Dilemmas
at the heart of academia - II
Making
it easy on purpose
Over the
years in introductory humanities courses, I have created a series of content
quizzes to insure students actually have read the text prior to coming to
class. With the advent of online sections, the quizzes are more to insure
students actually procure a textbook.
Initially the
quizzes were somewhat challenging, probably pegging an occasional level 3 on
Bloom’s Taxonomy of challenge in test questions. But after years of enduring
incessant whining about the “excessive” difficulty of the quizzes and the
presumption of a right to challenge the answers (“But this is what I meant…”) I
finally gave up this year and created an intentionally basic set of content
quizzes at Bloom’s level 1:
The following artifact is a) the
Pyramids, b) the Washington Monument, c) St. Peter’s Basilica, d) all of the
above.
I give
students 10 minutes for each 10 question quiz and require them to take two quizzes
for each chapter, awarding them the higher of the two scores for the chapter.
Not surprisingly, the weeping and gnashing of teeth largely subsided overnight
and the quiz scores – and as a result, the final grades – soared. No doubt the
customers are happy with these quizzes. It’s the format they’ve encountered
since elementary school for which this level of challenge was actually designed.
Grade inflation leveraged by empowered consumers triumphs again.
But I did not
want to give away the entire farm with these revisions bearing in mind that the
instructors are the only parties now being required to be responsible for
student cheating. And so I wrote into the quiz instructions this explicit
statement:
This is a closed book quiz. You will
have only one attempt to answer the 10 multiple choice questions from the
assigned material. You must answer each question before advancing to the next
and you will not be able to return to previous questions.
In theory,
preventing return to previous questions deters students from answering those
they know, skipping those they don’t and returning to the skipped questions
after looking them up. Of course, nothing prevents them from simply going
through question by question with the text in hand other than time limitations.
Ten minutes might be enough for some students to simply look up answers and
avoid reading the text at all but in most cases it becomes prohibitive if they
haven’t even glanced at the chapter.
But here’s
the way I salvaged a shred of my own dignity in this process. The final
question of the second quiz for each chapter asked the following:
(T/F) On my
honor as a UCF student and in accordance with the UCF Golden Rule, I hereby
affirm that I have observed the conditions required for both A and B Quizzes
(closed book and notes) and have neither given nor received aid from anyone or
any source in taking these quizzes. I acknowledge that violation of this
agreement constitutes grounds for failure, required attendance at the Academic
Integrity Classes and/or expulsion from UCF.
My goal was
to try to inject a bit of conscience into the process. Even as I assumed the
students would probably cheat, I didn’t want them to walk away smugly
self-satisfied. Indeed, in some cases, I figured it might even prompt some
reflection if not a change in behaviors though I’m not holding my breath.
Not
surprisingly, no student has checked false thus far.
An
attempt at accountability
At the end of
each semester, I have students complete a self-evaluation of their participation
in the class. The point of the exercise is to try to get students to hold
themselves accountable for their level of engagement or lack thereof in the
class. Of course, given the decreasing levels of engagement that studies of
undergraduate attitudes and behaviors are reporting among college students
generally (and particularly at UCF whose only national ranking on the Princeton
Review three years ago was #2 on “Students Never Study”) it’s probably not
surprising that many report having “worked harder in this online course than
any other.” What makes this frightening are the calculations I provide students
each semester showing that the undistracted class activities, reading, discussions
and prep work required in this class account for about half the time commitment of what a Carnegie
Unit college course should be able to reasonably expect from college students.
If this class
is excessive, what in the hell are they doing in their other classes?
The last
question of the semester end self-evaluation includes the following question: I consistently read the quiz question about
cheating and answered it honestly. And here is where the dilemma arose.
While I have
little doubt that the vast majority of students have, in fact, cheated on these
quizzes at least once and then lied about that when asked on the quiz itself as
well as on the semester-end self-evaluation, one of them appeared to have had a
guilty conscience at the end (assuming the student was not acting out of a smug
sense of impunity). The student answered as follows:
There were times when I was not honest
about the quizzes.
Oops. Warning!
System malfunction!
As I said to
the student, this is an admission of cheating. And were that the only
consideration, there would be no doubt that the student should be referred to
the academic integrity course as a condition of graduation and perhaps failed
in the class. The law is the law, right?
A
text without a context….
