Jerry Dallal wrote:
> I trust my students. They are graduate students in science and policy.
> They know the seriousness of misrepresenting someone else's work as their own.
> If, at this point in their careers, they are willing to sell their honor
> to cheat on an exam, they have bigger problems than I can hope to
> solve by giving up the chance to let them show me what they've learned.
> I tell them this in class. They agree with me.
I don't believe that trust is sufficient. In my opinion you have a responsibility
to students who cheat to keep them on task and see to it that they come
out of the course knowing the material. You also have a responsibility to
the other students in the class who are working hard and doing the work
on their own to reward them for their efforts.
The proportion of students who cheat varies by geographic region, major, and
university, but in my experience there are always some students who cheat.
Rather than "trust" your students you might what to do a reality check and see
what the frequency is. I normally design one assignment as a "cheating trap";
one with a very high degree of variability, where the probability of identical
answers is astronomically small. This helps give me confidence that students are
learning the material on their own.
Of course this technique does not account for students having their work
done by someone else, which is why my grading system is designed so
that outside work only accounts for a small proportion of the overall grade,
i.e., it's necessary to do the outside work to get an A or B. Exams are designed
so that in order to do well you need to have done the outside work (unless you are
absolutely brilliant and in that case the question is not relevant).
--
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~athe0007
