To cheat or not to cheat

Honestly... I cheated on my recent exam... I think ?

No one said it was open book ... so I just assumed it was ok... people still failed the exam...

The excuse most students use against these online proctoring software is "invasion of privacy".

It IS a pretty legit reason yet I'm unsure this is really why they protest for most of them.

Anyways, if you pass a course by cheating, good for you. But you can't cheat away all your life.

Can someone explain why a user downvoted this thread?

cybercavalier wrote: ↑ Can someone explain why a user downvoted this thread?

This why I don't post nearly as much as I used to... In some cases, it seems some users down vote for the sake of down voting...
I've gotten down voted on my threads asking for legitimate suggestions/info/advice...

Maybe you got down voted by a student that got caught cheating?

There are different forms of cheating . If your opening up a text book and you can get the info within seconds... I don’t get how you will fail in life. If your sitting on WhatsApp as a group and someone feeding you answers ... good luck in life .. usually those are the groups of people that go further unfortunately. Life a game, choose your battles.

Also ambiguous genitalia will not help my future career in IT (exam I cheated on)

I had some friends who told me stories from back home (India and China) where they would take a test and keep a handgun on the desk. The idea was if they do anything to the student, they will tell their friends to take care of the instructor and their family.

hightech wrote: ↑ I had some friends who told me stories from back home (India and China) where they would take a test and keep a handgun on the desk. The idea was if they do anything to the student, they will tell their friends to take care of the instructor and their family.

I don't know where your friends are from, but civilian access to firearms in both mainland China and Taiwan is limited to null.

cybercavalier wrote: ↑ Can someone explain why a user downvoted this thread?

Might be as simple as someone voting "not cheat". Who knows why anyone votes here, really.

Yeah I kind of doubt non military or police peeps can get handguns. My friend who was actually a police officer in China told me that even the police don't walk around with handguns.

Cheating has always been easy.

You cannot prevent people from going to the washroom. You think professors or proctors are interested in following people to the washrooms? I kept my phone on me through every single exam in school.

This software cannot prevent cheating. It can make it more difficult and perhaps deter people, but if people want to cheat they will make it happen.

No matter how much student cheats on exam, UBC still gets the last laugh cheating students of undeserved high tuition fees.

Both unethnical - one is just more legal than the other.

The trick is designing an exam that takes more than access to information to cheat on. If I could get 100% on a math exam by simply throwing all of the questions into https://www.wolframalpha.com/, what is the purpose of that exam? Not saying that's the case here, but just an example. Anecdotally, the father of a former student teaches business classes at Western, U of T and Queens. I spoke with him about the various protocols for academic integrity and how they're affecting his exams. He said that he simply assumed his students would look things up in their books, notes, and online, and modified his exams accordingly. I guess that approach works better in some fields than others, but at the end of the day, there aren't many professions in which we don't have access to information, colleagues and time to figure things out. His exams pivoted from trying to assess what his students know to whether students can identify the knowledge that they need, find it efficiently, identify the important parts, apply them properly and communicate their conclusions effectively. Even when they go back to face-to-face classes, he's going to continue to incorporate this form of assessment in his couses. He admits that it takes more effort to mark, but he's far more confident in what those final marks actually represent.

OntEdTchr wrote: ↑ The trick is designing an exam that takes more than access to information to cheat on. If I could get 100% on a math exam by simply throwing all of the questions into https://www.wolframalpha.com/, what is the purpose of that exam? Not saying that's the case here, but just an example. Anecdotally, the father of a former student teaches business classes at Western, U of T and Queens. I spoke with him about the various protocols for academic integrity and how they're affecting his exams. He said that he simply assumed his students would look things up in their books, notes, and online, and modified his exams accordingly. I guess that approach works better in some fields than others, but at the end of the day, there aren't many professions in which we don't have access to information, colleagues and time to figure things out. His exams pivoted from trying to assess what his students know to whether students can identify the knowledge that they need, find it efficiently, identify the important parts, apply them properly and communicate their conclusions effectively. Even when they go back to face-to-face classes, he's going to continue to incorporate this form of assessment in his couses. He admits that it takes more effort to mark, but he's far more confident in what those final marks actually represent.

That's why the article is a step ahead of that logic and explains it's math class.

Even 10 years ago, they were already doing online exams in UBC's webct portal.

Even back in the days, where questions were set up the way you described in say, biology-type class, they still have trouble monitoring students who'd sit beside each other and work together on exams.

While essay/short answer questions are harder to cheat on, it's way easier to catch cheaters in math type exams because people who work together - get their answers wrong together.

And then there is the problem of asynchronous exams - where you can have 1 person take an exam and the other reads and copies the whole thing - studies it - and then does the exam later.
This happens a lot more in in-class type setting. Professors are sometimes too lazy to make their own mid-term, so classes with more than 1 professor teaching at different time may resort to using the same exam.
That is where students will take advantage of asynchronous exams - where 1 student who took the exam earlier will tell the student who's taking it later what questions are in the exam.

Many points of attack.

spiritsBB wrote: ↑ That's why the article is a step ahead of that logic and explains it's math class.

Even 10 years ago, they were already doing online exams in UBC's webct portal.

Even back in the days, where questions were set up the way you described in say, biology-type class, they still have trouble monitoring students who'd sit beside each other and work together on exams.

While essay/short answer questions are harder to cheat on, it's way easier to catch cheaters in math type exams because people who work together - get their answers wrong together.

