New York City Schools Block ChatGPT
Plus, hundreds of headmasters caught cheating. Plus, there's this baffling thing on plagiarism. Plus, a great post from University of Manchester.
Issue 178
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NYC to ChatGPT: You’re So Blocked
Reporting out yesterday is pretty straight forward - the nation’s largest school system has blocked access to ChatGPT on all its networks and devices. The NYC school district has more than 1,850 schools and more than 1 million students.
The coverage mentions concerns about plagiarism and cheating. And according to the reporting, the district said ChatGPT was being blocked:
Due to concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content
Cool. May I ask a question about Quizlet and Chegg?
Pakistan: Hundreds of School Headmasters Caught Cheating Promotions Exams
A news outlet in Pakistan says “hundreds” of headmasters have had their promotion exams invalidated:
after they were caught cheating red-handed.
It does not say how they were cheating, only that they were caught using “illicit means” on their exams. And by “hundreds,” the paper says it’s 650.
The folks who run the schools were cheating, apparently. Yikes. I err on the side of catching cheating, as opposed to closing your eyes. But, my goodness. This is not a good look for the educational system in Pakistan.
More Cluelessness, This Time on Plagiarism
Back in November, I shared the error-filled and misinformed writing and research of Sioux McKenna of Rhodes University in South Africa (see Issue 166).
I really wanted to put research in quotes just there.
And I’m not sure how I missed it, but also back in November, McKenna penned yet another piece aimed at academic integrity, this one in Times Higher Ed - which incidentally deserves credit for keeping its pages open on this important subject.
This time though, McKenna hates plagiarism detection instead of exam proctoring. Tell me if you sense a theme.
The sub-head of this piece is:
The police-catch-punish approach neglects to address plagiarists’ misunderstanding of what higher education is all about
Their ‘misunderstanding,’ the author says, relates to the commodification of education versus the joy and value in learning.
On this, I completely agree. In fact, academic integrity research has shown a strong link between the idea of educational attainment being a transaction - tuition for a degree, students as customers - and cheating. Though, I’m not sure how you change a student’s mindset about the joys of learning during a conversation about plagiarism. That seems, naïve. More often, when a student with a transaction mindset is challenged on misconduct they rationalize, blaming the instructor or the school, then they become defensive and even litigious.
Anyway, McKenna somehow gets from education having become a marketplace commodity to making that the fault of plagiarism detection software, Turnitin specifically. That’s a big, big leap. To get there, she writes:
the policing of similarity percentages works from the assumption that our job is to catch plagiarism by students, who are not to be trusted. The student is no longer a novice in a knowledge field: they are a customer who must be monitored lest they make off with the goods without paying.
Let’s start by agreeing that, if you’re a teacher, it is your job to catch plagiarism. Not your whole job. But definitely your job.
Further, this argument is flatly illogical. Plagiarists and others who cheat are paying - they pay tuition. The issue is not the payment, it’s the learning. Detecting plagiarism safeguards the learning process - not the paying process. Those who cheat their way to grades or degrees paid for them, they just did not earn them. Very different.
And let’s be clear that teachers and schools do have an obligation to be sure that those with degrees or credentials actually learned. Otherwise, what’s the point?
It’s a perplexing argument to make because, later in the piece, the author writes things such as:
Universities do have a responsibility to ensure that those who receive qualifications have indeed come to understand the knowledge that their transcripts represent. This entails taking breaches of academic integrity seriously and, indeed, meting out punishment where appropriate.
And:
Plagiarism is a problem because it indicates that the student has not enjoyed meaningful engagement with knowledge. Parroting the ideas of others without demonstrating some personal meaning indicates that learning has not happened.
True. So what’s the problem again with checking for plagiarism?
I want to, but cannot, go point by point on her piece. It’s a Mobius strip of thinking. She says, in another example, that policing plagiarism “pushes those students who are seeking shortcuts to qualification to become ever more sophisticated in their plagiarising practices.” So, I’m assuming, she wants to stop checking for plagiarism - though she never actually says that.
She does say that plagiarism checking does not work, though. Specifically:
the software cannot identify plagiarism. It can only match direct words, not ideas.
This is obviously wrong. It can - and does - identify plagiarism. And I cannot believe I have to explain that plagiarism is not just stealing an idea, it’s words too. If you cut and paste from a source without attribution, you’re stealing the words and the ideas. Both matter. If you’ve stolen my words, you’ve likely also stolen my ideas. But you should correctly attribute either one.
It’s helpful that McKenna says that, at some universities, students:
are told that they must submit their work to what is commonly known as “plagiarism software”, usually Turnitin. They are required to get a similarity score below a particular percentage before they may submit their work for assessment.
I’ve never heard of such a thing. But if that’s happening, that should not be happening.
She’s right when she points out that a practice such as this is not helpful or instructive. That’s not how plagiarism detection is designed to work. As I’ve said many times, tools such as Turnitin are not cheating deciders, they pinpoint areas in need of human, expert review, analysis and determination. A high similarity score does not necessarily indicate cheating any more than a low one does. Using a checker on the front of assessment, before the actual assessment, is a bad idea.
Finally though, what worries me most about this particular piece of writing, beyond its errors and lack of consistent thinking is that McKenna offers in the open that:
Over the past 15 years, I have been part of quality audit panels at 10 universities in four countries.
If that’s true, oh boy.
University of Manchester Article on Academic Malpractice
I worry occasionally that The Cheat Sheet spends too much time on negativity - the cheating, the lousy reporting, the deep lack of understanding of this problem.
So, I’m happy to share this article from the University of Manchester, on what they call “academic malpractice.” Which, by the way, is a term I like.
The piece is aimed at students and it’s good. I don’t know why every school isn’t publishing something like this every semester. Specifically, I like its tone - helpful and understanding. It appropriately directs students to the free included study resources offered by the school and advises students:
there are individuals and companies outside of the University that try to exploit students in need of help by offering things like ‘essay writing help’, ‘study resources’, ‘free summaries and answers’ or ‘tutoring’. Please do not engage with these companies.
I’d like it even more if it named a few of them. But still, this is pretty strong. Saying companies outside the university will exploit students by offering help or tutoring - that’s great.
I also really like that the post says clearly:
In fact, in England it’s illegal to provide or to advertise a cheating service for students.
It is. And I think this underscores why such laws are important to not only policing the cheating providers but in reinforcing that academic integrity is not some outdated institutional notion about scholarship. It’s actually against the law. In England at least.
Anyway, it’s pretty great.