We need to talk about cheating in universities...

[@DrTrefor]

This video is going viral again months later, so editing in a few follow ups! Thanks everyone for sharing in the comments:) 1) A common comment is that rote memorization isn’t a meaningful thing to be testing in the first place, and that allowing a formula sheet in tests is a good idea. I agree! I actually do this in most of my classes (thumbnail is mainly just the visual of cheating I could think of). I try to write tests that get at students ability to reason with the material, not memorize it. I generally think this is a bit of a moot point in that most people who have done the practice problems and are able to reason in calculus will be 90% of the way to memorizing the basic formulas anyways. I don’t really see different grades regardless of whether I do or do not allow a formula sheet, but nevertheless think allowing it lowers anxiety and symbolizes the emphasis on reasoning and conceptual understanding over memorization. 2) The other big theme in the comments is broadly speaking "dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning in universities". Whether this is that universities are way to expensive, too credentialized, don't teach relevant comment, have poor professors etc, there is a lot of various ways one can quite reasonably be frustrated by the quality and purpose of the education. I also agree! I mention this late in the video, but these kinds of dissatisfactions have been shown in studies to highly associated to increased cheating, and it makes sense. I share a lot of those frustrations with our academic system. Ultimately, to me this video is not trying to address a lot of those larger concerns but to say something like "given the system we have, rightly or wrongly, my view is that cheating is still nonetheless much less effective than many students think" as I described in some detail in the middle of the video.

[@AK-vj6ld]

Whatsapp groups for each module. Classmates are helping one another. Discord groups chaats. Senior students joinning group chats help.

[@DrTrefor]

@@AK-vj6ld chat groups definitely can really normalize cheating because you see everyone doing it so why not do it yourself?

[@IsaacNewton1687]

Last year, during COVID I didn't study much. I had other things going on in my life, it was a really stressful period for personal reasons and while I did attend online lectures I didn't study thus I wasn't sure I was going to succeed. Because of the pressure I thought that cheating was my only way out and so I did ( calc 1&2=analysis 1 , physics 1 and probability theory ). I don't feel good for doing so obviously but I felt it was the only path I could take in order not to disappoint my family, my friends, my girlfriend and frankly my teachers from high school ( everyone said I was smart ). During the second semester I wasn't really good phycologicly either and so I didn't really study again. I also felt that I've lost my thing and that I didn't want to study physics anymore. But a few days before the exam period it was announced that we are not going to take the exams online ( for obvious reasons ). I was terrified. I studied a bit and got 1 in analysis 2 ( calc3&4 ) and I basically failed everything . ( Astrophysics 4 , Physics 2 didn't even take the exam and Differential equations and linear algebra 5 ). But 1 good thing came out of this entire failure. I didn't feel bad anymore. I went to my university for the first time ever and I felt eager to learn more and study more. During the summer there was another setback. After the exam period we were forced to attend labs ( we didn't complete them due to the virus ) . That basically means that I didn't have time to study during the summer. I finished my lab report ( along with basically everyone else ) 20 days before the exam period ( 20 August ). I went to a 10 day vacation to my grandma's house ( Crete ) and I didn't have time to study all that much. Normally I wouldn't go but one of my uncles has cancer and I had to see him, at least one last time. I didn't care for the exam. When I came back home ( Athens ) I only had 10 days to study for Analysis 2 ( I again skipped physics ). I didn't have enough time and i barely studied the entire syllabus ( that means I didn't solve many homework ). I got a solid 7/10 ( because I didn't manage my time correctly and had like 5 minutes to figure out the integration limits, completely my bad , I could have done better ). This semester I studied as much as I could I attend every single class and I'm sure I will do better. I feel more confident and I love studying honestly. I regret cheating because I don't know about some stuff ( overall I did overcome my difficulties but it takes time, a lot of time ). In particular series and linear algebra. I didn't solve any homework and so I'm having trouble with matrices and series in general. But I'm going to study these things in particular ( after the exam period is over ). Your videos have helped me a lot so thanks for everything. P.S. : During analysis 1 our teacher was the best calc teacher in Greece ( he has plenty awards ). He was amazing, I loved everything about his class and felt bad for cheating. The sad part is that during the online examination 750people took the exam ( we even had a guy born in 1967 that took it with us ). About 13% of them failed. So yeah I feel really bad for him because looking back it was overall a normal exam. We've had professor's ( according to older undergraduates ) that didn't care about anything and made the exam so hard that like 98% of them failed. He ( Apostolos Giannopoulos ) was a really cool guy and we let him down..

[@estebantapia1225]

A friend of mine obtained the highest score in Quantum Mechanics without even knowing what a expectation value was :/

[@pieinside2345]

@@godografnaykvista not a all, we can't complain that we learn nothing in school amd praise the people that know the least all at the same time. even as a joke he's no boss, he's either going to continue to struggle or fill in the gaps later.

[@IsomerMashups]

Oh wow. A dehumanizing, high-stress, high-stakes, low-empathy setting where the letter grade you receive can determine your entire financial future encourages people to do whatever they have to in order to get that letter grade. Who would have guessed?

[@IsomerMashups]

Your suggestions are excellent, and I'm very glad that you realized the underlying issue here is rarely the students, but rather the system.

[@roop-a-loop]

nothing dehumanizing about it

[@arielcerecer142]

@@roop-a-loop It is dehumanizing when your worth as a student is defined by a grade. You got a really important exam coming up but your mental health is not in a good position and performed poorly? Oh well, guess this failure will forever be in your grade reports. Or what if you are having troubles in your personal life like an accident, or your house burned down, whatever, really and havent been able to study that much/your mind is distracted? Where's the compassion? Idk how it works in other educational systems (Im from Mexico) but here, we usually have one big exam and thats it, I've had exams that are 80% or even 100% of your grade, so even if you showed discipline, diligence and a will to learn, if, for whatever reason, you do bad on the exam, your work is wasted, reduced to a single number/letter. I would say thats dehumanizing. Reduced to a digit in a spreadsheet. Another number, another student from the list of thousands of students

[@pingeee]

This is exactly why I hate this system, they don't care whether you learn or not as long as your ability to regurgitate useless bullshit out onto a piece of paper is good thats all that matters

[@DumitruUrsu]

You just described life. All that stress is to prepare for the shit that's about to happen, when those grades are even more meaningfull - a 6 (we use a 1-10 scale here) in dam engineering means that people are gonna die due to floods. A 5 in a braking system design means death, and liability for the company you work for. A poor grade in a civil lawsuit means your client goes to jail, and nobody wants you as a lawyer. If you don't understand several layers of abstraction needed to grasp integrals, how do you grasp a software engineering problem with 200k lines if code? Sure you can sneak and cheat your way through those systems and companies too, but at some point people notice you're a fraud. Unless you sneak into a managerial job or a meaningless one fast enough, were you incompetence is hidden a little more easily.

[@George12String]

The real enemies here are the grading system and the cost of college tuition. Students aren't afraid of failing per se -- student are afraid of the consequences of failing. Students don't want a permanent negative mark on their record; students don't want to delay graduation if it means paying an extra semester of tuition down the line. It seems universities facilitate an incentive structure that leads to cheating. This doesn't justify the cheating any more than poor material conditions justify committing a crime, but it does explain why cheating occurs. Let's try and reform education so that the only real motivation a student has while taking a course is indeed learning the material.

[@MUSTI67]

This needs more recognition.

[@robloxvempor]

Agreee

[@musicdev]

^^^ yep, education reform is the answer, not a constant antagonistic relationship between students and learning

[@reizayin]

People need to stop giving in to the scam that higher education has become.

[@xkjjx]

College is also about making sure you learned the material though? There has is be "consequences" for not learning the material properly, otherwise why learn?

[@AlexBesogonov]

To professors everywhere: PLEASE stop doing closed-book exams. In actual engineering nobody cares if you remember all formulas or integration methods, you can always look them up. I still remember spending weeks practicing integration techniques that were then never used in practice. Mostly because practical diff. equations are either trivial or can't be solved anyway.

[@jordoruiz0001]

Or it takes like 10 to 15 minutes in a exam that lasts an hour, and you have other 3 problems you have to solve, when in real life, solving that equation takes you 5 to 10 seconds with a calculator

[@bunstie5208]

closed book exams force the student to discipline themselves and actually learn the content, while yes you can use your notes in the real word it separates the inclined students over the less disciplined.

[@foxadee]

@@bunstie5208 Alright but at least include a formula sheet

[@AlexBesogonov]

@@bunstie5208 I propose a better method: connect students to electricity and shock them. The students that cry and run away obviously can't discipline themselves and are unworthy of education. It's probably going to be just as effective.

[@alfonsoserramartinez1344]

​@@bunstie5208 eeeeehh idk, the content now or then you gonna need to know it, and also if you didn't pay attention to clases or actually read the book, you will take most of the time trying to answer any question. usually open-book test makes the student develop about learnt content or make them use it in a new context. making them kinda harder than closed-book exams. I sometimes joke with my classmates when we have open-book exams that they are the time where I learn the most (instead of showing my knowledge, they are where I actually learn)

[@edfrederick3630]

My prof allowed us to bring in the cheat sheet for computer architecture subject, 2 side of A4. And I think it’s hella good way to “force” students learn everything because they need to know what’s important and what’s not. Fyi it’s around 2000 pages of presentation, and you’re only allowed to have 2 side of A4. Beside writing things again is also a method of studying, you basically have to reconstruct everything you learnt (this is also basic knowledge for reading researching paper I believe)

[@jdoesmath2065]

Yes! I've always allowed my students to use a full (self authored) page of notes (front and back). The exercise of preparing such a page is an awesome way to prepare for an exam. Moreover, it eliminates the temptation to "sneak in notes".

[@SadnanSanim00071]

This is actually such a brilliant way to teach concepts because it forces the students to completely reconstruct the knowledge mentally and digest it in their own way. More professors should do this

[@UkrainiansWillLose]

Most my teachers just copied questions off state exams so I just printed out a bunch of questions and answers that I noticed came up often

[@mndlessdrwer]

Good lord, can you even fit the diagrams for the basic logic gates and registers in that small of a space? I watched a couple videos about them and their functions a few weeks back and it flew almost completely over my head, and I've got a background in maths and sciences.

[@edfrederick3630]

@@mndlessdrwer yes, I was able to write down 4 chapters into that 2 side of paper, but basically only things that I know I will forget :D I didn't write down any code instruction of assembly because I'm good at that, only the long ass theory part

[@i.ninetales]

Professors catching students on cheating are like the police looking for couriers instead of investigating the whole drug cartel

[@kayo6689]

And what can the teachers even do? They don’t have the power to take down the industry a few pegs so they do what they can in their own classrooms. This is an annoying systemic problem of the whole education system that we can’t blame on any particular person/organization. That said, I agree cause cheating will happen as long as grades matter a lot.

[@Enthalpy--]

Yup

[@SHEUZ]

yo tuco why you alive

[@stickyfox]

It's like the police looking for addicts more like.

[@KekusMagnus]

most often they're not really looking for them, many cheating attempts stand out like a sore thumb and the prof is stuck deciding if it's worth reporting or not. The profs i've worked with only go that far if the cheating is serious, and even then they turn a blind eye or only warn the students to be more careful

[@yichen8884]

I received an email from those cheating contractors asking if I need any "help". I asked them if they could prove the P=NP problem for me. Surprisingly, they said that they can do that for $100. Maybe I should have taken the deal and gotten my 1 million dollars.

[@AeroCraftAviation]

😂 Lol major R.O.I.

[@leonardocontreras9690]

Thats was legendary

[@Shawkster6]

Lmao 😂

[@imademedikasurya3917]

Big brain time, also ask the about prime number in reimann zeta function problem

[@imademedikasurya3917]

also if i was you i will ask olympiad problem, they will be screwed

[@jainabraina]

What I've noticed here (UC Berkeley computer science) is that the common refrain of "If you just cheat and don't learn the material, you won't do well later!" just doesn't really hold up. Students will study the material, learn it, and then cheat *anyway* because the classes are just that competitive and difficult. Granted, that's not the worst thing in the world - the primary objective of learning is still fulfilled - but it screws over students like me who don't cheat because the classes are curved.

[@ozordiprince9405]

What do you mean they are curved?

[@frodododo]

@@ozordiprince9405 iirc it means that instead of there being set scores required to get a certain grade, grades are allocated based on your position in the class, eg the top 20% get an A, the next 20% get a B and so on. Therefore, if other people cheat, thereby doing better than they would otherwise, theyll be ranked higher, meaning youll be ranked lower, meaning you get a worse grade for the same performance

[@mndlessdrwer]

In IT, and all other fields to which computer science is applicable, you will never be without some form of reference, be it guides, manuals, schematics, technical documents, walkthroughs, or KZbin videos made by a teenager in India. I'd say a solid 70% of the job is figuring out where the resources are to resolve your current problem and then synthesize that information into something you can actually use, then documenting it for later reference. Some career paths, like processor design and manufacture, have fewer resources online, but then you end up with internal knowledge bases to scour through instead. Trying to restrict students from using resources that they would realistically have at their disposal in their profession is just silly and pointless. Once they leave that specific class, they're going to forget everything that there isn't a demonstrable need for them to remember. OSI layers? Forgotten within the week. It's just not that important in the field unless you're actually the one doing the packet encapsulation software design. Then you have a poster on your cubicle wall with the OSI layer chart.

[@wesleysmith2199]

After my final exam, I discovered a calculator left by a student. This was in the mid 70's when even the simplest calculator cost $400. Taped to the back of it was a cheat sheet. Imagine the dilemma of this student: (1) claim the calculator and admit cheating, or (2) forget the calculator and lose $400. It turned out it was his brother's, and he had to take option (1).

[@animeandstuff5377]

lol wonder if he took responsibility since it was his calculator and felt bad for losing it or he was just broke. Also if this was in college i would be surprised because although 400 is a lot with a job you could pay it back.

[@Barsee23]

yeah it was his "brother's"

[@antman7673]

In my physics exam we are allowed to write a DinA4 paper with “cheats” or notes. It is generous and helps not to feel pressured to remember everything. Good notes aren’t enough to complete the exam. The tasks are technical. Some stories came about of people using the old 3d glasses to write in red and blue to have double the information on the paper. Another story was someone writing on a extremely large piece of paper till the loophole was fixed and the size limited to DinA4.

[@geraldsnodd]

🤣

[@ChristinaKilgore]

My loophole: microscopic notes Don't need a large sheet of paper if the difference between an e and a c is a drop of ink

[@cpK054L]

Funny story, MY physics professor actually let you take a cheat sheet like you said, AND he LITERALLY LEAVES THE BUILDING during the test Test was for 2 hours? He gives you 6 hours. Take your sweet ass time. People would be yelling answers at each other, whether or not it was correct, was up to the beholder Why did he let this happen? "It's like letting the dumb lead the dumb" and he was right.... most of the ones who did not study anything at all failed anyways. It doesn't matter HOW open book you make it, you can have the answers right there you can have all of Maxwell's equations and derivations, Keplar's laws, Bernoulli Principles, don't matter if you don't know what they are Other professor that made the class cheat proof is to literally make the whole class project based. You better have the design documents to back up your constructrion.