And then there is the problem of asynchronous exams - where you can have 1 person take an exam and the other reads and copies the whole thing - studies it - and then does the exam later.
This happens a lot more in in-class type setting. Professors are sometimes too lazy to make their own mid-term, so classes with more than 1 professor teaching at different time may resort to using the same exam.
That is where students will take advantage of asynchronous exams - where 1 student who took the exam earlier will tell the student who's taking it later what questions are in the exam.

Many many points of attack.

You're right, and I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not a post-secondary prof but I do understand the thought process involved in choosing an assessment tool. Am I wrong in suggesting that most assessment tools are chosen because they provide (seemingly) objective results, i.e. a percentage mark, and can be marked efficiently and without being too time-consuming? Exams comprised of questions that have one right answer and one optimal path to finding it will always be open to attack, but those are the easiest to mark. It's a hard balance to find.

OntEdTchr wrote: ↑ You're right, and I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not a post-secondary prof but I do understand the thought process involved in choosing an assessment tool. Am I wrong in suggesting that most assessment tools are chosen because they provide (seemingly) objective results, i.e. a percentage mark, and can be marked efficiently and without being too time-consuming? Exams comprised of questions that have one right answer and one optimal path to finding it will always be open to attack, but those are the easiest to mark. It's a hard balance to find.

Right, there's always that balance. You can make exams extremely difficult to cheat on, but that also makes it extremely expensive for you, and most students would probably object to having those costs passed on. It's a balance because at a certain point, the student is the customer. If they really want to cheat, or don't want to pay for the costs of preventing cheating, they could always end up picking a different institution.

Some professional bodies, for example, won't do distance exams for that reason, and they can do that because they have a large body of (paying) members who would object to the exam process being less rigorous.

Manatus wrote: ↑ Right, there's always that balance. You can make exams extremely difficult to cheat on, but that also makes it extremely expensive for you, and most students would probably object to having those costs passed on. It's a balance because at a certain point, the student is the customer. If they really want to cheat, or don't want to pay for the costs of preventing cheating, they could always end up picking a different institution.

Some professional bodies, for example, won't do distance exams for that reason, and they can do that because they have a large body of (paying) members who would object to the exam process being less rigorous.

So I guess until the people that care about grades, i.e. employers, stop caring about grades, there's not going to be any reason to change. There are already signs that large corporations are placing less and less value on postsecondary education, particularly in certain specific fields where they highly value hands-on experience or subject matter specific training. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/15-comp ... egree.html

OntEdTchr wrote: ↑ So I guess until the people that care about grades, i.e. employers, stop caring about grades, there's not going to be any reason to change. There are already signs that large corporations are placing less and less value on postsecondary education, particularly in certain specific fields where they highly value hands-on experience or subject matter specific training. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/15-comp ... egree.html

I think it's just as much how society as a whole views postsecondary education. Do students really want to be educated, or do they just want pieces of paper (or in prestigious programs, connections) that get them a better job? And what does education mean - after all, 50+ years ago the pinnacle of education was being able to spend several years reading things in ancient Greek, or debating philosophy. I know for me, from my parents' point of view, their idea of success was if I wrote-off 4 years of my life to get the highest possible grades in the best program (i.e. the one that got the most "wows" from people they told, not the one where I necessarily learned the most). I think the less it becomes about the actual learning, the more there will be cheating.

Manatus wrote: ↑ I think it's just as much how society as a whole views postsecondary education. Do students really want to be educated, or do they just want pieces of paper (or in prestigious programs, connections) that get them a better job? And what does education mean - after all, 50+ years ago the pinnacle of education was being able to spend several years reading things in ancient Greek, or debating philosophy. I know for me, from my parents' point of view, their idea of success was if I wrote-off 4 years of my life to get the highest possible grades in the best program (i.e. the one that got the most "wows" from people they told, not the one where I necessarily learned the most). I think the less it becomes about the actual learning, the more there will be cheating.

Yep. And this is veering away from the topic of this thread, though not really as it speaks to the root of the pressure that may lead to academic dishonesty... But the effects of this view on post-secondary education can be felt in elementary schools. You won't believe the level of stress felt by certain 7th graders to get certain grades so that they can get into AP or IB so that they can get into a good university (despite AP and IB providing no advantage with respect to Canadian post-secondary admissions.) Wanting to do well isn't a necessarily a problem, but many of my students have developed a habit of dismissing any piece of feedback that doesn't come with a mark or any activity that won't "be on the report card." That's a big problem, IMO. Hell, I've had 3rd graders tell me that their parents made them practice the gifted test so that they can get into a better school. If we looked at the things people seem to value most in our education system, K-U, through an economic lens, it would look a hell of a lot like a bubble.

As a mature student wrapping up my degree, I do feel for these young students just getting started or taking 5 online courses in one semester. Any time I've ever taken an online course, the syllabus would devote half a page explaining how difficult it is and the focus it requires to do well and not fall behind. Multiply that times 5 and where many students are not fit for online learning, And there is now a good chance that their learning and grades will suffer. This difficulty is increased by many professors who are not familiar with the online system, who do not take the time required to respond to their students, and who themselves are experiencing fatigue teaching these courses online. Professors are also being directed to make the exams more difficult so that students who do open their notes will not have time to read through them and formulate the best answer possible all while decreasing the time given to complete these exams.

All these factors combined have, in my opinion, forced students to reach for their notes or take alternative measures to meet the pressures of getting good marks. After viewing my classmates marks, i can tell you that any amount of cheating, on a whole, is not helping to increase their grades, and i guarantee you most are doing it.

All I can say is good luck to all the students who are currently learning online. While I took it for granted the past 4 years, the campus really does have a positive effect on students and their learning. Through the available resources, in-person communication with classmates and professors, and the ability to be more focused in that environment.