But no events
occur in a vacuum. And here are the horns of this particular dilemma. On the
one hand, this student would never have been caught cheating had s/he not
answered the question on the self-evaluation about cheating honestly. I’m a
believer that honesty with oneself and others is always better late than never.
But, even confessions in criminal proceedings, while often procured through a
plea bargain to reduce charges or subsequent penalties, still result in
punishment. Indeed, even confessions to a priest usually involve some form of penance.
On the other
hand, it would seem patently unjust to punish one student for engaging in an
act of candor and honesty about prior cheating while that student’s classmates
indulged in unjust enrichment through dishonesty on the same question. That
would seem to buy into the meta-lesson taught by the university that students
are somehow entitled to cheat unless told otherwise as a means of advancing
self-interest. It would also appear to teach a related meta-lesson that
consistent dishonesty is always preferable to listening to one’s conscience and
getting honest with oneself and others.
What to do?
Lawrence Kohlberg’s
model of moral reasoning offers some guidance here. The conventional, stage 4
law and order response would simply be that an admission of guilt to cheating
merits the full punishment prescribed by the law regardless of what anyone else
did: “What if everyone did this?”
However, the
post-conventional, stage 5 social contract approach, while affirming the
importance of the law, always recognizes the role that context plays in any
violation of that law. It is true the student violated the rules and admitted
to the same. Thus, some form of punishment is merited. But, it is also true
that the student admitted the violation and evidenced a modicum of remorse.
Moreover, this student violated the same rule as many, if not most, of the
student’s classmates violated with impunity but faced no punishment because
they were willing to lie about their misconduct.
Making an
example of a human being is almost always a flawed approach to law enforcement.
It violates Kant’s categorical imperative of treating a human being as an end
unto him/herself and not a means to another end. It also says that a socially
constructed rule or law is more important than the human being in question.
That’s a dangerous road to start down as examples from the Gulag Archipelago to
the bowels of Abu Ghraib prison readily inform us.
Avoiding
the easy out of scapegoating?
So, here are
the options. 1. Failing the student 2.
Reducing the grade to reflect the cheating 3. Reporting the incident to Student Disciplinary Services 4. Requiring attendance at the academic
integrity course making graduation (which in this case was to occur this
semester) contingent upon completion of the course 5. Sending the student a nasty letter saying “You
shouldn’t have…” 6. Ignoring the whole thing.
What would
you do?
There are
some who will no doubt see anything other than one or more of options 1-4 as
too lenient with the result of reinforcing the very behaviors the rules seek to
prevent. But I would suggest that this moral indignation might be better
placed. Why not focus it on a system that encourages cheating, a university
which presumes dishonesty among its students while placing the burden for
academic integrity entirely on its instructors? Why not question the entire
enterprise of offering college courses which readily serve as online cheating
factories?
Clearly it is
easier to scapegoat an instructor with a sense of justice or a single student
who had a better-late-than-never change of heart about academic honesty than to
deal with the system which gave birth to the dilemma. Scapegoating permits the projection of shadow
onto the designated figure to be punished for our sins while avoiding any
kind of reflection on the shadow content within the morally indignant. Scapegoating
always protects the dysfunctional context in which infractions occur from any
kind of critical reassessment and the necessary changes thus indicated even as
it continues to produce the same pathological results.
The truth is,
I have given up any hopes for substantive changes in the values or the
resulting behavior of either the university or the students it now draws. The
former long ago sold its soul to corporate imperatives, assuaging its
conscience with the hollow hype of public relations. The latter has largely
devolved into craven consumerism and an amoral superficiality reflected in
grade points. I’ve also long since given up any dreams that the university
might actually be a place where values are seriously considered, where personal
and social development is seen as one of the goals of higher education.
Credentials factories simply don’t lend themselves to much moral development. Besides,
corporations don’t want morally reflective human beings anyway, they want
minimally trained, obedient workers.
Given that
reality, true justice must be meted out in the most equitable manner possible under
the circumstances, even if it might mean that a lot of cheaters will in fact
prosper and an honest malefactor will face less punishment than s/he deserved. For
whatever else you can say about this dilemma, it is the instructor who must live
with his own conscience at the end of the day.
Socrates wept.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D.,
Ph.D.
Member,
Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest,
Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor:
Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of
Central Florida, Orlando
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend
themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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