[@nomore-constipation]

Plot Twist: The real brains with creativity use this as an excuse to excel at cheating. 3D glasses seems a bit much for me but more power to the person who did it. I personally would like to think I'd use a system generated print tiny enough to read with a paper thin magnifying glass. Plus if we really want to work on being creative I'd might research ways to compress my notes like a file archive does (like ZIP, ZIP7 or RAR) 😁 Especially if you're background is Computer Science 😉

[@aaaaaa-hh8cq]

@@cpK054L that kind of test is so scary to me Never listen to other people's answers They're > 90% wrong 😄

[@rufioh]

In my first year at uni, one lecturer said “revision societies are cheating” and tried to get them banned. These are societies where 2nd+ year students help 1st years by teaching, and making mock papers and stuff

[@neptun2810]

This lecturer is just some stupid narcissistic. Knowledge needs to end up in your brain, how it gets there is not the professor’s problem.

[@brunoianigro61]

Ah yes when cheating consists of *checks notes* studying with someone else at home

[@scurvofpcp]

When I was in highschool I was one of those vo-tech trash students, and every snow day we would miss our 4th period class and the teacher kept saying to see her at lunch (which we would not be there for) to get our missed work. Well, we got together and managed to get photocopies of all the missed homework so we could do it and as a group made it a point to study the fuck out of the course material because we were going to A+ those tests just to spite her. She tried to fail and suspend the lot of us because we cheated by learning the material on our own.

[@kinnai8334]

Seriously? My university organises groups of 2nd and 3rd year students to help 1st years with lectures, content, problems, etc...

[@helojoeywala6622]

my uni has that on purpose lmfao

[@Michallote]

I love how my university deals with this. Firstly all exams must be submitted by professors every semester so they are practically always new. Secondly all previous exams are available on the university web page and actually encourages students to use them to study. Thirdly and most impressive is that most exams allow you to take your notes into the exam. And correspondingly it has problems that require connecting 3 or more topics in order to solve them, information is almost always dependent and conceptual understanding almost defines your grade. If you have fundamental physical understanding of the topics the exams are surprisingly easy, and when not by the end of the exam it forced you to think creatively to reach a solution. They are very long exams as well and most of the time have very very lenient time limits (say 5-6 hours for finals). Some might argue that is a bad think but on the contrary many students realise how important it is to take notes and have them correctly organised. The extension of the courses makes it very hard to locate what's useful if you didn't make your notes yourself or at least studied them well and catalogued them. One of my professors told me that in practice you won't have single day time limits to make all the calculations, you usually carry them out in matters of weeks. So putting time pressure on top of the underlying difficulty hinders the actual learning of topics. I know this will receive some criticism, so for those interested my university is top 100 in the QSRankings (if that is of any value, it is considered after all the best uni in my country) and I have enjoyed so much more my education because of this philosophy of teaching.

[@bzztbzztboy]

Yes! I think the best sort of exams are the kind where you're pushed beyond what you learn in the syllabus, but you're given access to resources and ample amounts of time to make the connections and put in whatever mental legwork you need to.

[@jeremygalloway1348]

What are you studying? I can see this being very beneficial for physics/engineering/maths. I feel a huge issue at least in the states...is too much distraction unrelated to school and education. Too much tv...internet...too many ads trying to get you to buy crap you don't need. Too much nonsense making it increasingly difficult to focus on what needs to be focused on. Also...diet. too much sugar in everyday items. Too much oil. Too much crap. I know this has nothing to do with cheating or learning directly...but indirectly I feel these are the top issues

[@Twigleaf]

Seems like they are literally getting rid of learning. If they allow unlimited notes, resources in exams, it's not always beneficial is it. I know it's hard to see all that in context, but those rules are an extreme departure. It is possible they are dumbing down the learning process so bad, it's akin to giving degrees away. We have went into this belief, where if a person pays 200k for college, that they are owed a degree. I finished in 97, and at the time, I said... College exams were getting so advanced, by 2020 we would not be graduating many at all. Just the opposite now. These professors in many cases are giving degrees away. Look at the rules you list. They are literally letting you bring in a library to override your actual ability to learn the material. To the professor talking..... " I hate to fail students".... You should realize just saying that has you predispositioned to do everything you can to pass them. Prove me wrong. Universities have went from learning, to some kind of Social status, or political theatre. Student pays 200k.... Demands degree.... Later demands the local plumbers, electricians, workers pay that 200k.

[@ZeonLP]

@@Twigleaf I disagree. Those exams are, or should be, specifically designed such that you can bring 10 pages of notes with you and that won't get you anywhere unless you understand the concepts on a deeper level. Their purpose is to not force students to memorize complex (as in long) formulas that they understand but may forget in the exam. One might easily solve a problem conceptually and describe the solution process perfectly, yet still be unable to give a full solution including numbers because they simply didn't 100% memorize a weird formula and don't have enough time to rederive it or rather to not waste time rederiving it. Most professors don't even remember every single formula but they very well know when and how to use them after looking them up quickly. Plus, in my country, 60-70% of people still drop out during the first 2 semesters in STEM fields so I don't really think they are giving degrees away.

[@ГеоргиГеоргиев-с3г]

Your whole life you have a calculator, why get stopped in a test, same with carrying a book in your pocket, yes the no help from outside is probably bad since you are supposed to know how to do it at the end and get paid for it, but it's not like your boss is going to keep you at work if you do no work, so i say let them cheat all their hearts out, have them grade each other at the black board, if they want high grades have them, if not, not, we knew each other who cheated and who didn't, there are cases where mistakes are viable and cases were they aren't, measuring a stars brightness of mark by one or two orders of magnitude is not that big of a deal, twitching while operating on another human is a life vs death thing, the reasons why students cheat are: One it's easy(way too many options), High grades are hyped as a life or death sentence, "Everybody's doing it". That is why i like the Norwegian grading system, just like in kindergarten, you get an elephant, you get a truck, grades are ultimately pointless, either you can do it(and get bad grades), or you can't (and get good ones), but both ways you will feel bad for getting your grade, been on both sides of the spectrum, on top of the regular grades, it's just an illusion that everyone believes and makes judgement upon even i bought in to it once or twice, a checklist is way better, it even comes with a "will do it later" self fulfilling prophecy, why not be able to take calculous 3, before calculous 2, they weren't that connected, could have probably graduated 5-10 years before getting in, if i wasn't using the state curriculum of waiting a year for a year and instead studied at my own pace, and probably missed only a class or two, instead i almost had a nervous breakdown the last year, because i found out i didn't really want to study anymore(my center of being, being: learning just so i know more, shattered by making me care about my grades, instead of the pure desire to learn more), after skipping around half my classes because they were deemed "not necessary" by the teachers that led them, and finding stuff that were deemed "more necessary" by everyone around me, not really achieving any of them all, and that is my story of why i prefer the pure fictional sciences(they haven't failed me) like math, psychology, and non-applied physics, it may not be useful, but i have found it's use, fun. If i could monetize alchemy, i will probably start caring less about it.

[@gg-xp9wc]

I've cheated in the sense that I have looked up solutions as a reference to homework problems that I either got stuck on or that I felt were a waste of time. In both of these scenarios, my "cheating" was genuinely the most effective (and time efficient) way for me to learn while still getting a good grade. I'm a "learn by example" kind of person so if I got stuck on a problem type that the professor/book didn't explain well, I used the solution to generalize a way to approach those kinds of problems, and used that to drill for exams. And if I came across a problem that I knew wouldn't be useful for me to do, I didn't have to waste too much time on it. Since homework is for a student's own benefit, I don't really find this kind of cheating to be particularly problematic. I was practicing in the way that was most effective for me, without wasting time. That being said, I have seen a lot of students starting out like this who then fall down the "cheat code" analogy rabbithole where they start looking up solutions more and more, so it definitely takes discipline not to over-use.

[@kacperfilipek8461]

I wouldn't even consider it cheating. Sure, if you look up every problem without even thinking about it you wouldn't learn too much, but looking up how to solve problems you get stuck on or don't know how to solve is a perfectly viable way of learning in my opinion.

[@jorgelenny47]

As a stack overflow enjoyer, this is just how some students work

[@saravananjeeva5258]

@@jorgelenny47 u mean software engineer ? jk i know its abd stereotype

[@eligoldman9200]

I am literally the same way.

[@Saldivinorum]

@Paulina Romanovsky let me ask if I understand you correctly. You expell students simply because they refuse to pledge their allegiance to a piece of cloth? Wow, just wow. PS I love how you pretentiously tote your supposed exemplary style of teaching as superior to others, yet you mispelled allegiance as "allegence." So the "Pledge of Allegiance" is soooo important in your opinion that you'll go so far as to expell students for refusing to blindly parrot it's verses, yet you can't be bothered to learn how to spell allegiance correctly? Might I suggest stepping off your high horse before you hurt yourself, because you're not perfect nor do you have the perfect style of teaching. And while I love my country, I never understood the robotic Pledge of Allegiance and would gladly take my kid out of your school of indoctrination.

[@philippg6023]

In Germany, in pure Mathematics, you are usually allowed to bring a handwritten piece of paper into the exam and i think that ist awesome. I am the oppinion that the Goal of a lecture is Not to know some formulas by heart but to understand the matter and to be able to proof things. Therefore i have never seen anyone cheating in an exam at the University.

[@oflameo8927]

Germans are notoriously good at Engineering.

[@ithaca2076]

ja, entschuldigung mein deutsch ist schletch, aber hallo von amerika

[@ActuatedGear]

@@ithaca2076 Okay, Guessing: Yeah, in school my German is "crap", going hello from America. Actual: Yes, sorry my German is fast, but hello from America. I wasn't too far off. Hooray for cognates!

[@vanguard.aggressor]

In FCUNAM we copy and paste the German System, locally we call it the "Formulario", it's useful, but their main importance is Psycological, the student is more confident in a Test.

[@philippg6023]

@@vanguard.aggressor true

[@eliontheinternet3298]

Do professors realize how much of a problem it is to not just fail a class, but to drop below a certain GPA? I wasn't able to get my bachelor's degree because I got one too many C's, lost my scholarship, couldn't apply for other, less selective scholarships because I was already in college and most require you to be an incoming freshmen. Couldn't pay for school, had to stop. I am lucky enough to be going back now but that is only with the support of my partner. It is 100% understandable that students feel pressure to cut corners when the margin for error is small or nonexistent.

[@BlackCodeMath]

"Pressure" is an excuse. Life is full of pressure to be dishonest, resist it. And I've been there, I've had to accept C's in key college courses. 100% of the time, me not putting the work in came BEFORE I felt the the pressure to cheat. Do the work.

[@thedumbconspirator4956]

@@BlackCodeMath It frankly depends on the type of stakes youre facing. There are some extremely uptight programs where a certain GPA should be maintained. Accepting Cs is fine, people especially in STEM will rejoice over a C. but getting kicked from your program or screwing with your graduation timeline is a whole other thing. Lot of people also typically dont do well on high stakes environments. Its a terrible feeling not knowing what sort of curveball a prof may throw at you during a test, especially is its a hard subject.

[@BlackCodeMath]

@@thedumbconspirator4956 sure, but none of that excuses cheating. If you're in a demanding, high stakes program then you should behave accordingly and put in the necessary work BEFORE you feel the need to cheat. If you don't do well in high stakes academic programs, you always have the option to not enter those programs. But many people don't want to accept that-

[@BlackCodeMath]

@@thedumbconspirator4956 sure, but none of that excuses cheating. If you're in a demanding, high stakes program then you should behave accordingly and put in the necessary work BEFORE you feel the need to cheat. Or drop out of the program. People with some kind of integrity will do that. And if you don't do well in high stakes academic programs, you always have the option to not enter those programs. But many people don't want to accept that- they want the benefits of the tough academic program without doing all of hard work that is required to succeed in one. That is the mind of a cheater- do less than I am expected to do but get the same rewards as a person who DID do what they are expected to do. Quite simply, if it's too hard then that person should take an easier path. But one should not blame the difficult requirements of the path they chose when they decide to cheat, that's a weak and dishonest choice.

[@thedumbconspirator4956]

​@@BlackCodeMath I fully agree. Tough, high stakes programs warrants a LOT of work to be put in. But dont go about assuming that the type of people to cheat are the type of people who dont put in any work. Everyone puts in a lot of work. Keep in mind that youre also taking multiple (sometimes unrelated) courses at once and the issue of time management becomes massive where you cant spend TOO much time on one course or youll fall behind in the rest. Thats where a lot of people feel the need to take a shortcut so they can spend additional time on other courses. Professors are generally apathetic to the different course loads that everyone is taking and will move at a pace that they see fit. The problem is everyone learns differently at different paces and the whole concept of you show up to see me talk about a subject for x hours is quite flawed.

[@logank]

The only problem with this is professors need to actually be 100% certain when they accuse of cheating. I had a professor, who thankfully reasoned with us later, but he wanted to give myself and a friend an F on a coding homework assignment for "cheating". We were honest that we discussed the assignment together (which was allowed by policy), and we both talked about a global variable being a potentially good idea (typically global variables are frowned upon). We both had a global variable, which is why he thought we cheated on each other. However, preparing to defend ourselves against the university, we sat down together and went through our code to find that almost none of the rest of it was all that similar. Luckily he agreed with us and reinstated our homework grades.

[@xenostim]

That is ridiculous on so many levels. What's next, they accuse you of cheating because multiple people used an if statement? Then to not even compare the rest of the code /facepalm ps. I'm glad you and your friend didn't cheat on each other ... XD

[@DragonEdge10]

Coding is one of those things that I genuinely feel like it's really not worth chasing after "suspicions". Often time for homework snippets on established algorithms, there are pre-established, logically sound paths to take that exist because they make sense and are based in common fundamentals. What even would constitute cheating in coding on a small scale anyway? Your student using external resources or collaboration to do a sorting algorithm might end up looking fairly similar and cheaty, but that's basically what everyone does in the real world anyway, it's optimal. It just doesn't make sense to me why anyone teaching coding would go after stuff like that when they could far more easily and concretely prove cheating on any of the larger projects their students do, where it's clear that there are completely different styles of code thrown into the same project and the student barely knows what any of them do and how they work with each other.

[@nomore-constipation]

The college I attended gave the professor extreme access to accuse us but gave us a narrow way to provide our proof we didn't cheat. Way too many hoops to jump through just to prove that you didn't do it but they didn't have anything of substance when it came to accuse anyone. Most of the "questionable" cheats were possible but I don't know how many times students actually started cheating after not cheating because if you're going to be judged like one then why not just adjust your perspective and cheat. Oddly enough more people cheated because of it. I remember one challenge back to the professor included the Dean of the college. It's actually amazing how much they backed off accusing me from 100% to 80/20 then 50/50 when it involved more people to review and my final appeal while the Dean was there my cheating was lower than 60/40 and it was in my favour of 60% not cheating. It definitely gave me a sour feeling about academics in general

[@nendobot]

Lol wait till they find out how much original code is actually in use. In all seriousness, what a unqualified professor.

