Berkeley's Unique Cheating Deterrent

Plus, at least one person at the upcoming Course Hero "summit" was paid by them. Plus, The New Yorker fumbles its coverage of proctoring. Plus, cheating "skyrockets" in Canada.

Issue 29

Berkeley Teacher Has a Unique Cheating Consequence - a Below Zero Grade

Like most schools, the honorable Ivy University of California at Berkeley has had to deal with increased cheating this year. The student paper there has an update on the situation including a unique approach adopted by some professors.

First, cheating - the rise in cheating - is taken for granted. Rhea Sood, a campus sophomore, told the paper

With the whole virtual semester, it’s a lot easier for students to cheat on tests, especially when you’re taking them online

When online assignments were graded “for completion,” Sood said students submitted blank pages or previously completed work for credit. Shobhana Stoyanov, a continuing lecturer in the department of statistics, said she had to change test tactics after students posted questions on Chegg.

Interestingly, in addition to embracing more test proctoring, some teachers at the school developed extra penalties for misconduct. Nicholas Weaver, a lecturer at the school told the paper that

if a student was caught cheating on a project worth 50 points, they would receive a score of 50 points below zero. This was because if the student received a zero, cheating would still be the “rational” option according to Weaver. 

The article also included the familiar refrain that students were cheating due to “stress” and that poor test design was a culprit.

Course Hero Hosts Summit on “Teaching Today”

Course Hero, probably the second biggest company profiting from academic dishonesty, is hosting another “summit” with education leaders. They did this back in April too, which was covered in Issue 21 of “The Cheat Sheet”.

The upcoming event has familiar faces - Sara Goldrick-Rab of Temple University and Jesse Stommel - who headlined the April thing. This time they’ll be joined by a few new names, including one that’s quite disturbing - Greg Toppo, who’s listed as “President Education Writers Association.”

I am an EWA member. I wrote him asking whether it was appropriate to share his credibility, and that of the EWA, with such a prominent cheating provider, a company that schools and faculty are spending time and money trying to stop.

Toppo responded

I don't see any problem sharing my credibility or EWA's with Course Hero

He further said he’d been paid by the company - via a PR/lobbying firm - to write a “white paper” on academic integrity. Much more on this paper later.

But, Toppo continued, that he wanted to “explore more interesting issues” than cheating. Those include, he said

whether students are using these sites because their colleges aren't doing a very good job at instruction or assessment

He also that he agreed with the idea that

students who use these sites are doing so "rationally," often because many instructors simply aren't trained in how to use and grade course homework and assessments properly. 

And that

Students … rely on these sites because they don't believe they're getting what they need from their institutions. Colleges and universities can continue being cynical about these companies … or they can improve their practices. 

Blaming schools for “not doing a very good job” and teachers for not being able to “use and grade homework and assessments properly” is a whole new level of hostile blame shifting. And maybe, from Course Hero’s view, money well spent.

I asked Course Hero whether they’d paid others listed as attending the July “summit.” They did not respond. More to come.

The New Yorker Fumbles Cheating Coverage

The New Yorker ran a long piece this week on remote test proctoring.

Mostly, it’s a boring rehash of the already published proctoring tales circulated on social media. But it nonetheless takes some tumbles. Here’s one.

The writer interviews a student, Femi Yemi-Ese, a recent junior at the University of Texas at Austin. The article says:

Yemi-Ese’s grades dropped precipitously early in the pandemic, a problem he attributed in large part to Proctorio. He took several tests while displaced from his home by the winter storm that devastated Texas in February, which forced him to crash with a series of friends.

See it?

His grades dropped “in large part” due to the test proctoring process, not because he was physically displaced by a major storm that forced him to couch hop.

Here’s another. The author wrote:

Although most educators assume that cheating is more common when exams are online, research has suggested that the prevalence may not vary much from in-person exams. Stories about online cheating often rely on the say-so of proctoring companies, as was the case with a recent Washington Post article, which cited ProctorU to suggest that cheating had increased nearly eight-fold during the pandemic.

Disclosure: that Washington Post article is by me. And it did not “suggest” that cheating was up eight-fold. Cheating was up eight-fold. It cited several sources, all of which have been independently reported since. Here’s just one example from the Wall St Journal.

Anyway, the research the author cited about the “prevalence” of cheating in online exams doesn’t address that at all. That’s just incorrect reporting. Instead the paper,

finds evidence that the difference in the testing environment creates a disadvantage to students taking the online exam which somewhat offsets the advantage that the unproctored students gain from greater opportunities to cheat.

In other words, it does not assess the “prevalence” of cheating. It says that online exams may have built-in disadvantages that may somewhat offset the advantages students “gain from greater opportunities to cheat” on online exams. It concedes that online exams are easier to cheat. It’s about advantage gained from cheating on online tests, not how often it happens.

It’s also a study of just 44 students, published in 2014 - long before the pandemic drove the recent spike in cheating.

This stuff is important. Do better, New Yorker.

Cheating “Skyrockets” in Canada

The Calgary Sun has a story on cheating, based on information from Sarah Elaine Eaton, an associate professor and academic integrity researcher at the University of Calgary.

The headline: “Academic cheating skyrockets during pandemic: UCalgary researcher.” From the article:

She said schools in Canada are reporting anywhere from a 38 per cent to a more than 200 per cent increase in academic misconduct during the pandemic.

Keeping in mind that most cases of academic misconduct go unreported, the increase is probably considerably larger. Even so, it’s absolutely true that cheating is, and has been, on the upswing for the past year.

In considering these numbers, it’s worth remembering also that Canadian institutions are generally more open about the challenges of cheating. American schools, by and large, remain silent and secretive, a culture that perpetuates and encourages misconduct.

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - More on that Course Hero summit. Plus, the VICE story I could not get to this week. Plus, of course, more cheating.

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