Cheating and Course Design

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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?

Humberto Leal is dead. Does this threaten our own rights?

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As I posted recently (“The Right to Access Your Consulate”), Humberto Leal was scheduled for execution by the state of Texas yesterday. Despite appeals from a large number of external actors (the UN, Obama, and apparently 4 of our current Supreme Court justices), Texas Governor Rick Perry decided to continue with the execution. As I stated in that previous post, at issue is the right of a foreigner to get assistance from their own country’s consulate (and to be told of this right) when arrested. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that codified this right has been a relatively straightforward deal for most countries. We seem to be creating most of the problems (and of course, the fact that we allow for the death penalty in some states, while many other countries do not, brings more attention to our cases).

It is now up to Congress to pass legislation to make sure that we no longer run afoul of our international legal obligations. Fortunately, there is a bill in the pipeline. Let’s just hope that Congress acts soon.

“China-smooth”

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“In clustered Central Accra, they pave the streets in praise-pursuit; china-smooth like heaven’s highway.”
– That is Nana Yaw Asiedu on his blog Anti-Rhythm, contrasting the “two Accras”, one that is more rougher and the other, “china-smooth”. Which makes me wonder, in Africa how much might “China” be associated with modernity and higher standards of living?

The Right to Access Your Consulate

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Let’s say you are on vacation somewhere outside of the United States–let’s say it is Europe–and you run into some serious legal problems. Perhaps you find yourself being charged with a serious crime, such as murder or being an American spy. An unlikely scenario for most of us, but it might still make you feel a little better to know that you have a right to contact the American consulate and request advice or assistance from your home country. Indeed, this is a real concern for American military and aid personnel serving overseas. And it is a right that even so-called rogue nations respect, as Liz Goodwin notes in a recent article. North Korea granted such access to American journalists it jailed and Iran did the same for the American hikers it thought were spies.

The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, adopted in 1963, both created new international law and codified pre-existing international customs. Much of its 79 articles focus on the definitions of consular activities and the rights and immunities of consular staff. Article 36, however, has been broadly interpreted as providing foreigners who are arrested a right to access their home country consulates.

Al of this seems straightforward, so why is there a problem in the United States? On one level, there is a question of federalism. The typical VCCR case that makes its way into law school case books, cases such as Medellin, Avena, and LaGrand, have often involved American Presidents trying to tell Governors to stay executions of foreign nationals because their consular rights were never invoked. Indeed, this is exactly what is happening right now. President Obama, and his solicitor-general are asking Texas to grant a stay of execution. This is to give Congress time to finally pass legislation that will finally incorporate American obligations under the treaty it signed and ratified into the domestic legal system, as the Supreme Court has said is required. So this goes to the second reason for the problem today. There is disagreement as to whether our original ratification of the treaty was sufficient and self-executing (as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Circuit has apparently said), or whether Congress was required to enact legislation first (what the Supreme Court has said).

So here we are. Tomorrow, July 7, the State of Texas is scheduled to execute Mexican national Humberto Leal. Whether or not he is guilty (likely he is, in this case) and whether or not an intervention from the consulate would have altered the penalty, we should still be aware that how we treat the nationals of other countries may impact how those other countries treat our own nationals.

One of the key principles underpinning international law is reciprocity. We often make agreements and uphold those agreements in the hope that others will do the same. As so many observers have been pointing out, this is one issue where the United States is not upholding its end of the bargain and if that continues we should be worried that others will no longer do the same for us. Let’s hope that Congress finally passes this legislation so that we can put this issue to rest.