[@ZoraVisions]

@@xenostim oh that would be halarious

[@Chris-pt6hh]

When we (Columbia) went online, some of the historical curves were moved by a full letter grade. People suddenly getting 80+ on exams that typically have averages around 60. When we went back in person, the grades were magically back to normal.

[@dkoykoala1488]

gotta make that money~~

[@trafalgarla]

If the average is 60, you're teaching wrong

[@levihallock5549]

@@trafalgarla if it's engineering or a higher level stem class it's common to have below 70% class average in my experience. I've seen below 60% but that is a more severe case

[@trafalgarla]

@@levihallock5549 It's common if the professors are bad at teaching. I went to graduate school for an engineering masters and physics PhD. The classes that were taught well had higher averages and everyone I knew loved those classes.

[@1oo1540]

@@levihallock5549 racism is also common. Doesn’t mean it’s good.

[@TitusRex]

I dropped off university because everyone around me was cheating and some professors even admitted that they made the exams harder because everyone cheated anyway.

[@DrTrefor]

I really disagree with anyone making an exam harder because there is cheating going on. Make a fair exam. That's on the prof. Write that test fairly. That's on the students.

[@harmanbans]

Practically every Economics class at UCLA has become much harder since we went online almost two years ago today - every professor I’ve asked justifies it by saying they know people will cheat anyways

[@ranaathar8775]

@@DrTrefor facts

[@vanguard.aggressor]

That's not the way, all the cheaters will be mediocre graduates, but the right students can change the world, what if Leibnitz dropped the University when he knoes that Newton discovers the Calculus?, never, in any under circunstance, you give up because what others do

[@datboii3738]

I had a professor who made his own questions and one who only gave 4 exams the whole semester… impossible to cheat through because they hawked over you every few min the class was small… it was a nightmare I know others in my class failed and I barely got through it, teachers are incredibly unfair and don’t realize some students are gambling their life to better improve their financial position they can’t extend their UNI as they can’t even afford their current enrollment. And though some people do get through it we still can’t find good paying jobs when we get out because all the really good paying jobs require experience… so imagine being extremely stressed for 4-5 months to even pass an upper level course to only become more stressed out of UNI with mounting debt…. And no employer willing to pick you up without experience in the field… I was lucky to have interned for a DoD company, and obtain an entry level position in my field but for others with a blank resume. And even before that for those with unreasonable teachers I completely side with the students, I remember one professor starting an introduction with “a lot of material is based on already known information” not even willing to re-group over previous material for those absent from the pre-req course through winter break…. Teachers that expect you to find out the information take for granted their position in university in that expectation to teach minimally ‘expectation’ it’s burdensome.. it’s laziness and a disservice to future students.

[@kruksog]

I'm not proud of it, but I did cheat on some homework (never a test) in the final two years of my undergrad. A big part of the problem (as a math/comp sci double major) was the tremendous amount of work that was expected of me. I was doing homework like a full time job and I know that's part of the deal, but never having a moment to myself, a moment to breathe, just became crushing. Like, it got to the point where, if I struggled with a problem, I couldn't justify spending 3 hours on this one problem, banging my head against it when there was a mountain of other work I had to do. I wasn't getting enough sleep, I never got to see friends, I never got to enjoy myself. It was untenable. This problem is only made worse by the fact that I, and a lot of students, also had to work while going to school to survive. I don't know what the solution to this is, other than to get kids free/cheap school so they don't need a job while going to school. The workloads in some classes does need to be addressed though. I'm fine with the 3 hours outside class for every hour in class "rule," but I feel like I was doing more like 6 or 7 just to keep my head above water. It was too much.

[@kruksog]

@Itachi Uchiha @Itachi Uchiha that's why I said that 'I understand it's part of the deal.' Also though, lots of people make reasonable choices that put them in difficult places... Can you reasonably expect me to say "I'm not going to college, because the things I love are hard, and I will have to take a job while doing it?" If you knew me personally, you'd understand there was never really a choice there. I always wanted/yearned for higher education. Further, having to take a job while going to school is a reality most students today face. To be able to go to school without working is absolutely a privilege, and I'm against that. Education ought to be a right. Finally, I suspect you didn't fully read my comment (so I'm not sure why I'm expecting you to read this one, but...): During my freshman year, I was told if you wanted an A in a class, expect to spend 3 hours outside class for every hour in class. I said I was fine with that, but I was spending 6 to 7 hours outside class, for every hour in class, for each class, and that was to stay in the B to C+ range for many classes, not to keep an A, while working as a line cook 25-30 hours a week. I was sleeping no more than 5 hours a night, and usually more like 3 hours. I never had fun, I never saw friends, I never did anything that wasn't work, for 9 months straight essentially. And yes, as you point out, I chose that, but for Christ's sake, have a little empathy. My point is, I dont think you can reasonably expect people to go through that and not bend in certain aspects of their life. If I'm honest, I'm lucky I only resorted to googling answers on a few homeworks, rather than throwing myself from a 30th floor window.

[@kruksog]

@Itachi Uchiha Bud....I just dont have the energy to respond to this shit. Once again, I said "I understand that's part of the deal" implying THAT I UNDERSTAND THAT'S PART OF THE DEAL. I MADE THE COMMENT TO TALK ABOUT THE IMMENSE PRESSURE MANY STUDENTS ARE PUT UNDER TO ADDRESS WHY STUDENTS OFTEN MAKE SHITTY CHOICES IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. Write another comment when you've graduated because I suspect you're at most a sophomore and not yet taking classes that are truly demanding, like mathematical statistics, or real analysis, or natural language processing, or theories of computation. Shit gets mind-bendingly difficult. I never claimed to be a natural; I'm just someone who loves the knowledge. I still dont think you've read my comment because you haven't addressed the fact I spent 9 months sleeping 3 or 4 hours a night without a single instance of free-time or happiness. How can you expect that of a person? I was a non-trad in my 30s when I did it. I'm not sure how I made it through. That we ask it of 20 year olds just seems insane to me. Finally, I double majored because math is my love, especially discrete math, but I wanted a good job, hence CS... and having a job in school wasn't a choice for me. It was a necessity. What I wanted was to get a higher education, which I did. If you're privileged enough to be able to get an education without a job, I really don't think you deserve to have a voice here, because you just don't get it (clearly). You can't. I went for my dreams, swung for the fences, so to speak, and if you think I can't say, or dont deserve to say "it was unnecessarily painful" because I chose to go for it, then I don't have any respect for your opinion. Anyway, done responding to you because I can tell you are going to continue responding inimicably to my explanations. Good for you, being a robot who doesn't experience human misery. Enjoy your diploma when you get it in 2 to 3 years. I'm sure your coworkers will find you a joy 🙄.

[@dkoykoala1488]

i hope you have had a solid career path after that. i'm currently taking electrical and was offered computer eng yet i work full time too! gonna try to keep at it since they share like 85% of the classes. i know ill have to let go of the full time job but i've managed to get a consistent 6 hour sleep schedule so far. might have to move back with mom at 29 though LOL!

[@saravananjeeva5258]

@@kruksog i respect ur determination , but was taking math major just for ur passion really worth it ?,i know math helps in comp sci , but i doubt a major is needed for it .i do not think being a double major will make u more employable(comp sci is all about the portfolio) ,but i dont know

[@windowsforvista]

@Itachi Uchiha what are they supposed to do if they need a job...

[@DavidCourtney]

Not being able to have a formula sheet in math exams was such a terrific and valuable lesson that totally applies to real life. In my day-to-day engineering job, myself and everyone I work with are locked in a room, and we are never allowed to look anything up. 🙄

[@oliversmith7130]

+1

[@GoodwillWright]

Imagine the people working on the Apollo space mission. They had to remember the formulas or people died. Good thing they had big brain memories.

[@merryjman]

I understand and agree with the sentiment, and as a physics teacher I let my kids use a formula sheet on all the tests. BUT: I am actually glad my math teachers made us memorize some of that stuff, because having those equations in the "muscle memory" of the brain was really helpful in the sense that it prefabbed my brain into being ready to learn physics and higher math. Memorizing lists of convergence tests? Not so much.

[@mndlessdrwer]

@@GoodwillWright Pretty sure the capsules had manuals for the systems so the astronauts didn't have to memorize literally every component for every system before launch. They may have wanted to have a working concept for what they were and what they did, but they certainly wouldn't have been sent with literally nothing.

[@emmaseay4068]

@@merryjman Unless you do something constantly, you will not memorize it. It doesnt help you to memorize formulas in maths, if you plan to never use maths on a daily basis.

[@RangerOfTheOrder]

A few years ago I took a technical maths course. During the final our instructor said that if we were unsure about a formula, just let him know and he'd write it on the board for us. He was a retired engineer, and didn't care if we memorized the formula, only that we knew how to apply it. Because that's how it works in the real world

[@omrialkabetz5602]

I have ADHD and I used to get bad grades on math exams in middle school. One day during an 8th grade algebra exam, our teacher had to leave the class in order to take care of an urgent matter. Before he left, he asked the students if he could trust us not to cheat while he isn't there to watch us, and the students promised that they won't betray his trust. He said very clearly that he trusted us and went out of the classroom. As soon as he got far enough away - everyone got up from their seats and started comparing and yelling their answers. I was the only one who remained seated and solved the exam alone, while trying as much as I could to use my fingers to block my ears. As soon as the students guarding the window saw the teacher on his way back, they sounded the alarm and everyone got back to their seats. When he walked in it seemed like nothing had happened. I was the only student on that exam who got 40/100, while all the other students got 100 or 98-ish, which was highly unusual so the teacher must have known what went on while he wasn't there. When I got to university I was crushed by the feeling that the impossibly demanding academic environment pushes almost all students to cheat on homework assignments at one point or another, regardless of their ethical standpoint or their feelings towards the matter. The worst part is that because students keep passing the exams with high scores, it doesn't seem like the lecturers have an incentive to change anything in the working environment, which perpetuates the cheating attitude. Eventually those who refuse to cheat are the ones who get hurt the most.

[@saravananjeeva5258]

this where the saying , if u cant beat them , join them , is true .ethically it is wrong but u also dont want seem like the only person who wasnt able to to do homework

[@Andrew-dh1ws]

good for you for not cheating man. i bet none of those kids in middle school remember that "one random test", but you have a valuable story on integrity. sounds to me like you were the real winner.

[@thomashansknecht1898]

I can relate. There was a Computer Networking exam my final year at university. I remember someone in the class found a Quizlet with the same exam questions and answers from last semester. Everyone flocked to the Quizlet and "studied it" (probably also looked at the Quizlet during the exam) since the exam was online. The class average for that exam was around 93% while I made around a 60 or so after around 12 hours of studying. For reference the exam before when no one found a Quizlet with all the answers had an average of a 61%. However, because I did not actively cheat I suffered and was left with a C for that class. I also remember a group project for my Artificial Intelligence class where my team wanted to cheat and copy someone else's git-hub project but I refused to turn something like that in so I stayed up around 32 hours straight during finals week to try and finish the project without cheating and got a 60% on that project giving me a B and taking away my A in the class. I would rather have a lower grade than having a chance of not graduating plus it is so uncomfortable and seems so wrong to cheat. Good of you to not cheat. People like you are the ones that make it through schooling and will actually understand and benefit from the material.

[@omrialkabetz5602]

I wish I could maintain my integrity and write a comment that will show how much I benefitted from it, but in reality I have lost much of my sanity at university. Following a failed attempt at getting a degree and a major depressive episode, I have lost much of my passion to the subject and the future seems very uncertain. The reason I don't cheat isn't necessarily related to integrity, it's because I went to university to study, not to pass exams. I saw people who study little for exams and only copy homework during the semester, and still pass with a better grade than I do. It is very frustrating but it means that we are all different. Some people can do so. My problem is that due to a lack of human resources (or at least that's the excuse we were given), the university can't do much to help those students who really want to study, vs those who just want the degree title. It makes you question people who "look good on paper". If I was a professor looking for PHD students, I would be wary of those who have "perfect" grades.

[@no1ofinterst]

@@thomashansknecht1898 Wait, so the teacher just re-used their exam? Like if you knew that was what was on the exam last semester, then couldn't you just study off of last semesters exam?

[@Nirmy001]

not to justify cheating, but most of the cheating around me happens from peer pressure, so many people around them are cheating and getting better grades than the people who genuinly work and spend time learning subjects and its really demoralizing, it makes it feel like working hard has less value than cheating. A student can study, get a high B on an exam and have a really good understanding of the subject or they can cheat and get an A on the exam while having little understanding. Unfortunatly many admissions which are greatly based on numbers influences students to go for that second option.

[@rifewithpotatoes]

Especially in the run-up for more competitive majors. I went into geological sciences and it solved practically all of my problems, but when I was young and foolish and still considering programming and engineering there were times when it was really tempting. The programs were so selective that it really did take perfect grades to even have a chance, but the homework was very long without actually addressing the things I needed to study, so the choice was to waste time crunching through the frankly quotidian material they wanted me to "practice", rush the homework to actually study useful material, or cheat. What kind of choice is that, exactly?

[@fikkitchen]

THIS!

[@anweshpradhan1842]

Thank you! This especially when the grades are relative to each other. If others cheat and get good marks, i also need to

[@vanguard.aggressor]

In Human Resources we know that, a B student many times is better than a straight A suspicious student, we measure the Enthusiasm, the Merit, not the numbers.

[@PvblivsAelivs]

I was a little surprised at the characterization of having notes of the most common formulas as cheating. I am more accustomed to exams being open-note and no-calculator. Presumably, this is a test of your ability to apply the math rather than rote memorization.

[@LeDore38]

Depends on the level, my open notes exams were usually pretty hard, but stupidly easy exams for entry level stuff would be nothing with notes. And anything in those exams need to be second nature anyway.

[@dhsora95]

I don't believe under any circumstances that notes should be considered cheating. Memorizing a formula vs using it are very different skillsets and they measure different abilities.

[@DrTrefor]

I also am more commonly in favour of allowing a formula sheet (thumbnail not withstanding), but it really depends on the level and learning objectives of the course.

[@theRiver_joan]

As someone with adhd/asd that really bothers me when professors make such a big deal about not allowing access to basic notes and information during your exam. I’ve never cheated in any other sense other than just looking at some formulas, and even that was only twice. I really loved when I eventually took an abstract linear algebra class and the professor told us he didn’t care if we used our notes or the text book, it wouldn’t help us. He was right. If you don’t actually know understand the material, having the ability to sift through your text book (which you also clearly don’t understand) doesn’t help much.

[@philipegoulet448]

@@DrTrefor I'm really curious, what learning objective would justify not allowing a formula sheet? Considering you can access those formulas in seconds using the internet in the vast majority of situations where you will apply what you learned, I find it hard to justify.

