Just What Do They Want From Us Anyway?

A New York Times Article on high tech cheating generated a fair amount of traffic on our TLTR list here at NCSU. Due to crunch on projects I was not able to respond in a timely manner to the posts, and had intended to post something here. Well, time has passed and this response has morphed again into something else.

One question that never asked during the discussion was why students cheat. The answer is obvious, because they have not done their work, they are unable to keep up, they want a simple shortcut to a good grade instead of doing the work.

The work. The work indeed.

The answer was "higher moral conduct" by some to this problem. Students should be held accountable. This is a safe answer. It is sort of like saying that I like babies, sunny days and ice cream.

I think it is actually much harder to ask the question I want to ask. The same dumb question. Why do students cheat?

I have my own answer. It is a semi-successful means of accomplishing the goal, which is getting a good grade. Actual grasp of the subject matter is a distant secondary goal(and in fact, may just get in the way of accomplishing the primary goal). With no "moral" boundaries, students are apt to cheat. It is a morally objectionable, but perhaps successful way of navigating a system that rewards good grades.

I don't worry if there is a superior being watching me when I work on a assignment. My motivation for not cheating is pride in my work, my engagement in my studies. I guess I am not the normal student, but I think something is at work here.

By the time students get to college, they have figured out that school is mostly easily quantifiable knowledge. You are tested on that which is easily testable. Successful students "read" an instructor, and know fairly quickly what is expected of them, what is the percentage of their time they have to expend to get a good grade. They stare at the instructor, and ask themselves the title of this posting: "Just What Do They Want From Us Anyway?".

I know this because I was often terrible at doing this when I was younger. I would try to understand formulas instead of just memorizing them. One takes more resources, but in the end it doesn't matter -- just being able to memorize a formula is better when you have 50 minutes to take a test. You may forget every bit of it 2 years later, but that doesn't matter.

The "high tech" angle on cheating in the NY Times article is just a red herring anyway. Cheating is simply a way that students try to bypass a system that is becoming irrelevant to learning anyway. They have figured that out. Life is not a series of multiple choice questions, although with some thought we may be able to reduce them to that. I think the fact that no one seems to be thinking about "why" versus "how" is quite instructive. Education is stuck. in. a. rut.

-------
On another note, I have begun updating my LiveJournal account again. It's personal stuff, nothing too personal, just a scratch pad, random thoughts. Changed the name to "Hal Meeks Slept Here".