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by oob205
5039 days ago
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“A large part of the plagiarism arises from lack of understanding of the expected standards of behavior in U.S. academic institutions" Or maybe it arises from perfect understanding of the standard of behaviors in US academic institutions. As article notes, 43% in the US admit to cheating. Truth is probably even higher. I'm not faulting Coursera for doing what they think will work to curb cheating, but this idea that cheaters are the "other" from countries where they don't know any better is ridiculous. |
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Actually, the article references another article on their site which references a survey:
http://chronicle.com/article/High-Tech-Cheating-on-Homework/...
The second article states the survey, done by "Center for Academic Integrity", found 22% admitted to cheating on tests, which is the traditional idea of cheating, and 43% admit to "unauthorized collaboration on homework".
Unfortunately, the article does not properly cite its sources. In particular, it does not name the survey, who did the survey, how many participants were involved, what the range of errors is, what the definition of "unauthorized collaboration" is, how the question was phrased, or which of numerous "Center for Academic Integrity" was involved. The most prominent according to Google seems to be the "International Center for Academic Integrity" at a Clemson University, but I was not able to find a reference on their site to such a study.
This is a good example of the problem with not properly attributing one's sources such as "The Chronicle of Higher Education" is doing. Readers can not evaluate the quality of claims in the article if they can not reliably locate the sources and read the parameters and constraints of referenced surveys and studies. It's very unprofessional not to properly cite sources in formal publications and articles.
> "this idea that cheaters are the "other" from countries where they don't know any better is ridiculous"
In my experience (personally as an adjunct professor, and in frequent discourse with other college professors making the same observations) most students in US engineering courses for the last 25 years are nationals from various asian nations. In many other countries collaboration on homework is expected and normal and students are not taught that failure to show sources is plagiarism. Only copying answers on a test is considered cheating in much of the world. Because of this, the majority of cheating in engineering classes is done by foreign students. Much of this is unintentional because they are simply unaware and were raised in a different system. In some cases, students receive sophisticated assistance from their home country, for example Chinese students in some courses have bound Chinese language translations of class-and-professor-specific course materials, including appendices full of past course exams for a given class, with answers and explanations. Making use of any and all resources one has access to, without feeling the need to attribute or explain its provenance is considered common sense, not cheating. Explaining US standards of academic behavior at least provides those who are unaware of these standards an opportunity to adjust their behavior to conform to US (or possibly western) standards of what is considered cheating.
Cautious readers will at this point be observing with delighted skepticism and awareness of irony that - as I post anonymously using an alias - my personal history claims above are not a reliable source and barely qualify as anecdotal.