[@dondelchulia3189]

Schooling costs have gotten out of hand. From a lot of students I talked to, cheating was more a form of avoiding having to retake classes from professors abandoning their job during covid, then seeking an easy way through university.

[@Fusion05]

As a student, here is my perspective. In the classroom I am expected to learn multiple different ideas and formulas, quickly memorize them, then take a test and hope I understood everything and remembered it all. In the real world, I’m just expected to do my job. I don’t have to remember every formula, I don’t have to do everything on a sheet of paper. In the real people use charts, books, and the internet to fulfill their job. Heck even my doctor looks up new medicines. Even teachers or professors have to look up answers to questions every now and again. So in my eyes, if a student uses textbooks or notes to help then ace the test, let them do it. The saying “you won’t have a calculator on you all the time” is quite frankly a lie. An estimated 83.72% of people have a smartphone, and I guarantee most if not all of those phones have a calculator. It’s not your all of your fault, it’s mostly the grading systems fault, but how you choose to handle the situation is on you!

[@cryora]

You don't want to be the professor who's always clueless and needs to look up or ask someone else for the answer. The professor who doesn't know anything and always tells the student "you know what, why don't you learn it and teach me?" isn't a professor you would consider competent, nor is that professor fulfilling their role the way they should. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting in a meeting where no one has the knowledge, and having to make a decision based on who has the most forceful personality or the highest authority. I would argue that professors that only pull rank and not bring real expertise into a project are the cheaters who are getting a professor's paycheck but letting other people do the hard work. Even more frustrating is that you have the correct answer, but because your professor is behind on the knowledge and believes something else and believes he is right because he is the professor, and now you have to fight with your professor's ego to get him up to speed. And good luck trying to convince that professor that they need to review math, because now you're at risk of getting in trouble with university policy associated with "insubordination" and your "manners" will get criticized.

[@peamutbubber]

Skill issue

[@peamutbubber]

In education you should be enjoying what you do and studying for hours a day, that's more than enough to remember everything and pass. If you don't enjoy it or find it tedious, don't do it! Or if you have to, suck it up. In the real world people have to do mundane things to a high standard all the time, and teaching students to ask for the answer every time is a bad thing

[@WhatWillYouFind]

The purpose of memorizing and using those formulas the goal is MASTERY. The problem is how the school and our system actually awards merit for those things. If you're in university for MASS COMMUNICATIONS, you're learning psychology and how to use written media effectively. If you're in mathematics, fundamental understanding of equations "not doing them persay, but the mastery of expected outcomes and how to get there are important," compared to just mindlessly solving problems which have no applicable answers in the real world. A prime example of this is STATISTICS. We were expected to master the setup. We were expected to be extremely critical of the data and analyzing the surrounding information to verify that not only was the problem valid but the data and the solution were also correct. This was important for me, I aced Calculus and nearly flunked out of all prior math classes BECAUSE of the instructor. Regression Models arent scary once you "Get It." Understanding exactly how to apply this model or be able to explain how a Median Distribution works in the real world was MORE IMPORTANT than just a^c=B.

[@aidanbrown7137]

@@peamutbubber couple hours a day to remember everything? You must not be in stem lol

[@EpicMathTime]

All my best stories came after I switched from teaching university level to teaching high school. They were really... really bad at cheating. Story time. It's 2020. Covid strikes, we go online. I give an online test. I have students handwrite their answers and take photos/etc. to get it to me (this was right when it happened, so we hadn't adopted to remote learning yet and didn't think we would be gone for long). I give a trigonometry problem. "There's a ladder leaning on the wall, needs to be at an angle, how far should the ladder be placed from the wall?" You know the one. I'm grading a test and I see that one student answered "about left from the wall." No idea what that means. Continue grading. Another one: "the ladder should be placed about left from the wall." It keeps happening. Test after test. "About left." What the hell is going on? I notice every "about left" paper also has a very peculiar error on a different problem. I sift through the papers and look for any other test that made the same strange error on the other problem. I find exactly one. I flip to their page with the ladder problem. Their answer: "The ladder should be placed about 16ft from the wall." All those students copied her test and misread her handwriting. They all saw "about left" where she wrote "about 16ft." They didn't even question the fact that what they had copied not only failed to give a solution to the problem, but also wasn't even a viable English sentence.

[@DrTrefor]

that is just embarrassing lol

[@greatgas5875]

imo a normal wall is too hard. Now if it was a "cos" wall instead, I'd immediately ace the question.

[@MisterPyOne]

We could have teams when doing homework in university so sometimes I would do some stuff and the other person the other stuff or sometimes all or nothing. When copying homework I would always check if it made sense while copying sometimes finding errors and on occasions having an idea how to actully solve the problem and doing it the right way.

[@christopheryu4148]

Haha... this happened to me as well... I had a student copy word for word... but their picture was cut off on one side... so every line was missing words at the end. Pretty funny.... then of course they deny they cheat until I show them screen shots.

[@robloxvempor]

FUKKCC☠️🗿🗿🗿 lmaoo

[@Guy_With_A_Laser]

Something that I saw while I was TAing in grad school: The university had a fairly generous scholarship program for the undergrads where students could get a respectable scholarship based on their entry level grads, and it renewed annually as long as they maintained their GPA... but if their GPA dropped below a certain threshold (pretty high, I think it was an A- average or something), then they lost the scholarship going forward. So we observed a lot of cases where a student who was "on the bubble" of losing their scholarship had a really strong motivation to cheat, even students who were generally excelling but just couldn't afford to take a B in physics 101 because it might mean a loss of thousands of dollars going forward. Really unfortunately designed system.

[@ricardoalmeida7805]

To me, it's really simple, if the education system were any good people wouldn't cheat. I became fluent in Japanese because I had a private teacher that really made me fall in love with the language, not only did I not cheat but I went out to point out my mistakes and areas I could improve when the teacher missed it, even if it meant a lower grade. I cheated my way through school and uni cause I just needed certification to work and the actual content is dogshit. If you don't want people to cheat don't overload them with bullshit.

[@zorkmeadd]

i took college french classes as a highshooler, and of course i struggled a bit. but what really got me through the class was a free tutor that the college provided to any students. she would actually help me practice french, and also get good grades.

[@justanotherhotguy]

I don’t cheat because I that just would add to my stress, but I agree with your point. There are subjects where I don’t care to understand because the teachers are so bad at explaining at. It would be so better to simply cheat them through.

[@abes2836]

I just can’t stand how many bs filler classes that are unrelated to my field that we are forced to take in uni. I get they want us to be well rounded but what was the point of taking all of these classes in high school?

[@AlCatSplat]

People will always cheat no matter what. Some are just born lazy.

[@sotam8938]

@@AlCatSplat Not true, if a person is generally interested in the topic and there isnt any consequences to not understanding the topic well, then they wont cheat...

[@King_Of_Games]

My teacher said it best and I’ve always held this to heart. If a student is able to cheat that means there’s a problem with the test not the student

[@orangesel9338]

idk bro if u need to cheat on a calc exam u aren't paying attention in class

[@robertveith6383]

​@@orangesel9338 -- Please write in English, not in texting.

[@jdoesmath2065]

I have a colleague who insists that a student surrender their phone before using the restroom during an exam. Dude, if your exam can be hacked by Siri, you need to rewrite your exam.

[@nickthompson1812]

@@robertveith6383 Please learn to understand informal English. It’s present in every corner of the USA, might as well get used to it.

[@peamutbubber]

If you need to cheat on a calculus exam, you are not paying attention in class!

[@glaxmattbas]

There would be less cheating if teaching were less focused on memorization and grades. There are courses that allow open books at exams and there's really no reason not to allow it on every course

[@mndlessdrwer]

Absolutely. Give them at least the minimum resources that they will have in that profession. Memorizing things comes when it becomes inconvenient to need to reference the same thing over and over. I memorized enough commands to be able to function at a rudimentary level in CLI Linux and Unix interfaces because constantly needing to look shit up got inconvenient. I NEVER would have been able to do such rote memorization just because a class asked it of me.

[@lychenus]

I graduated 10+ years ago. 99% of my classmates cheated. I am the one who didnt cheat. I earned 80% in my final, everyone got almost 99%. I have a C, everyone has a mixture of B and A. So i just joined them cheating. Too late. Shitty grades, bad start in career (amid of the financial tsunami) and a dumbass second low hon. It was really stupid not to cheat when no one cared. I am a math grad and my math foundation is solid. Honestly, it is uselss and I have to eventually translate to become a programmer lol. Seriously, what is the point testing my memorization skills over various numerical methods?? Or ways to solve a ODE?? Useless degree and education.

[@maimee1]

You _have_ to eventualy or you _had_ to eventually? (about translating to be a programmer) I'm curious. Math knowledge is pretty useful in programming, or at least in certain fields like data science / machine learning, albeit only to a certain degree, as people don't necessarily need to fully understand the concepts, just achieve good results with it (which math would help, but so does skills related to cheating like looking up what others have done before for the same or similar problems). Another place would be where people build things other people just use without understanding the inners (e.g. numpy, scipy internals in C, 3D software internals in C++) but those doesn't seem like an entry job. Hopefully the degree isn't that fully useless. Actually I hope you find what works after getting a degree mostly useless to you.

[@mrosskne]

Why did you attend a trash school?

[@Puerco-Potter]

Why indeed math/physics professors put so much emphasis on memorization when now days any method is a google search away if you really can't remember it. My memory is excellent in the short term, and I am good with exams, yet I can't for the life of me remember how the exact formula of some methods are that I use semi regularly, but wow, I have them available always isn't that really convenient? Is almost as if I don't need to memorize everything to be effective and competent. What a novel concept.

[@the_crypter]

@@mrosskne All schools are trash.

[@vanguard.aggressor]

@@maimee1 I'm a Webmaster, and I don't even need a Degree, but as a Mathematic Student, I really need the Mathematics, my goal is Predict Earthquakes, and every single math tool, could solve this quest, so I need to understand all.

[@moomoocow526]

A significant amount of the cheating I observed in university was simply to get out of the busywork. Plenty of 3.5+ 3.9+ students do it because homework is just dull

[@ActuatedGear]

It all depends on HOW you're doing it. Copying answers gets you nothing. If you're already getting the concepts you can use it as a review of the specifics. If you're having trouble with the homework, you're going to be unprepared for the test. You can chance it if the homework makes sense but the answers aren't obvious, but the deeper you get into that, the worse your chances are. It's a balancing act.

[@ClemintineCake]

@@ActuatedGear your missing the opportunity cost of DOING homework. If the student already comprehends the problems then not copying the homework is just a waste of time that could be spent elsewhere on more productive things.

[@ActuatedGear]

@@ClemintineCake Except that the student is still REQUIRED to do said work so the opportunity cost must be factored in with a weighted adjustment to their GPA. You don't get to just not do the work.

[@ClemintineCake]

@@ActuatedGear Isn't the whole video about cheating to get out of the work. If I cheat on my homework and ace the test without cheating. I lose nothing and gain time, the most valuable thing to all of us.

[@mechadrake]

I remember in year one in mechanical engineering students could not cope with all the work and cheaters went to classes rested, woe us, stupid non cheaters. also had told this in the face, as I was stupid by not cheating

[@bennettpalmer1741]

As a student myself, one super helpful way of stopping people from cheating is just constructing the assignments differently. For example, if there's an online test, where half the questions are just "What does this vocabulary word mean", and it isn't open book, you have to realize that there isn't really anything you can do to stop people from cheating on those questions by cracking open their textbooks. Instead, if you make it an open-note, open-book test, but assign problems more based on application of the concepts, you end up with a test that isn't any harder or easier, (because they have access to their books for help to offset the increased difficulty of those questions), but is more valuable in testing their actual understanding of the concepts, (because it's application instead of rote memorization), and also discourages cheating. (because the easiest way of cheating by far is looking up the answer in the book)

[@inthelifeofpodcast3446]

Fuck man, don't help them. You sound like the kinda person to tell the ss Anne Frank is in the attic smh.

[@magiicZed]

I'm going to toss in my two cents involving my experience with physics. I took an AP physics class in highschool and while it was interesting and intuitive at first, it was also really fast paced and when I was absent, i felt miles behind. By the time Christmas brake came around, i had resigned and decided to just absorb the knowledge to have a leg up come college. I got a 2 out of 5 on the exam and decided to keep my notes because even in highschool, i was a diligent note taker. Come sophomore year, I'm retaking physics and it just so happens that on Mondays, I'm on campus all day. So i spend at least 6 hours each Monday reading the chapters, doing the homework, looking through book examples,and watching videos. I show up to every class. I participate. I go to office hours when I need help i take even better notes this time around. On the test, even though they are online and i can easily look up answers in realtime, i don't because I'm confident that i will pass because of the work i am putting in. Half of my peers don't have a clue what is going on. The end of semester comes by finally and i finish my final exam proud. At how much I've grown compared to my highschool self. But then the grades are submitted and I get a C- (73.4%) which is passing but i needed a C (75%) to go into my statics course. I was demoralized. Now i was going to have to take the stats course a year later because I was being honest. Those other peers however? Well one I personally knew from highschool, who didn't do the reading, didn't go to class, didn't take notes, didn't watch videos, didn't go to office hours, asked others for the homework, and just generally could t be bothered, passed and moved on. I might get the last laugh now that iced passed physics and understand the subject better than most of my peers, but what did it cost? A couple hundred dollars, an extra year getting my degree, and knowledge which i will most likely never use in the office because it's all done by computers (according to engineers I've met in the field). There's a lot of risk to cheating, but there's not much reward to being honest either, so i cant really fault anyone who does it.

[@AbeYousef]

I got an 87% in a course the past year and got a B+ because the cheating was so fucking rampant. My peers sent me all the solutions, but I choose to be honest. Now I have to explain why I got a B+ to every potential employer because they all expect all As lol

[@myplaylist3738]

The main issue here is the universities education system itself. The learning environment is always stressful with exams after exams. One letter grade determine your whole future. If you fail a class, there's goes 3 months of your life.

[@deathlightning55]

One thing that you didn't address is familial and societal pressure. Some students who may have been historically the smartest in their classes in high school suddenly find themselves under real academic pressure to perform for the first time in their lives. They can't bear to fail a class, as it affects their reputation among friends and family. The incentive to cheat and get that letter grade suddenly becomes the utmost importance if they can make it through that semester. It doesn't matter how it affects their learning in the future. I say this as someone who also faced immense pressure and dropped out as a result of sacrificing mental health in order to keep up. I saw classmates cheat, get away with it, and proceeded to go through and get their degrees. Obviously, the landscape has changed with online learning, which has made it easier and more prevalent.

