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Terry Elliott

The Daily Dot - Why the hottest trend in online education already has a cheating problem - 0 views

  • students in a non-credit bearing MOOC (massive open online course) were cheating on the written assignments.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The assumption is that people cheat to get the best grade in order to succeed on the cheap with the least amount of effort. this is the rational actor theory in action. We cheat for a discrete reason or reasons.
  • Why would a student cheat in a course in which they voluntarily enrolled, and for which they earn no tangible rewards?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This may be the question I want to explore.
  • We should not jump too hastily to the conclusion that MOOCs carry no real stakes.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Are grades the only stakes? We assume that this is the case.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • plagiarism researcher Rebecca Moore Howard
    • Terry Elliott
       
      need to look this researcher up in Google and perhaps email her as a source.
  • There actually are stakes for students in non-credit-bearing MOOCs, in that Coursera and other proprietors actually connect successful students with prospective employers.”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Stakes: you might get a job out of it as employers are watching these things.
  • A student who cheats his way to a Harvard degree has earned a Harvard degree, one which will improve his career prospects immensely.  A student who cheats his way to a MOOC certificate earns nothing of the sort (for the time being). So why are they doing it?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Well put. A classic way of resituating the same idea in a different context.
  • Analyzing the demographics of the cheating students and seeking to understand whether certain types of students are more likely to cheat than others (like in the work of Donald L. McCabe)
    • Terry Elliott
       
      There is a whole ocean of research on 'normal' cheating. Need to look up Donald McCabe.
  • oesn’t help in understanding cheating in MOOCs, since both the “massive” and “open” nature of the courses makes it difficult, if not impossible, to gain a clear picture of a typical MOOC student.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      But I am finding myself interested in how I can design online courses that are not only cheat proof but not even worth cheating on. Honor codes, appeals to ????
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Demographics not well understood so that cannot be used as a tool for analyzing cheating in MOOCs
  • plagiarism theorists, such as Susan Blum, consider how contemporary cultural practices of sampling and borrowing are challenging our traditional definitions of plagiarism—and how they are confusing to students who must abandon their normal habits of Facebook sharing or re-Tweeting in order to conform to the complex rules of scholarly citation. This may have some bearing on the case of cheating in MOOCs, especially when the students hail from different countries, where the rules of academic citation might differ from those in the home country of the faculty member.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Students bring a cut/paste/remix/mashup culture to an academic frame. To complicate this further, different cultures have different citation rules.
  • But my own research on cheating in higher education suggests that the most critical factor we must consider in our understanding of the problem is the course itself.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The problem of cheating originates in the course itself--how it is put together in its assignments and teacher communication--that determines cheating.
  • Examined through this lens, cheating in MOOCs becomes more understandable.  
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This explains why people cheat in what looks like low or no-stakes MOOCs--the courses make them do it by baking it inevitably into the course design.
  • or example, the question of learning orientation. Educational theorists like to distinguish between two orientations that students have towards learning: mastery or performance.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Performance oriented learners are more likely to cheat. Make sense. An athlete who is going for a personal best isn't going to cheat. She would just be in a state of denial. But if you wanted to appeal to someone other than yourself, then cheating might be a happy strategy.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      What is your learners learning orientation--mastery or performance? intrinsit or extrinsic?
  • the very design of a course’s assessment system (i.e., its specific package of assignments and exams) can nudge students towards mastery or performance orientations. This means that certain types of assessment systems will also push students towards or away from cheating.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Few learners are either one or the other, but the "course's assessments might push students towards mastery or performance"
  • The key way in which a course’s assessment system helps establish a mastery or performance-oriented classroom environment is through its use of—or lack of—choice and control.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      But if you invite students to demonstrate that they have learned, then there will likely be less cheating.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      If there is only one way to satisfy the assessment then there is little or no agency in the students' hands in showing what they learned.
  • Poorly designed assignments, like poorly designed classes, will engender dishonest work in any environment, from traditional to online.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Crappy assignments, afterthought assignments, will engender disrespect in learners because they feel disrespected by the assignment. Cheating is a natural consequence.
  • But the best defense we have against cheating is excellence in course design and teaching.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Great quote.
  • the Chronicle of Higher Education published a story about a baffling
Terry Elliott

Actually, online skimming probably hasn't affected serious reading after all - 0 views

  • A popular Washington Post article by my colleague Michael S. Rosenwald
  • The truth is, probably, that the brain is simply not adaptable enough for such a radical change. Yes, the brain changes as a consequence of experience, but there are likely limits to this change, a point made by both Steve Pinker and Roger Schank when commenting on this issue.
  • Pinker and Schank were among a group of people who responded in 2010 to Edge.org’s question: How is the Internet changing the way you think?
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  • Rosenwald’s story said that cognitive neuroscientists are worried that humans “seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online” which is “competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.”
  • The good news is that our brains are not being deep-fried by the Web; we can still read deeply and think carefully. The bad news is that we don’t want to.
Terry Elliott

digitalresearchtools / Annotation and Notetaking Tools - 0 views

  •  
    Mightr be useful to look at some of these tools.
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