| Cheating... I'm not sure that word means what you think it means. Give a quiz that can be completed in your own time over the course of a week. That sounds more like an assignment to me. So... the cheating was violating the rule that it can't be done cooperatively? If I'm cheating by asking other students about an assignment then I think I cheated on everything. And, of course, I did not. My answers to assignments were my own, but, often, I collaborated with other students to understand the questions, or to develop an idea of how to approach finding the solutions, or to clarify issues that were unclear. And, always, to make sure I got the right answer. Because if I didn't, it meant that I did not understand something and I needed to go back over the material to work out what that was. Any other approach would have rendered school valueless. This is the normal process of education. You can tell that I did not cheat because my work and my answers were unique. If I submitted an image of someone else's work, that would be obvious. Ah, but wait! I think I see. If the answers are multiple choice, that doesn't work. But why are they multiple choice? To make it easier and cheaper for the school. Your inflation of the profit margin on my education makes me a cheater because you can't tell if I did the work myself? That sounds about right. I think academic integrity is eroded more by the profit motive than by the Jesuitical definition of cheating in the article. Even though I went to what are considered some the best schools, the greatest insult to academic integrity was always the faculty, because most of them didn't know the subject they were teaching, faked it, and didn't care. And when I see many of the students who didn't cheat coming out of school not knowing shit from Shinola, I have to wonder why it matters? You get out what you put in, so who cares if people violate an arcane rule that says, "this, this here is an assignment; but that over there, that thing that looks identical to this in every way, that's a quiz, so don't talk to your friends about it or we'll nip your promising young academic career in the bud. Understand?" The only lesson here is that you need to cheat better. |