[@alarrim29574]

Definitely agree. I was an a student in high school with minimal effort and usually only studied the day of the test. Parents are teachers so I had the pressure but it was just easy in high school. Now in college I’m struggling in certain classes and I still have that pressure they put on me and the pressure I put on myself but I’m not good at studying or taking good notes due to not needing to in high school to succeed. It’s hard I constantly feel like I’m drowning

[@vanguard.aggressor]

The student Self-image, a hot topic in Psicopedagogy, be honest or succesful? why not both?, there are a way to do it?, is the System build to do this?, Is the American educational system efficient?.

[@notepadplusplus4923]

@@alarrim29574 same feeling

[@nickthompson1812]

It’s incredibly easy online. I’m surprised universities don’t use specific testing sites that don’t allow you to switch tabs or copy the wording on the screen for easy paste into Google search. Quizlet has definitely gotten me out of a few tight spots.

[@trystero1729]

I’m currently on a gap year, but at the university I’m attending next year, all exams are take home and open note. I asked a math professor about this during admitted students weekend, and what he said was that the exams are all hard proofs, so the open book just gives you the resources you need to start them. I think this is a good system, because it takes the premium off memorization and forces students to develop an intuition about what to do with given mathematical facts.

[@DrTrefor]

I actually really like open book! Sometimes students don’t because the questions I ask are this higher level and take more creativity then just regurgitating problems you’ve done already, but that is a good thing!

[@thearctican1]

@@DrTrefor I LOVE taking open book exams for exactly this reason. The problems are almost always more interesting and engaging than traditional exams.

[@duckslayr]

@@DrTrefor LIFE is an open book test.

[@Jonakill760]

@@DrTrefor honestly I learn more from open books exams anyway

[@ULTIMARAGNAR0K]

My uni has stopped exams altogether as we do assessments with tougher questions. Open book shows cognitive ability and you shouldn't be penalised if your memory isn't as good. But those who pay to cheat why?.... its going to bite you in the ass.

[@crimson4066]

It's sad. I cheated once and it was the worst moment of my life fr. I felt terrible about myself- never had I ever thought I would be "that" person and never did it again. I've since been able to actually study and be fulfilled by learning

[@crimson4066]

Anyone who cheats admits to themselves they can't do something despite wanting it- I think a huge aspect (at least for me) was the stakes and inability to be honest with myself and those supporting me. It really is a desperate and sad situation that I regret. I would rather fail than pass something I know I didn't deserve to

[@Queen-be6md]

Because academic honesty doesn't pay off much these days, outside of your morals that is, then why not do it? When it's so easy

[@ChiefYoshi]

@@crimson4066 I cheated once on a computer science test and I ended up scoring worse than any other test I took. I just suck at cheating, and the time it takes to prepare to cheat could be spent studying anyways. Even someone like me with terrible memory is still able to receive fairly decent grades by using good studying techniques, cheating only hurts you and makes it harder for you to recover

[@l4kr]

Once I left school, nobody actually cared what I did in the school. Everyone is interested in skills, not some shitty grades in the past. 99% of students go to school because of money or they got pushed by parents. There's better way to do things other than to suffer.

[@quint2568]

As someone that cheated every single general class by letting my ex do them. I work 90+ hour weeks plus Japanese lessons and volunteer to teach responsible gun usage. there was no conceivable time for me to do everything. But doing my IT classes which is actually the important part of my degree. Why do I need humanities classes? Or history? Has nothing to do with running a raid 5 redundant server.

[@cckiller4378]

I remember one of my old teachers once saying "As long as you don'tget caught cheating, you won't get in trouble, in real life there are also many people who cheat instead of working hard for something"

[@Nellak2011]

Big college: Gets billions by cheating students out of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees. Cheating industry: Gets millions by helping students cheat Big College. Big College: *surprised Pikachu face*

[@Kanbei11]

I'd not be surprised if big college owns cheating industry companies

[@theuberman7170]

@@Kanbei11 That would be insane.

[@carlosalejandro9025]

@@theuberman7170 but not unheard of, look at apple, they create the problems and they sell the solution.

[@mrosskne]

No one is cheating you out of anything. You enter into a transaction in which you exchange money for a service. If you don't think the school's service is worth your money, don't enter into the transaction.

[@Nellak2011]

@@mrosskne Funny enough College pays for me to go to it. You see, I say what I say on principle, not because of costs of college. What College does is objectively bullshit.

[@dhonors999]

I think as long as there are financial consequences for failure in university, you'll always have cheating

[@inorite4553]

As long as there are "weed out courses" that are nothing but barriers towards allowing you to progress in your career and that material taught is of little to no use in the future, you're always have people try to find the path of least resistance to get past and just "Check the Block" on that course. This is more of an issue with the collegiate academic system than it is a student cheating system. As a non-traditional student (40 going back to school to switch careers) I can't tell you just how much of the material taught is a complete waste of time.

[@TKCEDM]

I'll just be honest in the age of online classes, I've used my notes for all the "closed book" exams. I find it's stupid that professors are so for closed book exams yet don't realize that in the real world, you're always going to have access to information. I'm currently at a 3.7 GPA right now, but I think the fact that I can use a notes for an exam, barely understand the core concepts, and practically ace every test shows how flawed testing is. The best professor I ever had was for Business Law and she did no tests, only written assignments. I honestly learned so much in her class about law, and got an A in her class. Every assignment consisted of mock scenarios where we would thoroughly discuss who would sue who and present arguments/counter-arguments for each case. I could use my notes to complete the assignment (which you certainly should be allowed to, real life isn't a closed book exam), but it required a deep understanding of the material. It also completely took away the exam anxiety as we were given two days to complete our final assignment. The only way I could've cheated in this class was through contract cheating, whereas in all these classes with "closed book exams", I can just use my notes online during the exam and get free 90%+ grades. That Business Law class was so far, one of the only classes I had to put some serious effort into. I feel like a lot more classes need to be like this. Like imagine if my business law course operated where instead of having me apply my knowledge through real life applications in written response, I was asked in a multiple choice question to name the tort applied to some random case from 1927 they briefly discussed for two paragraphs in the textbook (which pretty much all my classes' exams have consisted of so far). Like how would that question help me learn about business law? It's teaching me to memorize vague information in the textbook and encouraging me to cheat, instead of gaining a grasp of the core concepts of the chapter, and allowing me to apply that knowledge. I find that the concept of an exam does nothing but encourage cheating. But profs can set up a test from randomly selected questions from a test bank, run it through a scan tron, get paid six figures and act like they're teaching. I don't see why exams even have to be a thing, if you run theory-based assignments, you're going to have kids not only learning the material at a greater rate, but you're also limiting ways to cheat to just one, and encouraging students to put in the work.

[@vanguard.aggressor]

Not all the education is the same, some areas requieres one method, wich is inadequate in others, the Seminars are magnificient, because their measures your Enthusiasm, but another areas, requires a Test, by example, Landing an aircraft, the problem is, the Pedagogy thinks that all the education is the same, they can't understand that the Disciplinar Difference exist.

[@DialecticRed]

I do something similar in mathematics/calculus, with using programs such as Desmos. It's just a graphing calculator that's easier to use, and I understand all of the core concepts that I need to use on an exam so if I have access to Desmos I can do pretty well. However, if it's just pencil and paper I always get bogged down in the arithmetic, which like you mentioned is another case where I'm not going to need to do that in the real world and it really just feels like a waste of time because all it does is increase the amount of time you spend on raw computation instead of actually addressing the way to approach a problem.

[@luizmatthew1019]

Other than strictly logical courses like mathematics, strict exams seem like the lazy professors way out of actually teaching well

[@milohdd]

My uni decided to make all our exams open book to avoid this problem

[@reidprichard]

"The fact that cheating gave me good grades shows the system is broken." Umm, what? In most fields it's trivially easy to regurgitate answers based on notes. The difficult part is internalizing it well enough that you can solve the problems without notes.

[@igboman2860]

Also you investigating a student for using a method outside of what you thought, is the exact problem with university education. When I was at Uni I never went to classes unless I had a test. All I need ed was the course outline and then learn on my own. I barely use my lecturers method

[@fauxparadox]

I feel like a lot of motivation to cheat can be chalked up to an already existing motivation of "this sucks I just need to endure" but is also hugely dependant on the learning environment. I've had classes where the professor quite literally only spends 4 hours reading the online PowerPoint off of the website all the assignments come from, then assigns 12 homework assignments for the week. At that point the feeling, at least for me, was "if this teacher is going to sit here, read some words for a few hours and collect a paycheck what's the point in me doing anything but getting everything done and collecting the grade." teaching, ESPECIALLY over online, needs to be a team effort, classes where the teacher is TRYING to do things is always going to motivate students to give honest work a try

[@pieinside2345]

the "credentialization" of university really hit home with me. i used to really care about learning but I'm in my final year and I've come to the point where the only point of this is to finish and get the diploma. i put minimal effort into work (just enough to pass) so that i can move kn a do something else. I've struggled throughout university and I've been running on fumes since about my 2nd year. and honestly seeing people so eager to cheat (especially lately) is just even more discouraging.

[@ActuatedGear]

Personally... I saw it as both and each separately. I got the paperwork I needed and I learned what I wanted. Those two are not the same.

[@cd-2k133]

I feel this, not even in college yet and I used to be a good student. Decent grades in every class (excluding some of the C's from virtual), but the big part is that my old school was really focused on doing work. This meant that literally every day every student would likely get multiple assignments that were difficult or at least took a long time to complete, but they weren't even worth anything. My work ethic is gone thanks to this wonderful learning strategy of making it so that doing work is pointless. Doing work in easy classes is better than doing it in hard classes because it gives you something to do, and even if it's not worth anything, it's just an easy way to pass time and make your teachers happy by being one of few students who understand the class AP Human geography is useless unless you like it, change my mind. Good luck at wherever you are in your school career, you might make it further than me.

[@pieinside2345]

@@cd-2k133 as a geographer this comment hurts me 🤣🤣

[@cd-2k133]

@@pieinside2345 well I guess it's useful if you want to actually do geography but it's the 1 class where I get hard work so I might just be salty

[@ActuatedGear]

@@pieinside2345 You have been replaced with satellite imaging. Like... We need maps and all... but it's not like you can't generate 99% of those representations from info collected as a a matter of course. It would be one thing if you were adjusting wildlife maps like... where certain varieties of trees are moving to and the migrations and spread of various insects... But the dirt don't move that dang much and eyes in the sky tell a better story than those on the ground most of the time. Am I missing something there?

[@uva1312]

My university dealt with cheating during covid in a very smart way. They sacked exams altogether and gave us three assignments per course during the semester. We had a week to complete each assignment, but since they knew we would have access to all our course materials freely, as well as the internet, they made them really hard on purpose. In the end I feel like I ended up learning much more than I would have by doing exams.

[@michaelwinter742]

PBL is fantastic

[@mychessnotebook8653]

I'm a math professor at a community college. My question is: what is the instructor's incentive to police for cheating? If you don't like dealing with the students, paperwork, etc. then why do you spend your time policing it? You aren't paid to catch cheaters. You're paid to teach. For example, why check their calculators for notes? Like you said, it probably wouldn't help much anyway, and if it helped a little bit, it would catch up with the student eventually. I don't like to actively look for and prevent cheaters for all of these reasons and also because it's demoralizing. When I was a student, my college had something called an "honor system." Teachers assumed students had integrity. No exams were ever proctored. Professors would pass out the exams and then retire to their offices. A student could even leave the classroom and take the test in the library or wherever they felt comfortable. I like to carry on this tradition. If there are cheaters in my calculus sequence, then these students are the ones that will never really understand calculus anyway. They will almost always fail the course, and if they don't, they'll fail something else down the line. If that doesn't happen, they probably won't have a prosperous career in a math-related field anyway.

[@JoeDev12]

At my university I'm pretty sure the administration warned at least one professor who was known for running a class where cheating was rampant. It reduces the value of a degree from a university if that reputation grows.

[@ApiolJoe]

Making it obvious that you don't police indirectly incentivizes students to cheat. I completely agree with your point of view, however I think the students should still think that they are being watched after. Cheating is bad for them in the long run, and it's kind of your job as a teacher to give them good learning habits as well. But, yeah... for example the punishment that Trevor gave for cheaters in his video doesn't seem harsh enough at all. In my university when I was a student, being caught cheating was punished with impossibility for the student to pass ANY official diploma for 5 years (I think it was including driver's license). Teachers were not monitoring very hard, but students were not cheating a lot either (or I was not aware of it). I'm not sure if it's actually a better system as if I was a teacher there I would really not want to catch a student cheating and have to do the reporting and paperwork associated with that. On the other hand, it was dissuasive.

[@ГеоргиГеоргиев-с3г]

@@JoeDev12 oh so the university was caught cheating, so how about we fine it? There are other ways to prevent cheating than just outright ban it, like show why cheating is useless, give a pass by majority vote to two or three students and use their lot in life as a horror story that actually happened to warn the next generations, and if their life was actually better, why not let everyone cheat??? Why make people miserable? A study, i want a rigorous study!

[@oflameo8927]

The incentive is sadism.

[@samwight]

@@ApiolJoe It actually really doesn’t. If you don’t care about catching cheaters, it almost always means you’re putting effort into other areas of the course that actually matter to students, keeping them engaged and paying attention. Cheating is almost always a structural failing on the part of the course or the institution because they aren’t designing their courses or policies right.

[@jetlagged3645]

Student perspective: I'm taking a course that will cease to be relevant the moment I pass it, it is too difficult to sleep through and I can't get my degree without it. There is no incentive for me to learn, but this alone isn't enough to push somebody like me to bending the rules as far as they go. What pushes me over the edge is $25k USD per semester and debts that I, in all likelihood, will not be able to fully repay until I have GRANDKIDS and the fact that not passing not only leaves me in the same place and out money but also risks my entire degree by dragging down my GPA. You put that kind of pressure on somebody and either they're rich enough to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their life or they win by any means necessary (not unlike the rest of the US come to think of it). Education is not, as my (genuinely amazing) professors constantly insist is the case, the opportunity to learn useful things that you will apply in your life. In fact, most of the classes that teach you ACTUALLY USEFUL INFORMATION like how to file your taxes or create a budget or perform emergency first-aid are not required nor are they actively promoted electives. Education is like playing Diablo Immoral, you pay obscene amounts of money for the privilege to grind for four to six years to get a piece of paper that ceases to be relevant after you get your first "real" job. The education system at least in the US is incredibly flawed to the point where it is little more than a paywall formality for most professions. Professors need to understand that as the system is now they are an obstacle to be overcome from the students' perspective in most cases especially in STEM type courses. I'm probably the last person anyone would expect to cheat, I go out of my way to follow every rule to the letter and the act of using not-specifically-allowed notes was something I was deeply uncomfortable with but did anyway because of the pressures mentioned. I'd come too far to lose everything to one or two weed-out classes that for some illogical reason are all the way at the end of my degree and are things I can immediately forget with no consequence at all. Fortunately on the few occasions I do break rules I had developed a knack for doing it smart, another product of a system that rewards people that learn how to exploit it instead of use it as intended. The day after I took my last final, I couldn't remember what the class was about, because I did crutch my way through the whole course from day 1 making it up as I went along. I abused textbook solutions to ensure I got full credit on every homework (though I at least had the decency to give them an honest try first) and figured out how the professor asked questions and created templates where I could plug and chug (it's almost like creating tools to do data analysis is a job I worked before that semester) and I 100% have no remorse. Those paid services seemed really sketchy (even the less sketch ones) so I avoided those entirely and focused purely on exploiting the system on my own with tools I developed from scratch, which honestly was a better education than the courses I was using those tools to defeat. Once the system stops being about penalizing mistakes and starts encouraging actual growth I'll stop encouraging people to take every crutch they can get.

