- Knowing What to KnowThe Cheating Debate
Winning is everything in the American culture, and people will cheat if they can get away with it. Now, according to The New York Times and other sources, the universities are heavily into catching cheaters. The problem is, in this world of high tech, the definition of real cheating has changed, and apparently educators have not figured this out.
What would have been considered cheating 30 years ago is the way things operate today. And by that I mean that you could not have done things 30 years ago that you can do today. Just because there is a new route toward the answer to a question doesn't mean that using that route is cheating.
Let's start with math, as it has been affected more than anything. Is using a computer cheating to calculate the trajectory of a rocket to the moon? Why not? Then why is using a programmable calculator to solve math problems cheating? I suppose that in some instances, you need the calculator, and in some instances, you don't. But where in the real world would you make this choice? You'd always use the calculator if you could. So why not in a class? And exactly how different is using the calculator from using the slide rule of years earlier? Now if you agree that using any of these devices is essentially the same thingusing a tool to arrive at an answerthen how is using the Internet via a computer any different?
This debate about the philosophy of modern education needs to happen soon. There appear to be very few educators who are not intellectually adrift with their brains stuck in the 1940s.
The Times article outlined how kids are using text messaging during testswhich seems to be a clear violation by any measure. But it's lumped in with doing research on the Web or cutting and pasting together a thesis. I have never felt that a student reading through ten sources and cutting and pasting a thesis together was necessarily a bad thing, if the point is actually to learn something. If the point is to create original works to be published by Random House, then yes, the idea has issues.
It seems to me that students should be taught how to do citations correctly and be able to cut and paste as much as they want, if they can combine the information from multiple sources into a coherent whole that makes sense of it all. Of course, nobody in school today would ever be encouraged to do any such thing, because everyone is still living in the 1940s.
First of all, in this day and age, why does everyone have to be a writer? There are other forms of modern media for communication. How about doing your thesis as a video production? I hate to say it, but I think PowerPoint should be used by students more and more. What's wrong with PowerPoint with a voiceover track? Hey, this sort of thing is quite doable. Why shouldn't it be appropriate for some classes? I'm not one to say that people should be illiterate. And writing is a great way to communicate complex ideas. But a multimedia show is sometimes better.Continue reading...