It is that time of summer when many of us begin thinking about our return to classes. We work on our syllabi as we design new courses and redesign old ones. A number of articles at the Chronicle for Higher Education have me thinking about one of the most challenging aspects of teaching: student cheating.

• Here is their recent article on how an Economics professor tracked cheating in his course. This article raised several concerns that I also have:
  • First, he had a major concern with the perception of students that a significant portion of their colleagues cheat (they estimated between 30 and 45%). His comment: “such an overestimation of the real amount of cheating can become an incredibly damaging social norm”. I agree! I’d be curious to see whether Wesleyan students think a similar portion of their colleagues cheat.
  • Second, what is cheating? A look at Duke’s honors code (where the Economist teaches) suggests to me that there may be some areas that Wesleyan’s honor code does not quite addressed. The article mentioned specifically that “‘Obtaining documents that grant an unfair advantage to an individual is not allowed”. In this case, that document was an exam from a prior year that the entire class may not have access to. Now, this prohibition may be implied by Wesleyan’s honor code, but is “improper assistance” a clear enough phrase? I hope so.
  • Third, what is the purpose of honors codes in this process? At Wesleyan, we have students reaffirm their pledge to the honors code with a comment and signature on exams and papers. I find this very interesting as I never had to do this in all of my years at UCSD as an undergrad and UC Berkeley as a graduate student. I just always “knew” that cheating was something I shouldn’t do and that I could get in trouble for doing. Such a pledge seems superfluous, though I understand that the psychology of requiring the pledge may help discourage cheating in some individuals.
• An article that appeared earlier this summer,“NYU Prof Vows Never to Probe Cheating Again—and Faces a Backlash”, discussed a professor who found that pursuing cheaters with Turnitin only led to a very dissatisfying teaching experience. In particular, he found that students do plagiarize; that pursuing this required he spend more time with those students rather than the students that don’t cheat; that it poisoned the atmosphere of the classroom; and that it may have hurt his salary. Now I have used Turnitin before and I had a much less severe experience. There were a couple students who were, it seems unintentionally, writing with insufficient acknowledgment of their sources. But I was very concerned that the use of turnitin violated the trust I share with students, that it led students to believe that I suspected they are cheaters.
• Finally, last Fall a story appeared about a writer who confessed to writing students’ papers. This so-called “shadow scholar” made me doubt my current strategy for preventing cheating on research projects. On such large projects I have students turn in a range of smaller assignments (outlines, bibliographies, rough drafts, etc.) primarily to help them with the writing process. But a small part of me also hopes that it discourages the purchase of papers online. However, from this article, I come to realize that students are able to purchase the services of writers who will also complete all of these small projects on the way to completion of the final project. I’m not sure there is a way to address this.

So, once again, here I am at the beginning of a new term trying to consider whether and how I might deal with the prospects of plagiarism and cheating. The key questions (no answers yet) include:

• Do I even try?
  • Of course, one should pay attention to the obvious cases. I’ll never forget the freshman (not at Wesleyan) whose paper began with the statement “After three years of research, we have concluded…” It only took a second to google a couple sentences and find the real research article that was the original source. But what about the less obvious cases?
• Should I use a system like Turnitin?
• Is it possible to use Turnitin without harming the atmosphere of the classroom and the student-teacher relationship?
  • Perhaps I should just have students use the service to check their own work before turning it in? Does that even make sense?
• Do Wesleyan students think that cheating is a problem here?
• What about the use of “performance enhancing drugs”? Wesleyan’s Code of Non-Academic Conduct was mentioned in Inside Higher Ed for including a ban on such drugs. But can we even monitor that?

This is such a common problem in student writing!  When I ask students how they go about writing a research paper I find that a common practice is to begin by creating an outline and paste lots of material–found online–into the outline.  It’s no wonder that the result is a lack of original ideas (as suggested in the article cited below).

But I have one additional concern:  this practice probably encourages students to simply search out material that fits their predetermined conclusions rather than challenging such presuppositions.

I think I might share the article with my students next term.

The researchers analyzed the students’ 1,832 research citations and assigned each of them to one of four categories:

Exact copying — a verbatim cut-and-paste, either with or without quotation marks.

“Patchwriting” — the copying of the original language with minimal alteration and with synonyms substituting for several original words (patchwriting is often a failed attempt to paraphrase, they said).

Paraphrasing — a restatement of a source’s argument with mostly fresh language, and with some of the original language intact; it reflects comprehension of a small portion, perhaps a sentence, of the source material.

Summary — the desired form of citation because it demonstrates true understanding of a large portion, if not the entirety, of the original text; summarizing was identified by the researchers when student writers restated in their own terms the source material and compressed by at least 50 percent the main points of at least three consecutive sentences.

Only 9 percent of the citations were categorized as summary. “That’s the stunning part, I think: 91 percent are citations to material that isn’t composing,” said Jamieson. “They don’t digest the ideas in the material cited and put it in their own words.”

via News: Skimming the Surface – Inside Higher Ed.

I’ve been doing a little reading online to gear up for the new term.

1. One of my favorite annual online visits is to the Beloit College Mindset List. They provide “a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.” As a professor of international relations and african politics, some favorites from the list are:
   • 32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
   • 41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
   • 43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
   • 64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
   • 68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
2. Profhacker has become a favorite web resource this past year. They have a great roundup of posts about getting ready for the new semester.
   • One of the articles mentioned raises a possible conundrum for those of us who are thinking about how to be successful teachers and get tenure. Daniel deVise, writing for the Washington Post, tells us that “highly rated professors are … overrated”. He cites a UC Davis-NBER-US Air Force Academy study (available as a PDF here) that found that professors rated highly by their students tended to give higher grades AND imparted less knowledge. Given that tenure at most liberal arts colleges is partly based on teaching evaluations, is this something we should worry about? I would definitely like to see more studies like this (this one may be limited by the fact that it focused only on teaching at the Air Force Academy).
3. Also at the Chronicle of Higher Education, I was intrigued this summer by Adam Evans’ piece on non-western teaching strategies. Unfortunately, it was so brief that it mostly appeared to provide superficial stereotypes. But it did prompt me to think a bit about how I approach the classroom experience and whether my approach is truly “Western”.