[@nickthompson1812]

Woah. If you’re paying $25k a semester I suggest you go somewhere else. I pay $5k a semester for 12 hours, but I also live off campus.

[@DragonEdge10]

@@nickthompson1812 If that's your view, you're either very talented, very lucky, a combination of both, or plan to work in a field that isn't particularly competitive. For many engineers, getting into the job they desire, hell even the field they desire, can depend in no small part to what their diploma says is their major and what university it was. And unfortunately, most if not all prestigious schools charge a couple kidneys per semester.

[@camdenmiller7127]

@@nickthompson1812 i pay 2.5k for 16 credits🫢

[@CloseTheDoorItsSnowingOutside]

🤓🤓🤓

[@taketheredpill1452]

As a 51 year-old who cheated one time in college I've changed my thinking on this. Our current society in COMPLETELY corrupt, to the bone. You should make it a GOAL to cheat and get good at it. It will prepare you for the reality of life you're coming into. Of course, there are exceptions, you don't want to be a doctor or engineer who cheated because that will come back to bite you in the litigious ass when your incompetence shows through. Be a good person and don't steal others' work but the system is your enemy and if you can find a way to f it in the a then do it.

[@inorite4553]

Here's another issue, cheating to get past the "check the box" course to get your degree when your job is in Engineering but your daily duties revolve around managing people, then it doesn't matter whether you learned how to find the derivative of a complex equation? My answer is, "Who cares?" That's not your job anyway. You're hired to take those who are good at the math and keep them focused, organized and productive. Yes you have to at least understand what it is that they're doing, but it is impossible to be able to do everyone's job. Focus on what you're good at and find where you can take what you're good at and make that an asset to your team and your employer.

[@Quiselott]

STEM student here. I won't cheat on my Math, Science, or Engineering courses because I figure I need to know that stuff or I'll do poorly in my field...but stuff like Political Science or Art?...I'm tempted! 😂 Those professors give me more work than my major classes and they're worth less units

[@vienlacrose]

The college admissions scandal taught me that there is no consequences to cheating if you're a legacy alumni or have money. If i'm competing with people who have deeper pockets than i, and they do shit like this regularly, i'm not obliged to entertain a system that pretends that advantage doesn't exist to my detriment.

[@mrosskne]

Then out compete them without cheating.

[@vanguard.aggressor]

That's the problem in tha American Education, the Academic Excellence is not the center of therir existence.

[@jordoruiz0001]

Mr. Burns said: "the man who cheats is the man that closes the gap, the man who cheats gives himself the advantage the nature denied him" And he is one of the most succesful men in Springfield, so i'm taking his word.

[@UHmurrayClass]

You are spot on with your observations, Trefor. I agree with your comments about having more frequent, lower-stakes exams and doing all we can to provide a learning environment as opposed to an exam environment. For me this means giving students opportunities to rework formative assessments to understand their mistakes and how to avoid making them again. I also try my best to make sure the summative assessments (i.e., exams) really do give students an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the course objectives. I try to include at least one active learning exercise in my classes each week, so that students can solve problems in real time and get help directly from me rather than a cheat site. We all have the same objective, and I try to sell my students on the proposition that the value of their degree is determined by the skills they develop and can apply in their careers, rather than whatever arbitrary grade they receive on an assignment or course.

[@JackRule16]

One issue with that is if there are too many exams that don't cover that much material students are more likely to cram and forget the information. I think personally that more than 4 exams in a semester is about the point where that might start to happen pretty frequently.

[@UHmurrayClass]

@@JackRule16 You are correct that having too many exams is probably counter-productive. I use a mixture of homeworks, projects and exams such that each category accounts for 25 - 45% and no single item is weighted more than 15%. I have some colleagues who only give 3 exams, each worth 33.3%, which I think only encourages the behavior you mentioned.

[@JackRule16]

@@UHmurrayClass Just as a qualifying statement, I am only talking from my singular perspective as a student, and I'm sure you have so many more data points that you're probably right. As a former student, however, I found that classes where homework was more than around 15% were the ones my classmates grasped/retained the knowledge least. (Perspective: Math/CS double major at Vanderbilt University). Also my apologies for the longwinded responses.

[@pmosh1]

Michael Murray you're a king.

[@souravsuresh2766]

Hi, I’m doing a BS-MS (5 year integrated master’s) in physics. In my institute, students are indirectly encouraged to cheat. Yes, you heard me right. There’s this relative grading policy, which grades you based on others’ performance. And there’re a lot of cheaters in my class who just form a group online and share the answers during the exams. Due to this, students are pushed into cheating because, as a single student, they can’t compete with a group of students. And hence if they don’t join the group, they’ll get a really bad grade. And then there’re people like me who don’t cheat whatever happens. But now I’m paying the price for it. I got really bad grades due to relative grading with cheaters (and that further depressed me making a feedback loop). Now I don’t get internship programs while the cheaters get really good opportunities. Worst part is that the institute and most of the profs, don’t give a damn. I really want to pursue research and now my institute and my classmates have ruined my career or life. Is this what I get for not cheating in my exams?

[@DrTrefor]

I really dislike grading on a curve. If everyone learns together really well, why on earth wouldn’t everyone get a good grade?

[@samwight]

Relative grading is fucking BULLSHIT. So sorry you’re having to go through this :(

[@souravsuresh2766]

@@DrTrefor But also, the relative grading policy protects us as well in certain cases, and maybe that’s why it was implemented in the first place, I don’t know. More than half the profs of our Institute have very high standards. Hence, at the end of the semester, the students get very low total. There were even many cases of the first mark being around 38%. So relative grading here saves everyone. I’m more mad at the institute for not trying to catch the cheaters and at the cheaters for cheating.

[@ayansahoo265]

@@souravsuresh2766 by any way are u studying in one of the iisers in India?

[@souravsuresh2766]

@@ayansahoo265 Yep.

[@tylercsm4690]

Cheated my way through college. I'm a smart guy but also had to work full time while in school. I just didn't have time to learn, cheating was the better alternative for me rather than having to pay for a class again.

[@Leviathan0707]

16: 34 totally agree with you on that point. In my 3th year, we had class on PLC. The professor seems strict at first but everybody in the class agree that he is one of the nicest professor in the university. He had many small test for us in which he don't even want to cheat because we like him so much, if we had a hard time with a question, we just choose to ignore it because there are many chance you can improve your grades in class. However, the final was hellish. The question wasn't even hard or tricky but he made us upload our computer screen as a video file every 30 min. I know he want to prevent student looking up stuff online or discuss about the test but it made the test a lot more stressful than it need to be. No one failed the test of course because he was good in his teaching but there was a lot of lost potential in that test, we could have improve on a lot of things if we didn't need to constantly check the clock. Thank you for addressing this point

[@paulobat3327]

He's not gonna do it but I will t.me/academicwritingassistance

[@jonathanmitchell8698]

I think we need to rethink the system of grading. Obviously this is difficult because grades are currently used as a very sloppy (but still somewhat useful) metric to assess learning and competence. But the current system of grading and the pressure that it imposes upon students is the biggest cause of academic dishonesty and cheating in my opinion. People also think of grades as a tool for motivation, but I think grades are just about the worst system for motivating students you could think of. In a hyper-capitalist system, it makes sense why we would assume that people require rewards and punishments to motivate them to do work, but I think humans are far more motivated by narratives (whether interpersonal or intrapersonal). In fact, I would argue that grades actually don't generate motivation in students through the behaviorist operant conditioning sort of mechanism we might associate with them, but rather through a narrative approach in which students attach narrative meaning and significance to their grades (i.e. they view grades as something that defines an aspect of their identity, and they use grades to identify success and failure in their conceptual "map" of narrative importance). Gamification is something that can be used to increase motivation, so I wouldn't say the behaviorist conception of rewards and punishments are entirely off base. But I do think grades as they exist now are a terrible and ineffective implementation of gamification. And that, in my opinion, is because they are inherently attached to a person's identity. They stick with you at least until you get to the next stage of your academic career (or enter industry for the first time), so it is very difficult to eliminate the association of grades with identity and narrative. If you are only concerned with motivating students, I think that a combination of a more pure kind of gamification (so maybe keeping some form of grading, but not using it as a metric that impacts a student's future and their self-perception), with a narrative system for motivation (encouraging students to pursue their own interests for their own reasons, and also using community based narratives and interpersonal interactions/encouragement) would create a better environment for student motivation. Now with that said, I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not claiming authority on any of these claims. These are just my opinions and I might be wrong. But I really think we need to at least examine these systems more critically and attempt to create something better than the clunky bureaucracy of schooling that we've inherited from generations of people piling their untested solutions onto the heap. As a side note, a recent study has shown that every year someone spends in a Montessori style school results in higher well-being scores as an adult, so I think there is some precedence for the claims I am making. Of course, there is also the problem of assessment. If we didn't have grades as a they currently exist, how would we determine if someone has the knowledge necessary to become a doctor? I don't know the answer to this. But why do you believe the current system fulfills that purpose efficiently? Why do you think grades as they accumulate throughout a person's academic career are the most effective and cost-efficient way to assess whether someone has expertise in a given field. As a graduate student and a TA, I can say that grading takes a lot of time, and costs the school at least a couple thousand dollars per month for one class. I can also say that grading is very messy. Yes, the best students typically get good grades consistently, but when grading any given assignment, there are at least a few cases where someone missed points just because they misunderstood instructions or otherwise understood the material but did not fit their answer into a mold that allows for the closest approximation to fair grading to give them full points. Furthermore, we all know that students can memorize material and pass a test, then promptly forget everything they were supposed to learn from the class. I don't know, but I certainly get the sense that the current system of grading is not only harmful to motivation, but also very ineffective and inefficient. And I feel like we should at least investigate alternative methods of assessing competence, perhaps using assessments at the point that they are applying for a job or further academic position (maybe with different kinds of assessment choices too).

[@DrTrefor]

Ya I largely agree, and sadly a lot of our typical assessment is often ultimately about being anti-cheating even if this isn't stated explicitly. Like does anyone REALLY think a timed, high stakes final exam is really the best demonstration of mathematical reasoning ability? But it is logistically doable.

[@postholedigger8726]

How is it assessed that a medical doctor is qualified? Actually the answer is simple. either they can cure you or they can't. If a way exists to cure you and your doctor hasn't kept up with the available information, then the doctor isn't qualified to solve that particular problem. Consider this, when a doctor gets through school, they have shown that they possess a certain level of knowledge. The problem is, medicine is a dynamic subject and the knowledge learned in medical school becomes out of date. . Medications change, procedures change, diagnostics change so good doctors keep up with the changes and those who don't become obsolete. Once past school and in practice, much of the up to date information is taught by salesmen from the drug and medical equipment companies.

[@Potoaster]

As a current student, I cannot thank you enough for this extremely well-worded description/suggestion catalogue of potential ways to improve schooling. It perfectly encapsulates some of my own thoughts and emotions as I go through the process myself! As it stands now, a lot of responsibility is placed on students to _create_ the narrative that motivates them to learn. It’s weird to leave students liable to figure out why they should be learning, unless I suppose you are strictly judging an education system based on its capability to teach, not it’s practical ability to make the average student learn. Of course there’s larger, more-abstract motivations like “getting into your dream college” or “having a financially stable career,” but typically during the time when students should be developing intrinsic motivation, these concepts are too far-off or uncertain to have a tangible influence. This results in a demographic of students, during the time when they are developing school-habits, who slip into the mindset of “I don’t need to know this, I don’t _want_ to know this.” Maybe they plan on pursuing a career in which the standard curriculum is irrelevant, or maybe the school system has failed them to the point they want nothing to do with learning anymore. Regardless, the ideal administration spends more effort encouraging growth and motivation and less effort measuring aptitude on an oft-faulty grading system. Perhaps there is an ideal balance of both we could strike, but in terms of getting to that point we have a long way to go.

[@crimson4066]

I agree completely- especially in regards to motivation. Children who don't get "good grades" grow up their ENTIRE LIFE thinking they're just dumb when they just needed some time to catch up or a little extra help. I skipped two grades, went from an A to a C math student, started hating math and just thought I was bad when in reality I just needed the time and space to master the material before moving on. Now I LOVE math! Love it! And I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to catch up, or I would've gone the rest of my life thinking I just couldn't do it

[@nbonasoro]

@@crimson4066I sympathize with the idea of courses being too fast paced. I had a 3.988 GPA in undergrad but completely forgot the materials months after I learned it because it's just too fast paced. I have been studying the past few months for various skill certifications like QuickBooks, HR, payroll and Excel. The ability to go at my own pace and only move on once I had mastery over the material makes learning and retention so much more enjoyable and easy.

[@SunSunSunn]

Im not proud of it but I've definitely cheated on exams and quizzes in various online classes. I don't cheat because the material is hard but because I'm too lazy to spend the willpower to memorize the information. I don't think there's valid logic for memorizing so many minute details if I already understood the concepts. On top of this, some classes are mandatory for my biochem degree that I just don't care to study for. However, I still need to do well in these classes to preserve my gpa for med school. It was always just about saving more time by studying the day before the test, understanding the concepts, and using notes during the test to supplement the concepts. With the amount of time I saved from not studying for long periods of time, I was able to accomplish more such as completing additional research, additional clinical volunteering, etc. For reference, I scored in the 98th percentile on the medical college admissions test in the US so I know for a fact that I'm more than capable of doing well in school. I guess this was just something I needed to get off of my chest.

[@jamesking2439]

I'll admit I did sometimes look up my physics homework problems online if I was really stuck. I always studied the approach and made sure I could reproduce it though. I didn't copy and paste answers.

[@gibranreyes373]

It's very interesting to know a professor's perspective. Most of my classmates have cheat almost in every test, I've never acused them or argue with them for doing it, it's their life and decisions, but it's so disappointing when a professor say that they have spotted cheaters and they aren't even close and accuse the ones that actually tried their best, but the worst part is that it becomes personal and they get upset with them. And they are just making cheating more atractive, I mean, they are rewarding cheaters and punish good/honest tries.

[@gundampharmacist7348]

As a student, I feel this so hard in my soul. I’m a Japanese major, but thanks to the pandemic and my own living situation, I don’t get nearly as much practice as I’d like, and that’s without factoring in my neurodivergence. There were so many times in my early semesters where gen eds confused me to no end, and I had to use equation solvers online; not to cheat, but to get into the right mindset and figure out how the answer was solved in the first place. Worked wonderfully for Calculus I and Physics… nooooot so much for Calculus II.

