Cheating may have less to do with the inherent "morality" of students than with the incentives to which they are subject.
Instructors have some control over the incentives within their courses, including the design of assignments and exams. A recent column on Inside Higher Ed (an online academic news site) opined that, if we teach studen…
Cheating may have less to do with the inherent "morality" of students than with the incentives to which they are subject.
Instructors have some control over the incentives within their courses, including the design of assignments and exams. A recent column on Inside Higher Ed (an online academic news site) opined that, if we teach students to write like robots, they can have a robot do their writing. The careful design of more meaningful projects and products can address that aspect of the problem, but that will take real, sustained effort on the part of instructors, even assuming they have the standing, the latitude, and the incentives to make the effort.
Instructors can also rethink how the overall grading schemes in their classes shape incentives. In his work on moral development, Piaget observed that when students are put in competition with each other for scarce approval or success, they will almost inevitably cheat: either they cheat on their own to get one over on their peers, or they collude in cheating to get one over on their teacher. On those grounds, I have concluded that grading on a curve is quite simply pedagogical malpractice.
There are things beyond instructors' control that shape the incentives, especially the nearly universal obsession with the GPA, which is an increasingly meaningless external indicator of alleged merit. The obsession sets in early, fostered by parents, college admissions processes, financial aid, and peer pressure, then is made much worse by some large employers who will screen applicants first by GPA, only allowing those over a certain threshold even to complete an application.
In my experience, the enforced GPA obsession makes students timid: any slight misstep - a late assignment, a mediocre exam score - feels to them like a career-ending calamity. They are so afraid of failure they have become unable to learn, unwilling to take risks, and much more inclined to find shortcuts around systems that seem to treat them with such contempt.
(For context: I'm an associate professor at a large public university.)
What Piaget didn’t account for was the expectation that checklists are now more important than growth. There is no such thing as limited approval or success; students demand equity of outcome.
I don't see a lot of that among my students. Given the opportunity, most of them genuinely want to learn, and they are capable of holding themselves to a high standard.
I only see that when I create a kind of artificial bubble within a course which insulates them, a little, from the GPA rat-race into which we are all locked. Within that bubble, they have the opportunity to fail spectacularly, and then recover from failure by trying again . . . and again . . . until they can meet or exceed an unvarying standard of proficiency in a given skill.
I've never seen students so motivated, or so willing to critique their own performance.
Serious question Bob K: how many professors are like you who really care so much about educating that they'll go the length to do what you describe? I think some do. But aren't there also a lot who just teach because they have to, but what they really care about is their own research? And teaching is just a nuisance they put up with to be at the university to do what they want?
Some of this is also a matter of incentives. I'm at a "research university" - part of the system established after the end of WWII. Although faculty performance is assessed on the basis of "research, teaching, and service," with lots of happy talk about how all three are valued equally, it's an open secret that all that really matters is publication and quantitative metrics of the "impact" of publications.
There's a longstanding morbid "joke" that the surest way to destroy your chances of getting tenure as an early-career faculty member is to win a teaching award.
That said, there is at least a sizable minority of faculty who genuinely want to teach well - and who really strive to teach well - and there are lots of resources available on most campuses to support that. Many of them aren't sure what to do, and none of us can do much about the external incentives that bear on students, like the GPA obsession.
Agree. The most freeing thing ever for me was taking college classes AFTER graduating from college. Once I had the paper in my hand, I was finally free to take a challenging class where I might get a "C" vs. selecting courses where I knew an "A" was guaranteed for showing up and doing the assignments.
I don't really experience it at my current institution, but in past teaching gigs the best students in class were those coming back to take classes just for their own personal interests. I once had a WWII vet enroll in one of my classes. He had been a bombardier in the European theater, and he bowled students over with first-hand accounts of dropping bombs on people . . . while we were discussing the ethics of war!
Cheating may have less to do with the inherent "morality" of students than with the incentives to which they are subject.
Instructors have some control over the incentives within their courses, including the design of assignments and exams. A recent column on Inside Higher Ed (an online academic news site) opined that, if we teach students to write like robots, they can have a robot do their writing. The careful design of more meaningful projects and products can address that aspect of the problem, but that will take real, sustained effort on the part of instructors, even assuming they have the standing, the latitude, and the incentives to make the effort.
Instructors can also rethink how the overall grading schemes in their classes shape incentives. In his work on moral development, Piaget observed that when students are put in competition with each other for scarce approval or success, they will almost inevitably cheat: either they cheat on their own to get one over on their peers, or they collude in cheating to get one over on their teacher. On those grounds, I have concluded that grading on a curve is quite simply pedagogical malpractice.
There are things beyond instructors' control that shape the incentives, especially the nearly universal obsession with the GPA, which is an increasingly meaningless external indicator of alleged merit. The obsession sets in early, fostered by parents, college admissions processes, financial aid, and peer pressure, then is made much worse by some large employers who will screen applicants first by GPA, only allowing those over a certain threshold even to complete an application.
In my experience, the enforced GPA obsession makes students timid: any slight misstep - a late assignment, a mediocre exam score - feels to them like a career-ending calamity. They are so afraid of failure they have become unable to learn, unwilling to take risks, and much more inclined to find shortcuts around systems that seem to treat them with such contempt.
(For context: I'm an associate professor at a large public university.)
What Piaget didn’t account for was the expectation that checklists are now more important than growth. There is no such thing as limited approval or success; students demand equity of outcome.
I don't see a lot of that among my students. Given the opportunity, most of them genuinely want to learn, and they are capable of holding themselves to a high standard.
I only see that when I create a kind of artificial bubble within a course which insulates them, a little, from the GPA rat-race into which we are all locked. Within that bubble, they have the opportunity to fail spectacularly, and then recover from failure by trying again . . . and again . . . until they can meet or exceed an unvarying standard of proficiency in a given skill.
I've never seen students so motivated, or so willing to critique their own performance.
Maybe there is hope.
Serious question Bob K: how many professors are like you who really care so much about educating that they'll go the length to do what you describe? I think some do. But aren't there also a lot who just teach because they have to, but what they really care about is their own research? And teaching is just a nuisance they put up with to be at the university to do what they want?
Some of this is also a matter of incentives. I'm at a "research university" - part of the system established after the end of WWII. Although faculty performance is assessed on the basis of "research, teaching, and service," with lots of happy talk about how all three are valued equally, it's an open secret that all that really matters is publication and quantitative metrics of the "impact" of publications.
There's a longstanding morbid "joke" that the surest way to destroy your chances of getting tenure as an early-career faculty member is to win a teaching award.
That said, there is at least a sizable minority of faculty who genuinely want to teach well - and who really strive to teach well - and there are lots of resources available on most campuses to support that. Many of them aren't sure what to do, and none of us can do much about the external incentives that bear on students, like the GPA obsession.
Agree. The most freeing thing ever for me was taking college classes AFTER graduating from college. Once I had the paper in my hand, I was finally free to take a challenging class where I might get a "C" vs. selecting courses where I knew an "A" was guaranteed for showing up and doing the assignments.
I don't really experience it at my current institution, but in past teaching gigs the best students in class were those coming back to take classes just for their own personal interests. I once had a WWII vet enroll in one of my classes. He had been a bombardier in the European theater, and he bowled students over with first-hand accounts of dropping bombs on people . . . while we were discussing the ethics of war!