4 ms·

I've never graded tests or papers, but I always assumed cheating would be obvious because if you go to chat with a student about the problem, they will not have

I've never graded tests or papers, but I always assumed cheating would be obvious because if you go to chat with a student about the problem, they will not have anything to say.

ht_th 5y ago
True, but that is not the same as proving someone cheated. Besides, when you have too many students, you cannot talk to all of them one-by-one in any meaningful way. Or assess them in a meaningful way, to be honest. By the way, where I work, management pushes for stuff like proctoring, and more students, and "measurable" results, and so on. As a teacher, I don't care much about the whole grading show.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > you have too many students, Then the students are not getting what they pay for.
Vrondi 5y ago
Well, if you put up an online exam that consists of only basic multiple choice tests, then you're making it a lot easier to cheat. That's the source of a lot of the trouble.
- professoretc 5y ago
  That's true, but questions that are difficult to cheat on are both difficult (time-consuming) to create, and difficult (time-consuming) to grade. Which means less time for other stuff, like actually teaching.
  - pfortuny 5y ago
    Not so much. They take time but to me it is a reasonable amount of time.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    So I only have experience creating/grading tests as a TA, not a prof, but that wasn't my experience at all. The total time spent in creating a few good, easy to discuss questions, the answering of which would demonstrate understanding, and then reading them, thinking about them, and coming up with a grade, was probably actually less than the amount of time it took to create meaningful multiple choice questions that didn't have any ambiguity, and which weren't easy to intuit the answer even without understanding. Doubly so when we did away with "partial credit" answers, but instead made it so each question was 1 point (or otherwise all or nothing), you had, say, 5 of them, and what we really were looking for was a paragraph that showed understanding (rather than checking off boxes in a rubric of "mentioned A, B, and C"; short essay questions, if you will), an expectation we communicated to the students. And that's aside from the actual project based grades, which were better still.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Yes, it’s difficult, but that’s why being a teacher is a job.
aiisjustanif 5y ago
You assume you would know the problem and that body language is truth.
- soco 5y ago
  As a teacher you're pretty expected to know the problem you just asked, and there's no amount of body language which can replace an answer to the asked problem.
bo1024 5y ago
This doesn't scale, and teaching these days is expected to scale.

I've never graded tests or papers, but I always assumed cheating would be obvious because if you go to chat with a student about the problem, they will not have anything to say.

ht_th 5y ago

True, but that is not the same as proving someone cheated. Besides, when you have too many students, you cannot talk to all of them one-by-one in any meaningful way. Or assess them in a meaningful way, to be honest. By the way, where I work, management pushes for stuff like proctoring, and more students, and "measurable" results, and so on. As a teacher, I don't care much about the whole grading show.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> you have too many students, Then the students are not getting what they pay for.

Vrondi 5y ago

Well, if you put up an online exam that consists of only basic multiple choice tests, then you're making it a lot easier to cheat. That's the source of a lot of the trouble.

professoretc 5y ago
That's true, but questions that are difficult to cheat on are both difficult (time-consuming) to create, and difficult (time-consuming) to grade. Which means less time for other stuff, like actually teaching.
- pfortuny 5y ago
  Not so much. They take time but to me it is a reasonable amount of time.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  So I only have experience creating/grading tests as a TA, not a prof, but that wasn't my experience at all. The total time spent in creating a few good, easy to discuss questions, the answering of which would demonstrate understanding, and then reading them, thinking about them, and coming up with a grade, was probably actually less than the amount of time it took to create meaningful multiple choice questions that didn't have any ambiguity, and which weren't easy to intuit the answer even without understanding. Doubly so when we did away with "partial credit" answers, but instead made it so each question was 1 point (or otherwise all or nothing), you had, say, 5 of them, and what we really were looking for was a paragraph that showed understanding (rather than checking off boxes in a rubric of "mentioned A, B, and C"; short essay questions, if you will), an expectation we communicated to the students. And that's aside from the actual project based grades, which were better still.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Yes, it’s difficult, but that’s why being a teacher is a job.

aiisjustanif 5y ago

You assume you would know the problem and that body language is truth.

soco 5y ago
As a teacher you're pretty expected to know the problem you just asked, and there's no amount of body language which can replace an answer to the asked problem.

bo1024 5y ago

This doesn't scale, and teaching these days is expected to scale.