[@orangesel9338]

calculus 2 is a filter course after all, really need to understand how everything works in calc 1 and 2 to get an A

[@paulobat3327]

He's not gonna do it but I will t.me/academicwritingassistance

[@kevinnnnn5598]

my uni implemented a system where all students need to turn on their video while doing the exam to prevent cheating. my exam generally is practical questions that test the ability of a students to implement calculus formula in real life examples. Bringing a “formula note” for you to cheat wont help at all.

[@DrTrefor]

I have used such services in the past. Not perfect and have their challenges, but so cut cheating

[@tcritt]

At my uni, we have cameras on, but everyone is in a Telegram group helping each other. It's rife.

[@walterwhite28]

My uni too did this but all we did was to keep our phones on our desks and copy as usual. As an Indian, engineering here (even in top rated colleges) is just copy paste from a book. All of my classmates had exactly same answers and no teacher even bothered to consider this as an issue. All they needed for a 5 mark answer is a page long answer and for 10 marks answer 2 or 2.5 pages long answer. Many times if we didn't get a long answer for a 8/10 mark question, we would just rewrite the same answer multiple times using different words and sentence structures. For mathematical subjects, we would directly use the long formulas (which profs expect us to remember) and plug in the values. Most of the times there would be calculation errors too, but as long as the your final answer matches with the majority, you score full marks.

[@lforlight]

My university requested two webcams aimed at the student during an exam. One at the face, the other from the side to also capture the desk. But it doesn't capture the screen, so no one can actually tell what you're doing on your computer.

[@muuubiee]

We need a camera and sound, where the camera has to show work area, us, and the screens. Makes it much harder to cheat, but you could just go to the bathroom and cheat there. Another uni told us to mute... so somebody could've sat behind me and told me the answers, would not have been difficult to cheat on it.

[@szabotudor]

In Romania there is a HUGE cheating problem. Literally everyone I know (including teachers) have told me they cheated at least a few times. The problem here is the way that courses are structured, with even subjective answers (like commenting literature, or LITERALLY GIVING YOUR OPINION ON SOMETHING) having very specific things that you need to say (even if you disagree with the opinion that the text presents you, you still have to agree with it and justify it in your essay). This mentality leads to so many people cheating, because if you find a different way to get to the same solution, you usually get punished for you creativity with lower grades, so it's easier to just cheat, instead of memorizing everything perfectly. It's weird hearing the perspective of someone from another country, since here it's been so normalize, some teacher encourage cheating, knowing that there is just so much that you need to learn, in so little time, that it is simply impossible to keep track of, lets say, geography, when you don't even go to the geography exam at the end of the year, cause you chose chemistry or physics.

[@blvndr]

welcome to Eastern Europe my dude. Greetings from Poland, where our high school finals are leaked 3 days before they take place.

[@sian3840]

@@blvndr that happens here too but they just keep changing the subject till the day is due

[@annulrsolformrkelse4023]

Unpopular opinion possibly, but if an additional slip of notes helps you solving a calculus final exam, then it's a bad exam.

[@eliontheinternet3298]

12:52 "They got themselves stuck in a hard place." Somehow I feel like a pandemic, unstable economy, and potential family issues aren’t their fault.

[@teddymasters1347]

In the physics department at my school we use "gateway" tests, where you get unlimited retakes, but you need a 90% or above. It really helps to take the stress off, and leads to a deeper understanding. Though this isn't as possible at larger institutions

[@Thefare1234]

The midterm and final exams at my university count for 70%-80% of the grade. People cheat on assignments all the time, and no one can stop them. Reducing the weight of assignments is the only option for mitigating this issue.

[@DrTrefor]

As much as I hate high stakes tests (lots of anxiety, time pressure isn't the best demonstration of mathematical ability) you are right that this approach which is very common is effective at mitigating cheating. One more example of how we make learning worse just to combat cheating.

[@pieinside2345]

as a Very nervous test taker this is one of my favourite approach. I'd rather have bi weekly or even weekly assessments than two test to clearly determine if I'm struggling in the course or not.

[@mario7501]

You're right. It's unfortunate though, since assignments and homeworks, if you actually do them properly are the most effective way of learning new concepts!

[@samwight]

There’s also a bigger question of accessibility. This kind of testing structure is just completely inaccessible to students with ADHD or executive dysfunction issues (eg. depression). I have a VERY hard time forcing myself to study for something that isn’t within the next week because of time blindness. Time blindness means I literally can’t picture or conceptualize time. I have no clue how far away something is, so I put it off. Exams like these require students to study weeks in advance and pay attention throughout the course. It requires an enormous amount of executive functioning, and it sets ADHD / neurodivergent students up to fail.

[@jorgelenny47]

I always thought it would be nice if at the end of the year they made a "cheating competition" where there's an unlearnable exam but everyone cheats somehow, and if you're caught you fail. Whoever gets a higher mark wins some price idk

[@Vivek-io3gj]

That is literally crazy

[@JaceGameplay]

@@Vivek-io3gj that's an storyline of Naruto, actually. The enfasies in they being ninjas, so gathering information is kinda their job.

[@jeremyjohn9313]

chunin exams from naruto lol

[@snufkin-w7n]

This video might interest you. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bWqTY6BsgrmoZqc

[@weebtrash108]

Someone's watched Naruto lmao Or not, but it happens very early on in the show

[@zacklayman6294]

I think one of the biggest grey areas is looking up help for questions and finding the question on like math stackexchange. The imposter syndrome hits hard. I do agree with all of this. I think one of the best ways to figure out cheating is to just have an interview-style component to the final exam where the professor/TA just asks question to the student directly and sorta just sees them reason it. if they learned the material, they would be able to at least communicate with the vocabulary. Love your videos :)

[@AuthenticJunior]

I cheated my entire high school and the reason was simple: the teachers didn't know how to teach the class and I needed to graduate because that's what will shape my future in today's world. It's not that simple for a student to tell the institution that a teacher doesn't know how to teach, so we do our best to overcome this obstacle. I don't regret doing this because I'm at the university today and if it's necessary here I'll do it again, we don't live in the world that many professors lived in that they NEEDED to know everything and if they forgot something they had to looking in huge books, today we have Google in our hands, universities and schools should adapt to the modern world

[@ColecoleCola]

Honestly university is more on their political idealogy than education. Also guess what univesity should stop using grade system and hw. It doesn't help. Yes I agree with you, people do it because professor hate it when students use internet because they know their teaching and living way of live is obselete. Also honestly if people realise that degree is worthless nowadays. College will fail or change their teaching style.

[@tylerdoe1096]

I guess one of the things I don’t understand, is why we are expected to remember things that we would never remember otherwise, or even 2 weeks after that exam?

[@vladlu6362]

I have a bit of a problem with the concept of cheating when there are notes involved. When are you, seriously, in the real world, working without notes? Don't you check sometimes in your previous notes, or in other people's work on your day to day job? It is not allowed to have your notes for tests and exams, and there are reasons for it... But are those reasons valid, and were they ever valid? Taking into account how the world works currently, test and exams are worth way too much for what they mean about the individual. Imagine programming for years, and failing math's class because you forgot about the necessary notation to be "correct" maths, despite the result being correct, using the correct algorithm, and you end up not having enough grades for what you'd want. Despite the fact that you were already a programmer going into the course, probably better than most, and failing because it is not "pretty math" or some calculation mistake is pretty ridiculous. And also, this is all academic. How does it reflect teamwork? How does it reflect real world application of said individuals skill? Exams and tests don't work, and while they reflect knowledge, the most successful students are also the ones that gobble up information, and then forget most of it after 2 weeks. It doesn't work. No, I cannot provide any alternative that is easily superior, but cheating with notes and little remarks for the student to remember is not really cheating; it's coherent with the real world.

[@inorite4553]

This! Exams don't test anything except recall of information. If you want to know whether someone has truly learned the material, the Final Exam should be a project where the students have to use what was learned to solve a problem, something tangible and real-world. Computers can do all the number crunching for us these days...but they can't write the equations and can't write the code.

[@maurocruz1824]

Gonna tell my case, I'm and undergrad of Mathematics. Some preofessors left us exams for sending back in one or two days (of course harder that regular 2 hour exams) and really hard to find online solved (maybe some hints in any pages). That would be great because I felt this a some oportunity for make "research on interesting and challenging problems" and not just train my memory for spit off a lot of answers that i probably forget the next day. I must admit the regular method for exams seems to go pretty well: it is the filter for which a lot of remarkable professionals had to pass, but I think is time of think about if time pressure and the lack to acesses to the bibliography is really the best way to test knowledge and skills of people.

[@emilspasov4356]

Totally agree, we have these hard assignments that we need to pass in order to get to exam. Something like normal homeworks but really hard high end problems that you cant simply find on a web page or your notes and the point is to actually do research and learn new stuff while having underlying problem. We have 2-3 weeks to submit so we have good time to develop sustainable new skills. I feel like at least 50% of what I learned I did from these assignments

[@cultofscriabin9547]

Problems with this : people can contact people who know math and ask them the answers. There are discord servers full of mathematicians where you can ask for help/answers

[@maurocruz1824]

@@cultofscriabin9547 mine was about differentiable manifolds and differential structures on them.

[@ericj3386]

This topic was covered on another KZbin channel. The main focus for his though of the rise of cheating was correlated to the jump in cost of college. Students out there are paying $25,000 a year for a college education. The cheating comes in when you can qualify for a scholarship that is based on GPA. If say someone can cheat there way into say a 3.50 GPA and get a $5,000 scholarship then they will try what ever they can to get that GPA to save that money.

[@DrTrefor]

Financial pressures is a good point, makes sense students would respond to this incentive

[@honkhonk8009]

@@DrTrefor You cant blame students for cheating in this day and age in the slightest. You cant look at a $70k program and expect people to do it "for the sake of learning". People are gonna grind for the credential no matter what, and learning is gonna become a forethought. Its just reality.

[@Ultra289]

I guess you only speak for murica Cuz my uni here is just 600 euro (can be more or less depending how many subjects you choose that year)

[@mathematicalmuscleman]

And here I was, after earning my B.S and M.S in Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at The University of Sydney, Australia having solved several thousand problems without ever thinking about cheating. No wonder at the final examinations I was and did very well. If you have to cheat in Calculus 1, just wait till you meet Integro-Differential Equations...Better drop Calculus 1 and do something way easier.

[@Adam-pc2cm]

I think a lot of professors come at cheating from the wrong angle. Everyone tries to discourage their students from cheating, of course, but whenever someone gets caught it seems like a "Gotcha" moment. I would much rather teach students why cheating is ineffective in the long run and give them the tools they need to learn instead of forcing them to fall back on cheating as a way to try and avoid failing a class. In my mind, there are no "bad" students who cheat because they hate school, there are just people who haven't been put in an environment that allows them to learn and grow legitimately.

[@DrTrefor]

I think I mostly agree with this. Supporting up front is so much better than punishing at the end

[@matthewovanesyan2389]

I got scared straight after I was caught cheating on a math test in 7th grade… never again.

[@Berry_N]

I'm in a STEM field. Online cheating is rampant and exploded, It's showing now that we are back in person and that knowledge is needed in later courses. I have no tolerance for it, but am working hard to fill those gaps and teach students how to be responsible for their own learning.

[@ingensvidcz5390]

Our professor of physical chem always said "if you cheat and I dont really notice it, its okay. The world we live in is far from ideal and even further from fair. Those of you who like my subject will sure come to love it during my lectures. And those who dont, i will not interfere with your goals in life". Althought i always went for organic, that man was fascinating.

[@nmionline9003]

Years ago, one of my students was caught cheating on a math test. He had some notes written on slips of paper he snuck into the testing lab. He was caught, given a failing grade, and kicked out of class. He came to talk to me afterwards and said he had trouble remembering all the formulas. I reviewed it with him and he realized it was easier than he thought. He promised me that he would study over the summer and return to my class the next semester. I never saw him again. He was killed by a stray bullet in a park he was in with his friends. If he had not been kicked out of class, he would have never been in that park. He would have been taking precalculus over the summer instead. Since then, the policy on cheating was changed. Students were still given a failing grade, but allowed to complete their units and move on to their credit math course. Cheating hurts people in more way than one.

[@theosib]

One time I had a student turn in code that looked suspiciously like someone else's code, but it looked like they had gone through a lot of work to refactor it. When confronted about it, the student explained that they had looked over someone else's code and "copied the algorithm, not the code." The thing is, the algorithm was the whole assignment.

[@evanw5572]

There's an assumption that cheating is bad, that it's an individual moral failing. Instead, it should be treated as a social/economic problem.

[@anonanon4686]

Instead? This dichotomy is prone to failure.

[@oflameo8927]

Yes, it is a financial problem, not a moral problem.

[@homerosouza2353]

I think that part of this problem is moral, the other, is simply a reflection of a bad and old educational system. I say that because I study in a free university in my country. Everyone on this university don't have to pay a penny to study there(at least, not directly), but most of the students cheat anyway. They cheat because they don't want to screw their GPD, or because they don't want to delay the time that it will take for them to graduate.

[@evanw5572]

@@homerosouza2353 That's still a social/economic problem, just with grading and the structure of the university instead of money and the rest of society.

[@oflameo8927]

@@homerosouza2353 What is moral about losing and earning less resources?

[@in3kro274]

As a former university student what I struggled the most was with the necessity to memorize some formulas that I no longer remember but that with a quick search I can get up to speed and recall how to use them. It really made it feel like I wasn't really learning but more like memorizing. Then some subjects did just let us bring our notes to the exams (or a limited amount of notes), and the exams did feel a lot harder but at the same time they felt way more fair and I felt like I learned much more in those subjects. Despite everything in university I didn't get to the point of cheating, but I do remember cheating in chemestry in high school because I just didn't feel like memorizing the valence electron values of the elements. Anyway, great content.

[@cameronball3998]

I just graduated with my B.A. Computer Science from a state school, and I am damn proud to say I had bent the rules here and there to get through when I needed to. I had most of college for covid, and being computer savvy, it’s not hard to cheat-most professors are either completely oblivious to it, or they turn a blind eye. Either way, I landed a real decent job as a software engineer straight out of college. I just see this as my big middle finger to everyone who argues against cheating. I study real hard at what I need to know, bs the rest, and move on. I know with certainty I am a better programmer than many of my colleagues-but my grades will never show it. This college system that have me a piece of paper at the end means nothing. I can’t stand the college system and professors’ bs that they put students through, and I couldn’t be happier to be done. I sincerely hope the best for all the students who don’t have the privilege of going through college during the pandemic like I did, because I took advantage of my professors not knowing how to use Zoom and other tools to get the grades I needed to make it out of this awful college system on top. God speed, future college students.

[@montyferguson4657]

Same for me, except I have not graduated yet. I do not need to know history that I also learned in high school to know how to program a computer. I have cheated in every class except for my programming classes and math classes.

