[wdewind]

Here's an idea: why not make the assignments personal enough that you cannot cheat on them?

"But wait, that would require huge amounts of time investment from the professors/TAs"

Yes, it's almost as if paying $65k a year for someone to teach you something should result in that person teaching you that thing instead of just checking in to see if you've learned it on your own.

[rhombocombus]

Here's an idea: you try to do that teaching three or four sections and report back how that goes. I am not sure if you have ever taught post secondary classes before, but what you're describing is untenable for someone who wants to not work 12 hour days. It's a nice idea, and I know that I would have loved to do that when I was teaching, but the fact of the matter is it isn't feasible unless you have a squadron of TA's to help you carry it out, and that's not gonna happen.

[wdewind]

Totally! I definitely didn't mean to imply this is the Prof/TA's fault. It is the fault of many institutions and systems above them. I meant that TA's shouldn't be responsible for grading 4 sections of 60 students each. The only natural outcome of that is poor education, one facet of which is easily cheatable assignments.

It just seems ridiculous that the thing we are focusing on is that kids are cheating and not that we've made this massive, unscalable, expensive, ineffective education system. We are acting like its the kids who aren't holding up their end of the bargain when they try and cheat it.

[rhombocombus]

Yeah, I absolutely agree. So much gets offloaded onto the teachers/TA's these days it's hard to get any educating done.

[ThePadawan]

> (...) unless you have a squadron of TA's to help you carry it out, and that's not gonna happen.

Interestingly enough, here's how this worked when I was an undergrad TA:

* The college's central office paid TAs for obligatory undergrad courses (so basically CS101 etc. up until sophomore year) * Advanced courses were funded by the individual chairs and institutes. And would you look at that, suddenly there was a whole less of code submissions auto-checked for plagiarism, and a whole more "talking to the TA to explain your reasoning and problems you encountered". This also served the double purpose that these TAs got to know the students, their likes and dislikes, and led to some easy recruiting for PhD candidates and such.

[rhombocombus]

I like that model!

[ben509]

It's a fair complaint from the student / customer's perspective, though, because university tuitions are constantly increasing for no apparent increase in value.

That universities pay the TA's beans isn't the customer's problem.

[CaptSpify]

Then schools should hire squadron's of TA's. We pay them enough that they can afford to, but they simply choose not to.

[currymj]

the reason the pay is so low is that it’s part of a PhD, usually, so the TAs tolerate it. i don’t think you could hire someone to just be a TA full time at those wages.

you can’t admit more PhD students, necessarily, because to graduate they need to do research under an advisor, and access to grants/projects won’t necessarily grow along with required teaching staff.

[wdewind]

To build on my snarkniess: it's almost as if the incentives behind research and education aren't nearly as aligned as we think.

[zrobotics]

Fine for higher-level courses, but how exactly are intro courses supposed to make 'hello world' and the like personal enough that you can't cheat?

[wdewind]

The same way it's done in kindergartens around the world? They say "write me a story about your family" or "draw your family tree." So ok: "write me a program that is somehow relevant to your life."

Imagine you are teaching someone basic web development. The assignment is "make a webpage that displays some facts about your favorite tv show." Easy.

I can buy that it makes the grading more complicated, but coming up with assignments is not difficult.