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Telling students about your anti-cheating measures seems like a health inspector telling restaurants in advance the dates when he'll show up. The problem is tha

Telling students about your anti-cheating measures seems like a health inspector telling restaurants in advance the dates when he'll show up. The problem is that most professors are not going to go out of their ways to employ anti-cheating measures; by catching cheaters, you are doing a service to the larger college community by removing them.

anitil 6y ago
Ironically when I worked in a deli, we actually were told the dates the health inspector would turn up. You can imagine the day before was spent cleaning and scrubbing!
- brigandish 6y ago
  As your example shows, it's not such a bad thing to announce measures because they can have the side effect of raising standards. Used alongside the odd random visit I would imagine this to be incredibly effective.
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    That's not what the example "shows". The standards aren't raised, but lowered. First, let's just agree on some terminology health codes are the "standard". If you only clean before an inspector arrives (and you are sure that that's the only time to do so) your standard is lower on average over periods of time or altogether, depending on the offense. If you don't know when the inspector is going to arrive, you are incentivized to keep to the code at all times, which is the reason you aren't supposed to know.
    - brigandish 6y ago
      > Used alongside the odd random visit I would imagine this to be incredibly effective. You missed this bit.
btrettel 6y ago
When I was a teenager I worked at a Shell gas station. Once I had a customer who asked about the advantages of using Shell nitrogen-enriched gasoline. I didn't know anything about it and found their question really odd. As I recall, they came back later and revealed that they were a secret shopper for Shell, and we failed the random inspection. All because of a question that no real customer ever asked in my experience. ;-) My boss didn't care, fortunately.
DavidVoid 6y ago
But would all those cheaters still have become cheaters if the act of cheating had been more difficult? I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that someone who started cheating because they saw an easy opportunity to do so at some point would never have cheated at all if that easy opportunity had never been there to begin with. "Oppurtunity makes the thief" as the old saying goes.

anitil 6y ago

Ironically when I worked in a deli, we actually were told the dates the health inspector would turn up. You can imagine the day before was spent cleaning and scrubbing!

brigandish 6y ago
As your example shows, it's not such a bad thing to announce measures because they can have the side effect of raising standards. Used alongside the odd random visit I would imagine this to be incredibly effective.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  That's not what the example "shows". The standards aren't raised, but lowered. First, let's just agree on some terminology health codes are the "standard". If you only clean before an inspector arrives (and you are sure that that's the only time to do so) your standard is lower on average over periods of time or altogether, depending on the offense. If you don't know when the inspector is going to arrive, you are incentivized to keep to the code at all times, which is the reason you aren't supposed to know.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    > Used alongside the odd random visit I would imagine this to be incredibly effective. You missed this bit.

btrettel 6y ago

When I was a teenager I worked at a Shell gas station. Once I had a customer who asked about the advantages of using Shell nitrogen-enriched gasoline. I didn't know anything about it and found their question really odd. As I recall, they came back later and revealed that they were a secret shopper for Shell, and we failed the random inspection. All because of a question that no real customer ever asked in my experience. ;-) My boss didn't care, fortunately.

DavidVoid 6y ago

But would all those cheaters still have become cheaters if the act of cheating had been more difficult? I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that someone who started cheating because they saw an easy opportunity to do so at some point would never have cheated at all if that easy opportunity had never been there to begin with. "Oppurtunity makes the thief" as the old saying goes.