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It has been fascinating to watch the reaction to Panos' blog post on cheating. I agree and disagree with this follow-up post, however. On one hand, I agree th
by pbh 15y ago
It has been fascinating to watch the reaction to Panos' blog post on cheating. I agree and disagree with this follow-up post, however. On one hand, I agree that most reactions have generally been shallow and poorly thought out. On the other hand, I think that what made Panos' original post so compelling was his comprehensive listing of the many disincentives to fighting cheating at the university, including the impact on his salary.
Overall, the result of Panos clicking more or less a single check box (and, admittedly, doing a few Excel tricks) to detect cheating was: (1) 45 hours of students crying in his office, (2) his class took on a powerful negative atmosphere, (3) his best students were turned away during office hours, (4) his student evaluations went down, (5) he arguably made less money than he would have otherwise, (6) he was called a racist in at least one public forum, (7) the reputation of his university and/or program was damaged, and (8) he was sent a cease-and-desist letter.
Ultimately, this is a huge set of disincentives. It is not surprising that most would simply choose the more appealing alternative of just deciding that a professor cannot be responsible for making students want to learn.
What is most discouraging about the salary information is not the money itself, but the implication that even Panos' department was not willing to give him support when he tried to fix the problem in his own classroom. (Arguably, they must have known that addressing cheating would have a huge impact on course evaluations.)
- techiferous 15y ago"Arguably, they must have known that addressing cheating would have a huge impact on course evaluations." By the way, the evaluations of students who cheated were not counted, which mitigates things a little. EDIT: "Moreover, the course evaluation input of any student who has an honor code infraction is removed from consideration when evaluating teaching performance." -- http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/nyu-prof-vows-never-to-probe-cheating-again%E2%80%94and-faces-a-backlash/32351 http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/nyu-prof-vows-never-t...
- pbh 15y agoI think that you make an important point. Not counting detected cheaters in course evaluations seems like a good policy. This is especially true because student evaluations have been shown in a number of cases to be very highly correlated with the student's expected grade. However, I still agree with Panos' diagnosis that his student evaluations went down in response to detecting cheating. He presumably has data from hundreds of students over years of classes. The primary difference between this year and past years was almost certainly his detection of cheaters. While removing cheaters from the evaluation pool may mitigate the problem a little, I find it pretty plausible that evaluations went down because of some cheating-detection related phenomenon, like the more adversarial atmosphere, his own feelings about the cheaters, or students feeling attacked or accused.
- techiferous 15y agoYep, I agree, too. It could poison the dynamic of the whole classroom.
- inuhj 15y agoPeople who cheated were counted. The evaluation of students who had honor code violations were not reported. From his original blog post he mentioned that he did not refer all his students to the university's "honor council". He even gave the student who copy/pasted another student's work a chance to redo the paper without referring it to the administration. It's a very reasonable thing for him to do given the consequences of being referred to the honor council. Having cheating on your college transcript is a scarlet letter if you're thinking about graduate school. You get an 'F' in the course and will not be granted admission to any medical, law, dentistry, or pharmacy school. The consequences are disproportionately severe given how pervasive cheating is.