Category Archives: Higher education

Cheating and Entrapment

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Lecturer statement reported by students: 

I worked with TA’s to create this uniquely worded question and submit the answer on Chegg – an online homework soling website… If you answered this question “correctly” on the final, you will receive a 0 for the exam, and will be reported to the university for violating the academic integrity policy.

What do students learn during your exam?

Students do learn during exams. If an exam contains deception or untruths, it potentially undermines the confidence or expertise of our graduates. If the exam reveals to them that our staff are hostile or unreliable, it undermines our value as an authoritative source for our graduates and their employers. Perverse strategies like this can only be defended if there is no other way to achieve our assessment aims.

There is a more honest and constructive path.

For example, giving advance notice, ahead of the exam period, that one of the questions is “impossible” and will be scored for insights rather than results. Or, if it’s a remotely proctored exam, include a question that calls for a “talk aloud” (real-time stream of consciousness) response. Or include questions that score students for evaluating alternative solutions in dialogue with another (assigned) student.

Cheating is a breach of trust. So is entrapment.

Why did you think the trust between you and students was stronger than their need to get a grade? Did students perceive your investment in relationship-building and their need for grades?

Let’s be clear. Publishing deliberate errors is not exemplary academic integrity.

Your assessment plan is broken.

Voiding 29% of your exam assessment indicates that you need a different assessment model. You can reduce the reward for misbehaviour by using incremental assessment. We have a large kit of alternatives to high-stakes closed-form exams.

Is cheating a professional competence?

If your discipline or industry regards high-stakes, closed-form exams as being the most authentic assessment, it has married tacit tolerance of this kind of cheating to strenuous denials. As an institution educating future professionals, we (ethically) owe students an honest appraisal of that context, and assistance in developing their optimal strategies for advancement. We need to ask how we can train students to excel in a cheating-prone discipline.

Edutech implementation as resituation

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Changing your own practice is real work.

 

Westberry (2015) unpacks reflections of 14 lecturers who switched to multi-site lecturing.

Experiences and responses

Some good teaching intentions were frustrated:

I conceived it as sort of having windows where you could, could talk or see or respond to people in other rooms, and that we would be a community…

I always use teachable moments … all this technology absolutely puts a down on that whole teaching system, because you have to abide by some rules, that you have to go on with the flow and be on camera and be on shot…

Sometimes the solution is to be less ambitious.

While the technical staff believed that more interactive versions of the technology were needed teachers on all four courses adapted by limiting interactivity or resituating it in other contexts such as tutorials.

Solutions often involved increasingly collaborative teaching practice.

Almost all teachers in the remote venues however, experienced uncertainty and a lack of control…

Time – perhaps a year – is required.

…the lack of professional development opportunities for staff and daily technical breakdowns led to replacement with another system after one year of operation.

They describe the teachers’ adaptation process as “often turbulent and multifaceted”, and,

in a situation of perceived compromise, beliefs remained predominantly unchanged.

things are a bit out of control – that [the lecture] it is not a very safe place, that the ground is shifting and it can all just disappear at any minute. (Technician)

Implications

Teachers need to be able to openly voice and negotiate pedagogical and technological choices.

In conclusion, the authors argued

it is imperative for technological changes to be introduced either in a way that is aligned with teachers’ current knowledge and ways of working, or with the support and time needed to effectively resituate them.

References

Nicola Westberry, Susan McNaughton, Jennie Billot & Helen Gaeta (2015) Resituation or resistance? Higher education teachers’ adaptation to technological change. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 24:1, 101-116. DOI: 10.1080/1475939X.2013.869509

Michael Eraut (2004) Informal learning in the workplace. Studies in Continuing Education, 26:2. DOI: 10.1080/158037042000225245