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| advice_column [2018/05/19 12:35] – [On grades and cheating] edit | advice_column [2018/05/19 12:39] – [On grades and cheating] edit |
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| =====On grades and cheating===== | =====On grades and cheating===== |
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| My second least favorite duty in teaching is to assign grades. My least favorite is to deal with cheaters. I talk about them together because my objection to them stem from the same root problem---the need to understand the real objective of being at CMU. | My second least favorite duty in teaching is to assign grades. My least favorite is to deal with cheaters. I talk about them together because my objection to them stem from the same root problem---the need to understand the real objective of taking a course. |
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| **Grades:** | **Grades:** |
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| **Cheating:** | **Cheating:** |
| For anyone even contemplating cheating, you should understand it is just not worth it. First of all, cheating cannot fix the fact that you really don't know or aren't able to do what you will need in the subsequent courses and in your later life. Second, although the chances of getting away with any one isolated instance of cheating is typically quite good, any one incident is also unlikely to have a noticeable positive impact on your semester letter grade. For that, one has to be cheating systematically, and one will surely get caught for that. Third, think back to when you were little and how your mother could always tell when you lied. She couldn't read your mind; you were just more obvious than you think. Similarly, we (professors), having spent basically our whole life in school, know a lot about cheating and cheaters. You are not going to easily fake us out with something we have not seen before. Lastly, by watching a student over the course of a semester, we (professors) have a very good sense for what is a student's expected performance and trend. You will get the grade you worked for. | For anyone even contemplating cheating, you should understand it is just not worth it. First of all, cheating cannot fix the fact that you really don't know or aren't able to do what you will need in the subsequent courses and in your later life. Second, although the chances of getting away with any one isolated instance of cheating is typically quite good, any one incident is also unlikely to have a noticeable positive impact on your semester letter grade. For that, one has to be cheating systematically, and one will surely get caught for that. Third, think back to when you were little and how your mother could always tell when you lied. She couldn't read your mind; you were just more obvious than you think. By watching a student over the course of a semester, we (professors) have a very good sense for what is a student's expected performance and trend. You will get the grade you worked for. |
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| For someone who is already feeling the pressure to cheat, you should realize that this is the symptom of a much deeper problem. Some how you have let your study fall behind and out of control. If you continue the same course, your problem will only snowball. The only way to recover is to identify the problem and to change what you are doing to regain control. Cheating is a poor patch job that does nothing to fix the root of the problem. I encourage everyone to take at look at [[https://www.cmu.edu/student-affairs/ocsi/academic-integrity/prevention.html |this very helpful page]] on how to avoid being caught up in this bad situation in the first place. (Notice their suggested way to address academic integrity is to do better in the first place so there is no reason to consider cheating. I fully agree with this.) | For someone who is already feeling the pressure to cheat, you should realize that this is the symptom of a much deeper problem. Some how you have let your study fall behind and out of control. If you continue the same course, your problem will only snowball. The only way to recover is to identify the problem and to change what you are doing to regain control. Cheating is a poor patch job that does nothing to fix the root of the problem. I encourage everyone to take at look at [[https://www.cmu.edu/student-affairs/ocsi/academic-integrity/prevention.html |this very helpful page]] on how to avoid being caught up in this bad situation in the first place. (Notice their suggested way to address academic integrity is to do better in the first place so there is no reason to consider cheating. I fully agree with this.) |
