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As a current student, I can maybe offer a bit of perspective on this. There are a few different options I've seen tried: 1. Project-based assignments. These

As a current student, I can maybe offer a bit of perspective on this. There are a few different options I've seen tried: 1. Project-based assignments. These work well. In certain cases a tool to check for plagiarism may be helpful, provided that a human review is used to double-check flagged assignments. 2. Essays. These can be given as take-home assignments, in which case they are similar to 1. They can also be given in an exam format, which is generally difficult to cheat and does a good job of testing understanding. 3. Traditional exams. These work poorly in a take-home format. They typically require invasive solutions. The least-bad that I've seen are those in which teachers require students to get on zoom with a camera pointing at the student's face, workspace, and screen. The other big downside is that they generally make students more nervous about the test. To any profs that read this: please use options one or two if possible. Your students will thank you and may even do better for it.

908B64B197 6y ago
3. favors rote. But is cheaper and easier to grade.
jholman 6y ago
I think you're missing the point completely. Start by supposing, for the sake of argument, that you think that grades matter. Like for example for determining access to scholarships or graduate programs. Also suppose, for the sake of argument, that some percentage of the students are going to cheat, and suppose that it matters to the aforementioned grades. Also I'm assuming a distance-learning option, perhaps due to quarantine, but the question generalizes to other reasons. How do options 1 and 2 do anything at all to fight the alleged cheating problem? Remote essays are very easy to cheat, just as easy as any other kind of remote exam. Anything take-home is even easier to cheat. The parent commenter is simply claiming that cheating just doesn't happen enough to matter (at least not at Caltech, they claim). That's possible, I have no idea. But it's quite different from saying "remote exams are bad". --- As for why professors administer exams, btw... a professor is going to spend such-and-such an amount of time on you and your class. Maybe it's 5 hours per week, maybe it's 20. Would you rather they invest that time into teaching, or marking? Speaking as a former student and a current teacher, I tend to prefer it be spent on teaching. If you agree that the teaching is more valuable then the marking, teachers should choose the least labour-demanding form of assessment, so they can get back to investing energy in teaching (and/or get back to other responsibilities). Exams are easier to grade than projects and essays. A professor who chooses exams is usually saying "marking is not a good use of my time". (A professor who chooses essays or projects is usually saying "marking is a teaching opportunity so I hate this but oh well").
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Remote essays are very easy to cheat Automated plagiarism detection tools should be good enough these days. Of course, there's always the possibility one could buy an essay but then there's always the risk the seller sold the same essay to several students!
  - ev1 6y ago
    I used to TA and have seen several of these essay farms in the most amusing ways. - Embedded metadata in the PDF of a long, foreign name that was not the student's (as Author:) - An email to several TAs + prof for the course with the student's personal information sent by the essay farm because the student was harassing the essay farm over payment/cost/speed, including live chat logs of the student calling them "pakis" (the essay farm was based in the Philippines) - Two students purchased and turned in an identical essay except the words were re-spun (bullshit synonym replacement, automated) to the point that both were unreadable to a native English speaker. It was clear neither of them had even read through it before submitting it at 23:59 A fair chunk of bought essays (under $100-150, probably, not the truly bespoke "pay2win" type) are nearly just the Wikipedia article regurgitated with irrelevant citations or sources that just vaguely match the keywords.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      > An email to several TAs + prof for the course with the student's personal information sent by the essay farm because the student was harassing the essay farm over payment/cost/speed, including live chat logs of the student calling them "pakis" (the essay farm was based in the Philippines) Wow. What ended up happening? The truly bespoke "pay2win" (love the name!) will always work sadly. But the price point means you don't have to be worried about 99% of the student population. It's an acceptable risk I suppose.
      - ev1 6y ago
        Nothing major unfortunately, on paper that should have been expulsion/suspension but in reality he got a zero and had to retake, and since it was a prerequisite for other courses it pretty much had the side effect of adding an extra year of tuition.
jojobas 6y ago
Options 1 and 2 pretend there's no "Assignment as a service" market. In reality there's not just a market, there are Ubers on the market, making it easy to match cheaty students with industrious graduates.

908B64B197 6y ago

3. favors rote. But is cheaper and easier to grade.

jholman 6y ago

I think you're missing the point completely. Start by supposing, for the sake of argument, that you think that grades matter. Like for example for determining access to scholarships or graduate programs. Also suppose, for the sake of argument, that some percentage of the students are going to cheat, and suppose that it matters to the aforementioned grades. Also I'm assuming a distance-learning option, perhaps due to quarantine, but the question generalizes to other reasons. How do options 1 and 2 do anything at all to fight the alleged cheating problem? Remote essays are very easy to cheat, just as easy as any other kind of remote exam. Anything take-home is even easier to cheat. The parent commenter is simply claiming that cheating just doesn't happen enough to matter (at least not at Caltech, they claim). That's possible, I have no idea. But it's quite different from saying "remote exams are bad". --- As for why professors administer exams, btw... a professor is going to spend such-and-such an amount of time on you and your class. Maybe it's 5 hours per week, maybe it's 20. Would you rather they invest that time into teaching, or marking? Speaking as a former student and a current teacher, I tend to prefer it be spent on teaching. If you agree that the teaching is more valuable then the marking, teachers should choose the least labour-demanding form of assessment, so they can get back to investing energy in teaching (and/or get back to other responsibilities). Exams are easier to grade than projects and essays. A professor who chooses exams is usually saying "marking is not a good use of my time". (A professor who chooses essays or projects is usually saying "marking is a teaching opportunity so I hate this but oh well").

908B64B197 6y ago
> Remote essays are very easy to cheat Automated plagiarism detection tools should be good enough these days. Of course, there's always the possibility one could buy an essay but then there's always the risk the seller sold the same essay to several students!
- ev1 6y ago
  I used to TA and have seen several of these essay farms in the most amusing ways. - Embedded metadata in the PDF of a long, foreign name that was not the student's (as Author:) - An email to several TAs + prof for the course with the student's personal information sent by the essay farm because the student was harassing the essay farm over payment/cost/speed, including live chat logs of the student calling them "pakis" (the essay farm was based in the Philippines) - Two students purchased and turned in an identical essay except the words were re-spun (bullshit synonym replacement, automated) to the point that both were unreadable to a native English speaker. It was clear neither of them had even read through it before submitting it at 23:59 A fair chunk of bought essays (under $100-150, probably, not the truly bespoke "pay2win" type) are nearly just the Wikipedia article regurgitated with irrelevant citations or sources that just vaguely match the keywords.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > An email to several TAs + prof for the course with the student's personal information sent by the essay farm because the student was harassing the essay farm over payment/cost/speed, including live chat logs of the student calling them "pakis" (the essay farm was based in the Philippines) Wow. What ended up happening? The truly bespoke "pay2win" (love the name!) will always work sadly. But the price point means you don't have to be worried about 99% of the student population. It's an acceptable risk I suppose.
    - ev1 6y ago
      Nothing major unfortunately, on paper that should have been expulsion/suspension but in reality he got a zero and had to retake, and since it was a prerequisite for other courses it pretty much had the side effect of adding an extra year of tuition.

jojobas 6y ago

Options 1 and 2 pretend there's no "Assignment as a service" market. In reality there's not just a market, there are Ubers on the market, making it easy to match cheaty students with industrious graduates.