-zillion chance they read this. But advice, private or public – Janet, you there?
– is very welcome.
Martin – First, yes I agree that people’s grades should reflect their competency. However, if somebody is at the point where they feel like they need to cheat, then they are likely not doing well in the course anyway. Plus in the type of exams I give, short of stealing the answer key by hacking onto my computer or breaking into my office, I can’t imagine what type of cheating they could do to alter their grades significantly. Finally, habitual cheaters are self selecting and will eventually not “make it”, say when they apply to Med School.
I feel job as a professor is to educate the students and impart knowledge in a clear and comprehensive way, and provide opportunities to those students who want to go beyond the lecture to explore the material in deeper ways and guide them through the process. My job is not to babysit students who want to throw away this opportunity by cheating in the exam!
As far as plagiarism, yes it is a form of cheating. But trying to pass off somebody else’s work as your own, in my mind, is much worse since it directly hurts the person being plagiarized. Whereas if you somehow wen through the trouble of stealing an exam, memorizing all the answers and then taking the exam, well that’s almost like studying…
But, IRL, you won’t be able to get the answers an employer/your advisor needs by stealing the test and memorizing the answers, and if that’s the only way you can get the answers, then you won’t be able to get them at all.
Much of the value of an education isn’t simply in its intrinsic value (the information you learn, the opportunities it gave you) but in what it tell others about your capacities. Misrepresenting your knowledge doesn’t only hurt you, but the people who rely on the estimation of your knowledge to make their own decisions. Even if those decisions only matter for the initial hiring and not for your long-term persistence, they still matter.
What I’m testing for, after all, is not their powers of recall but their understanding of the material.
That and the ever-essential skill of how to properly research for answers you don’t know. Rote memorization is for chimps. Knowing how to learn what you don’t already know is the gold standard for anyone who wants a successful career.
The anti-cheating strategies you outlined are good. Not all profs will go to those lengths. Some, as indicated above, are perfectly happy to dump the responsibility for not cheating entirely on the student. That’s also valid, and they are right: there’s hell to pay when your potential or current employers find out you’re a bullshitter.
Once I was in community college with a course by a teacher who believed in making us learn by dumping extraordinary amounts of homework on us. Of course, all the full time students (and part-time students who had full-time jobs) could not possibly handle the work load. Lots of floppies got passed between students, and we all got really good at editing somebody else’s answers so it didn’t look copied.
On the last day of class the instructor asked me, personally, for feedback on her teaching methods. I mentioned the problem that there seemed to be an inordinate amount of homework in her class compared to the others, and the time constraints faced by students simultaneously preparing for exams in four or five other classes besides hers.
She asked me how do students cope with that? It seemed like an honest question, so I gave her the honest answer. I said, look we don’t have time for all the stuff, so if someone shoots you a floppy, you leverage your resources and do what you have to do. It’s a very competitive environment, and a serious student is going for a top GPA if he/she can get it. What do you think people should do?
Amazingly, she seemed to get what I was saying. She told me she would re-consider the workload when shaping future curriculum for her class.
Whether she did or not, I’m not sure, as I never really went back to verify after finishing her class.
It was a rare moment: she seemed genuinely interested in the student perspective, and I did not feel at all threatened in that moment by telling her the truth about what was happening. I didn’t name any names, of course, and she seemed not interested in persecuting anyone, she just wanted the honest feedback.
MysteryProf,
I think it is unfair and demoralizing to the honest students when there is obvious cheating going on, particularly in the case of tests that are hard to proctor, like multiple choice or lab practicals. When I am careful to create a situation where cheating is difficult or impossible, as a TA, that is who I have in mind. This is especially true if your grade cutoffs depend on the results.
I just TA’d a course that had two lab sections on different days. We were required to come up with a quiz that was worth a fair number of points every other week which were pretty elaborate (lab practical) or with lot’s of diagrams and life cycles to draw or grade, and we got lazier about making them different as the semester progressed (the last two were virtually identical for the two sections) because there was not the slightest evidence of the Q’s being passed on.
The second section’s grades were no higher, and they seemed equally perplexed by the questions. It turned out there was a friendly sense of competition between the two sections, not sure if that was why. Also, it was not a huge intro course, these were pretty hard-core upper division students.
First, congratulations on a job well done!
How do you know they aren’t cheating?
Assume they are. That is, that “cheating” is something that everyone does, but to varying degrees, from an almost accidental peek to deliberate, organized conspiracy. The advantage of this approach is when exceptions show up, you get a pleasurable jolt rather than a slap in the face.
And cheating is a slap in your face! It is a specific rejection of your own devotion,to use your own term for it, not just academic principles.
The other side of the issue is cheating by the teacher. When a teacher is heavily invested in his or her own image as a teacher, he or she may prefer not to know about the cheating, turning the blind eye on the subject. But this is a form of cheating itself, cheating on the basic contract the teacher makes with society, through the institution that hires the teacher.
The issue becomes one of professional ethics at the point where the prof or instructor or teacher allows a personal proclivity to pass under the flag of academic freedom or some other rationale. Along with facts and concepts and reasoning, there is an obligation to teach honesty, which is something you can only do by doing it. That goes beyond the cheating issue and includes being honest about work load and grades no matter where you are in the system.
From a student perspective only, it would be nice if exam rooms were more comfortable. 3 hours spent hunching over my paper hoping to both prevent anyone else copying me and also prevent anyone from thinking I am cheating can get very painful after a while. School exams were better because at least the people behind you couldn’t see your paper. Stupid lecture theatres being slanted.
I realise there is nothing the lecturer/professor can do about this, I just like to complain 😀
Just wanted to follow-up. Student A back in country, confirms the copying from student B. Which was, I actually think, to their credit. Seemed very surprised that I would have reported the problem to the University without talking to them first.
Still feels awful. A claims, and I don’t doubt, that he’s the hope of the family and being supported by aged relatives working in second- or third-world conditions to send him here, had planned to return there and practice medicine. Yuck.