http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
Based on our discussions of a learning centered university, I thought this (disturbing) article was germane. It describes how plagiarism occurs when learning fails, and the author seems to indict educators for this failure--or for just being out of touch with our students. I'm interested to see your comments.
This is scary. I don't even want to think about it because it is so discouraging. LA, LA, LA I didn't hear any of what I just read [says with fingers in ears and eyes closed].
ReplyDeleteOkay, first of all, I felt my toes inch back in my shoes. I really think that we are guilty of the type of failure to help international students that is described in this article. I also wonder how we combat this type of cheating. I know that the best thing to do is probably to have students write everything in our presence and only accept what we see them actually write, but I also know this is not in accordance with the technology the world uses -- is the answer more computer labs? Obviously, that would help, but if the computer labs have Internet access, how do we know the students are writing, and not shopping? I am with you, Tanya, maybe closing my ears and eyes and putting my head in the sand is the easiest answer. At any rate, I feel challenged to know my students, whether they take their courses in a traditional way or online.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that there is a fail-proof way to combat this. Some students are going to cheat and they have methods/resources that we just will not be able to detect. For example, after reading some of the ECE exams, I suspect that one student may have brought in a blue book with the essay already written (the essay and the prompts did not match). So, do we now check every blue book that is brought into the ECE? I think it's one of those unsolvable problems (like totally unmotivated students who refuse, despite our best efforts, to become engaged with our classes). While my comment was tongue-in-cheek, this article IS very discouraging and will drain me of energy/enthusiasm if I think about it too much.
ReplyDeleteThis was so disturbing, but frankly, I don't think many of my freshmen would fork out $2000 for any assignment. HOWEVER, I'm sure some of my online students would be willing to pay anyone to do all of their coursework for the duration of the semester- *gulp*
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