I think grades also make a difference when you are looking for your first post-college job. Once you've been in the workplace for awhile, not so much.

I'm bummed. I can't seem to be happy. Marriage problems just keep pulling me down. If not for that, I'd be in a great mood most of the time.

A UCLA student was telling me that they now have to submit their papers online to a multi-university clearing house site that analyses the essays and compares them to papers (on that topic only? don't know) written by students all over the counry before giving them the "original work" thumbs up. She's not that trusting of the computer's ability to tell, but I can see where the institution cares, and not just for their own petty Fascist reasons, that cheating isn't happening.

And I don't see what's wrong with caring about what the institution cares about.

There were two students in my class who were accused of cheating on an Introduction to Nursing exam two years ago. As a result, ever since then my entire class is treated like a group of kindergartners. We have to leave our purses and bookbags at the front of the classroom during an exam. We have assigned seating. We have to sign an academic integrity statement at the beginning of each exam. We can't get up to go to the bathroom during an exam. We can't wear hats during the exam (I swear to God). All because two students were accused of cheating on one exam, one time.

How did they get caught? If a bunch of people saw it and no one reported it the restrictions -- as obnoxious as they are -- make some sense.

Gud, is there anything we can do?

Trudy, they were reported by another student. And I don't think those restrictions make any sense. It's academic "integrity" at the expense of dignity, and that's not a tradeoff I'd be willing to choose if I had a choice.

And I don't see what's wrong with caring about what the institution cares about.

Well, sometimes they're your saintly alma mater, and sometimes they're the evil Big Brother (usually in this case they are referred to as The Administration). Which is where the tension is -- when are you protecting yoru own academic experience, and when are you sticking it to the man?

I am flippant. It is because I am so tired I am dizzy and I have a stack of paperwork the size of my head still to get through. Also I think the people here at work have figured out that I am a worthless incompetent and have been for the last six years.

Trudy, they were reported by another student.

Then the restrictions are SUPER shitty... unless half a dozen others saw it and said nothing.

t snuggles Gud

Well, sometimes they're your saintly alma mater, and sometimes they're the evil Big Brother (usually in this case they are referred to as The Administration).

Which falls in line with nothing inherently being wrong with caring about what your institution cares about. They're not bad because they're an/your institution. Let them earn your distrust.

{{Gud}}

A UCLA student was telling me that they now have to submit their papers online to a multi-university clearing house site that analyses the essays and compares them to papers (on that topic only? don't know) written by students all over the counry before giving them the "original work" thumbs up. She's not that trusting of the computer's ability to tell, but I can see where the institution cares, and not just for their own petty Fascist reasons, that cheating isn't happening.

It's probably www.turnitin.com. The high school I'm doing my clinicals at this semester uses it. It's a pretty nifty thing. It has a bunch of papers, journal articles, ERIC articles, etc. in it. It also buys all those essays from web sites and puts them in. When a student turns in a paper, that paper ends up in its database, too.

The teacher can look and see a percentage of original vs. potentially non-original work and compare the paper to the source that is identified as the original. The teacher then determines if it was plagiarisim or not.

Quotes will often come up as plagiarism, but it gets highlighted and the teacher determines that it is a quote. Also, you could end up plagiarizing yourself from previously turned in work. But, again, the teacher can see that online so there are no problems there.

The restrictions are always shitty, I think. To me cheating is like [failed analogy]. Let me try again. I don't think you can make cheating impossible (short of the kind of individual attention which would improve education at all levels, but ain't gonna happen any time soon), but you can make it unprofitable and less appealing than the alternative. Treating students like criminals makes cheating more likely, not less. In my opinion, that is. But it's one reason I didn't give a damn about cheating going on around me at BU -- the university acted as though none of us could be trusted, which just made me want to act untrustworthy (I didn't, because -- among other things, like my own ethics -- my mother would keeelllll me, but I could understand the temptation).

Did you ever turn anybody in for cheating, Gris? Would you have?

No, and depends.

In high school, I almost certainly would not have, unless somebody was copying off of ME without my permission - and I certainly wouldn't give permission, except maybe for homework in certain classes where it simply didn't matter. Grades not on a curve, so unimportant.

In college, I would have. In any case I considered their cheating an honor code violation, at least, because I really believed in our code. There were some dumb classes I wouldn't have - the law and political science classes, for example, where grades were not curved. In my hard math classes with 150 students graded on a normal distribution that I spent 10-15 hours a week per problem set? Yes, I would turn them in if I found out they cheated on the final that was 50% of the grade.

That said, Tech is also structured in a way that makes it almost impossible to ever be faced with that quandary. Problem sets are usually completely collaborative - "copying" is encouraged, as smart kids explaining to not-as-smart kids is the best way to learn. Quizzes, midterms, and finals are take-home (though timed) and usually open-book. Cheating methods would be taking longer than given, looking things up on the internet, or copying others' tests, but since I'm not in the room with the cheater to see any of this done, I'm not presented with the moral dilemma.