I believe that the most important testing issue that faces college instructors is something that was glossed over by both readings; tests and assessments clarify weaknesses the students have, yet there is little attempt, by instructors, to follow-up on these weak points. Barbara Gross Davis tells instructors to “ascertain whether the exam was faulty”, “analyze why students performed so poorly”, and “talk about the disappointing results with the class”, yet there is nothing after that – such as, if the students all did poorly in one particular section, review and create a short quiz for them to take, again (2010, pg. 371-372).
I believe that there is a fundamental disconnect in the classroom if the instructor does not attempt to review and re-administer a test in which a large portion of students had done poorly. It seems that instructors are expected to chalk it up as a loss and move on, which, I believe, will further impede student’s ability to learn. Academics are linear and students need to understand all the base information, entry level and general classes, in order to be successful later on in their academic careers. By moving on from poor performance with little review, it will hurt students in the future.
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I believe that there are two primary causes for cheating. On the one hand, individuals can, at times, be incapable of managing their personal, professional, and academic lives that causes them to find an easy solution to a temporary problem. Disruption or competition in a student’s daily life I feel are the primary causes for cheating in academia, and it is the very competitive environment that has caused “’56 percent of graduate business students’” to cheat (Lang, 2008, pg. 197).
On the other hand, I do not believe in it solely being a student-based issue. Instructors may either fail to provide students with enough requisite information to complete the assignment, or have students answer overly-complicated questions that require a far greater knowledge base then they have, currently. It is important for instructors to understand that they need to provide students with not only an opportunity to direct their own education, but also create enough structure to guide the students to a successful conclusion. There are plenty of terrible instructors in the world that do not consider that some of what they do may be the reason behind the cheating.
Lastly, I will state that some (graduate school) instructors do not attempt to provide a realistic environment to test student knowledge. In the sciences, I understand it is important to memorize certain equations; however, I fail to see the purpose behind instructors not providing the equations to the students during tests. There should never be a point in your scientific career that if you forget an equation you will not have your resources at hand.
I believe that the most effective way to deter cheating is “give students lots of opportunities to do well in your course by giving a wide range of grade-bearing assignments, testing their skills and knowledge multiple times and in multiple ways” (Lang, 2008, pg. 202). By providing numerous avenues to achieve success in class, instructors provide students the opportunity to make up points in class if they were having an off-day.
I feel there are many similarities between what this blog points out and how I would answer these questions. As stated in the blog, competition I feel is a major component of cheating. People are put under pressure by their friends to do well. Students hate to tell their friends, who all got A’s on the exam, that they got a C. Therefore, students may be inclined to cheat to “be like their friends,” instead of having the motivation or the will power to ask the instructor or their friends for help.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I would say students cheat because of pressure from their parents. Many parents either help their children pay for school, or pay for their school, and/or expect their children to get good grades so they can succeed. Consequently, students feel to maintain those high grades for their parents, they may be inclined to cheat. Despite what students say, they like to please their parents. Therefore, students know they are doing poorly in a particular course, they may do all they can possibly do to keep the high grade, even if it involves cheating on the assignment or exam.
Lastly, the books say that 56-75% of students do/have cheat(ed) on a test or homework assignment. I agree that these numbers may be true; however, I do want to give students the benefit of the doubt. Many students may have cheated, for instance, by paraphrasing wrong, thereby not citing the paraphrased text the right way.
A very important concern has been reflected in your post. The performance of the students in a test is very crucial to measure the progress and understanding of the lesson and the effective teaching ability of the instructor as well. If the large portion of the class performs poorly, it simply explores some serious issue in the teaching and learning process that need to be addressed immediately. I believe the instructor must establish an effective communication with the class in order to fix the problem. A good way to remedy this performance deficiency is to take another quiz, but that is not all. What if the same incident happens again? Without finding out the root cause, a temporary remedy will increase the vulnerability of the whole learning process.
ReplyDeleteI also support your view about cheating committed by the students. Yes, there might be very few students who will try to find out a way for cheating, even if you deliver them the best quality instructions. Yet you have to find out a way that deter the students from cheating and prevent that “very few” from making their plan work. If you can understand their stress, design your lectures based on their ability to learn, and design your test structure more cognitive, the possibility of any cheating will be lessened. The right way to handle this issue is to motivate the students for academic honesty and make it a regular practice by avoiding unrealistic academic stress, too hard test questions and unnecessary memorizations.
Your comments bring up the question of how well does the test reflect the instructor’s ability at getting the information across? Granted, there is always that “communication noise” between the instructor’s message and the student’s reception of that message, but there is still the question of teaching effectiveness. Can it be said that a test can serve two purposes: both as a means to measure how well the student has assimilated the material, and how well the instructor has “packaged” that material for assimilation. If this is the case, then tests should be viewed in a different light by the instructor; not only as a measure of the student’s success, but that of the instructor as well. Having said this, perhaps it is not a bad idea to give a quiz that centers on the worse portion of a low-scoring test, and then somehow factor in the quiz score into the test’s score. The quiz would be given after the instructor has had a chance to re-hash the material, using a different, more effective, approach.
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