[@qubex]

As a nineties highschooler prone to algebraic mishaps and with poor arithmetic I would’ve sold my soul to have access to a CAS in order to let my higher order reasoning shine. Instead I was relegated to a life and a career that made me fundamentally miserable. Once upon a time astronomers needed to have keen eyesight to qualify for the job, now we have have noted astronomers and radio astronomers who are blind. Why are we who love mathematics tied to the rote manipulations that are so banal even a computer can handle them? Is it cheating to delegate to a machine what machines are designed to do? Humans use tools, let us use those tools.

[@BorsaMANIAC]

All the reasons I found why people cheat at universities (I'm from Russia): - I don't know how it's now, but 10-15 years ago at certain specialities you H A D to have a higher education diploma even if it isn't really required to learn the stuff you need, or otherwise your CV will be thrown in the trash. Good example - programming. You can just get a few courses, watch some youtube videos and you're pretty much fit for a junior position. And many students understand this very well. Thus they cheat through the uni programs while learning only the things they actually need (or "think" they need). - Many universities in our country have some really strange and/or unpopular subjects like philosophy (which is certainly not everyone's cup of tea) and some other crap local professors probably made up, so of course many cheat through them. If you are majoring in philosophy - of course the philosophy is important, but if you're getting for example an IT degree - it's likely not useful for many people. If the professor is very vigilant in cheating - students either bribe him (he probably has to accept the money because otherwise his salary is likely tiny, even in a prestigious place), or bribe the management above the professor to pass through him. - If the kid has rich parents, he has the incentive to just bribe the professors/management staff to pass the exam or even just get the diploma without learning anything. Of course "just getting" the diploma is very expensive, but "buying through" certain courses may be more affordable. Again, many students understand this and kinda have less aspiration in doing things honestly. - People just get in the university because they have to escape the compulsary military service. While you are in the university, the army cannot conscript you, but they may do so after you graduate. To really escape the army you need to go into the grad school, or go through the "military department" some universities have - to learn some military stuff in the universities and not get conscripted. Not many go into the actual scientific work, but many for sure flee into universities just to not get conscripted right after the high school. And likely people perceive "running from the army" easier after the uni than before. So, of course - it's not being in the university for the education. - Pressure in getting the higher edication in Russia remains pretty high, despite most of the degrees having a questionable quality as of now. Like, if you don't go into the higher education - you probably have "no brains" and only suitable for some menial job somewhere on the factory for literal pennies. Things change, education and jobs change, but this belief is still fairly deeply rooted inside people's minds here, I believe. Thus, again, - in the university but not for education.

[@GbpsGbps-vn3jy]

Exactly the same situation and in our country (a former member of СИВ/ССР), and definitely this belief is all around the world (have some friends in Western countries where they already went through the same shit). No higher education - you're dumb and don't need a good payment

[@heartache5742]

поликек

[@DimkaTsv]

In addition from side of non-precise sciences, which don't require formulas. And from my uni specifically (Russia too). 1. Usually what you required to take from university is understanding of basics, so you could meet any problem with readyness. And all these specific tasks, they have absolute no relation to actual situation you will meet in field. Or course just isn't important to your specialisation anyways. So in most exams you can cheat pretty easily. BUT! On some exams even though you have answers to all questions ready, written (or have remembered completely) before you (and remember, you cheated so you prepared full answer to this question), it just will not matter, because professor also smart and will ask you closely related question which is not one you could prepare to (because it wasn't in the list). If you understand his subject, you will answer this question either by knowledge or by logic... And if you don't... Well he will not fail you, but you will not get 5 most likely (A). But usually professors are quite loyal when taking answers. 2. For oral exams it is both easier and harder to cheat. Easier, because you can easier use your notes to find answer. And harder because professor can just add another closely related question on top. But it also depends in university... It is always harder to prepare to oral exams than to written ones. But on other side, it is harder to get better grade on written exam

[@gtd9536]

Since the advent of Google, I always felt like the whole educational system needs to be overhauled. Instead of testing for facts or calculation skills, test for reasoning skills. So instead have proof exams or IMO like problems.

[@Tim70theYawner]

I agree a lot with making more frequent low stakes quizzes rather than a few large exams

[@freshsquiffer]

I just graduated this spring. My form of “cheating” was either looking up answers to understand them/reinterpret them (quizlet) as well as treating all my exams like open book tests. Without that I would’ve lost my mind as many aspects of classes are horrifically communicated, especially online. Another side effect of this cheating is feeling like I didn’t learn anything, but that degree and applying my ideas in the future is more important so I don’t really care.

[@freshsquiffer]

I’d like to mention most of the exams I used my book and notes for were almost all essay based, so I still needed to form my own ideas. I actually dislike multiple choice questions quite a bit due to how tedious it is to remember every little detail, even if it was only mentioned once. It’s annoying. Idk.

[@jeremylane3139]

Great video Trefor, you've broken it down very nicely. Since you didn't ask for it, here's my 2c about "why students cheat" and "what to do about it." I'll apologize in advance because it's somewhat of a discursion from this topic, although I think it's fundamentally related. If we're interested in the most immediate cause of pressure and stress that induces students to cheat, then I claim that cause is grades. Grades are, I believe, at the core of most of the issues you mention in your segment about why. Beyond cheating, I think grades cause a lot of the other friction for students and instructors that I've experienced (more on this below). This might sound obvious or simplistic, but I think we can learn something if we think about the role of grades in more detail. How can we reduce the pressure caused by grades? A common piece of wisdom for instructors these days is to make assessements low stakes. Specifications based grading , for instance, seems to be primarily built around reducing this pressure (and I've heard it can be quite successful, although I've not done it myself). But then, we are scientists, so we should think more analytically and question the basic assumptions. What are grades? Fundamentally, they're a metric that instructors use as a proxy to measure how proficient students are at the given tasks. This introduces a number of complications. a) how lossy is this metric? does it accurately reflect level of mastery for all students? By the way, what is the type of mastery we seek from our calc I students? does it have much to do with remembering limits of sin(x)/x, trigonometric identities, and integration formulas (which is what we measure with grades in most calc I courses)? b) what incentives do grades create? beyond cheating, do grades create other false incentives that may reduce students' learning (aka studying to the test)? Do these false incentives further undermine the goals we have for students' learning mentioned in a)? There is a related conversation to be had about how effectively higher ed teaches more fundamental/important skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem solving, communication). In my experience grades create a lot of excess friction around those particular learning goals (especially because work that promotes critical thinking and problem solving is often highly unstructured and open ended, which is directly at odds in a practical way with numerical evaluation, and students sense this immediately). c) can the meaning of a numeric or lettter grade, which is very specific to the context of a particular course, be appropriately understood 1-3 years later by someone who is reading a transcript that contains only the students' grade? Almost certainly not (in fact, I'd claim that understanding/interpreting the scale of an ordinal data point is in general is something most people will do incorrectly in most circumstances where the scale is not very familiar and standardized, such as temperature). Even if the transcript also includes the the average grade for the course, that is not sufficient to interpret the student's result accurately (e.g., average is very susceptible to outliers, but also, the average is simply a very low information way to describe a distribution and it doesn't tell us anything else about the context or meaning of the grades). When I think about all of this, I keep coming back to Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". People talk about this a lot in relation to data science and the problems caused by platforms such as facebook and youtube designing their systems based on metrics like user engagement. Higher ed is no different. According to Goodhart's law, all attempts to quantify learning with grades are doomed (aka will create considerable friction somewhere in the system) if the grades are going to be tied in any way to a student's future success. The outcome is the friction we experience every day as instructors. The solution is pretty simple. Take grades off transcripts and make all courses pass fail. Make all courses (or, even better, all modules of courses) into microcertificates.

[@DrTrefor]

The closest course designs that mitigate many of your criticisms while still keeping the idea of grades (which you might be right that we should jettison, but I can’t do that single handedly) is more mastery based grading. So “calculus” has n major skills you need to master over the course of four months, but significant flexibility and repetition in your ability to demonstrate mastery of any given standard. An A is defined as meeting m of the n objectives. I’ve never actually worked myself up to doing this, but it seems a growing movement

[@jeremylane3139]

​@@DrTrefor That sounds interesting. I've experimented with various schemes for grading in my courses (in the few situations where that has been in my purview) and seen many people talk about promising methods I haven't tried. But when I step back from the details of each of these innovations, I think the fundamental problem remains. No matter how grades are calculated within a course, if they are carried beyond the course, then Goodhart's law will inevitably prevail and frictions will return. So I think we inevitably must question the structures imposed by higher ed and propose new ways to innovate. This is certainly beyond the scope of a single professor, but it seems incumbent on everyone involved. (this is, by the way, why those types of movements sort of disappoint me, since they are focused on details and not applying systems thinking) In fact, the example of mastery based grading that you mentioned brings up the other main way in which I think innovation is needed. If we grade based on proportion of skills mastered in a semester, then ultimately we are grading based on speed of learning. Is this good? Is this necessary? Is this unfair to some students who experience disruptions or barriers? In the current context of higher ed every course is one semester long. If a student fails they must retake and repay for *the whole course* even if they already understood ~48% of it. As the example of online courses teach us, the semester based model is an artifical relic. Imagine, for instance, what the alternative could be like! You are teaching calculus I and II for the year. The material is all prepared in advance (e.g. your youtube videos) and students complete it at their own pace. Some students complete all the modules in 2 months. Others take 9 months. None of this matters because throughout you are there to coach and provide support. In the end, if one student is 3 modules short of completion, they don't need to retake the whole course, just those three modules. I think things like this could easily be done with modern tech in a way that preserves the individual attention students get from instructors and the academic rigor.

[@jeremylane3139]

Higher ed just hasn't fully realized yet that it's fundamentally a tech industry (because it's been ossified by government subsidies and layers of admin/bureaurocracy that create significant barriers to innovation).

[@MegaMech]

I do not condone cheating. However, this may be a hypocritical lecture. In my experience profs talk the big talk but ignore when they do something wrong and ignore when the institution does something wrong. I'll have more respect when I see the complaining going both ways. Those essay websites don't work. You have tools to catch those.

[@ilickcatnip]

A course I have this semester (first sem, ECE, India) has that kind of one way mode for some tests where you cannot go back once you move forward in the test. While I think it lowers the possibility to cheat, it significantly increases anxiety and pressure like you said in the video. I ended up scoring less than what I could have if I were allowed to go back to some questions.

[@shrutijeyaram8027]

Nice to see someone else point this out! I am doing the exact same course as you in the same country but just a year above (third semester) and while that one-way mode of testing did mitigate the problem of cheating, for the more honest ones (like, but obviously not limited to, myself) it did create problems. I happen to be a very anxious- exam taker and do tend to make some mistakes sometimes in calculations or take a less preferred approach to a problem that could push me into a corner that i don't know how to proceed from in that moment, but a sound solution almost always strikes me when I move onto another problem and "distract" myself for a bit. The one-way mode seriously hindered my speed and i ended up losing marks on the final or 2 questions on the test that I would have been able to do otherwise.

[@kanaadpathak]

At 7:35, if people are sneaking in formulas into your tests, it basically says a lot about how effective your actual test is in assessing the knowledge of the person. The thought process behind that being “if I knew this formula, I would be able to solve the problem” which tells me that the problem is basically a memory test. If one student did this, maybe they didn’t study for the test and they’re not sure about what will help them so they put random bits of info on a crib sheet, but 11 students?! If you’re asking students for information can be easily retrieved from a book or from a simple google search, its not a very great exam question. I get not all subjects can be application based, but math certainly is- and if people can pass your exam but memorizing a bunch of formulas, its not a very well designed exam to being with. Because you’re not assessing knowledge gain, you’re just seeing the ability of a person to recall information

[@birgirkarl]

If sneaking in notes makes you pass an exam, there is something wrong with that exam. Exams should primarily test the understanding of a subject, not only knowledge/information/stuff on notes.

[@ActuatedGear]

I took Calc1-3 + Linear Algebra and Differential Equations. I spent A LOT of time on the homework using online Differential and the Integral calculators to slog through quickly what I like to call "Charts Scraping". I have both a preclusion to writing errors due to adhd and a tendency to go the wrong direction early on when there is nothing but knowledge and experience of the paths available to tell me otherwise. I got an A in ALL of those classes including the tests. The difference is that when I used those calculators I used them ALL THE WAY. Every time I did not understand how to get the answer I studied the detailed answer given by the calculator. I graphed it using desmos. I grabbed youtube videos. The books we had were terrible website bullcrap. Pauls Online Math Notes was a Godsend. So was this channel. None of that would have mattered if I had not recognized that I NEEDED to study. I used extra tools to power up my study capabilities and reduce the time I spent doing work that did not AID my learning. If you do that it works GREAT. If you use the calculator as a crutch to avoid learning the concepts, you're just crippling yourself and wasting your own time.

[@oflameo8927]

The problem was that you got scammed by your school because they made you teach yourself because what they brought to the table was insufficient.

[@ActuatedGear]

@@oflameo8927 On the contrary, I always have to teach myself. My... mind moves through the concepts too fast but the memorization is too slow. I have to balance the two. And besides calculus only works if YOU can plug it into YOUR skull. All the teaching in the world won't fix that. Besides, I went through all those courses online. My local college doesn't even offer those classes, none of them. What they "brought to the table" was perfectly well sufficient. I just hated the web format of the book that resisted all attempts to make it conform to better systems of display and reading because web books don't let you copy them. Also, who ever the one I actually had was... I hated the voice. It read like donkey donuts. It wasn't even the information. It was literally that I hated the voice of the writer in the text. There is plenty of information to teach yourself calculus but you can't test yourself. You can't be taught calculus either in the time you have to learn it. It's too many concepts for someone to translate into your brain. You have to teach yourself. You have to teach yourself FAST. Simple as that. Chart scraping is about pattern recognition. There are books FILLED with derivative solutions and there is a computer program that will scrape them all and find the ones used on the homework. That's how that works. You use the calculator to focus your memorization because you have finite time to work on that.

[@liam1253]

I had a math teacher who would trade points for formulas. It was one point off your test for each formula he gave you. That way, it wasn't worth cheating, and you weren't going to fail because you forgot a key formula.

[@ebn__]

As someone who recently went back to University to study mathematics after 15 years of working in IT, 8 of those being as software developer (self taught). My experience with academia is that we focus way too much on the final exam instead of learning the material leading up to said exam, this of course differs from professor to professor and it's ultimately up to the student to learn the material but I often feel that the exam is way more demanding than anything leading up to the exam and I rather have the assignments be more difficult so if a student does well on everything leading up to the exam then the exam should really be quite easy. Something I've personally struggled with is memorizing formulas, I'm in my first year of studying pure mathematics but I also have to take a few applied math classes which just expects you to memorize a bunch of formulas.. which I pretty much refuse to do, unless it happens naturally from me having to use something over and over. I simply cannot memorize it unless I can prove it myself, some I can.. some I don't have the time to. I don't think you should you be forced to memorize something that you are not also expected to be able to derive yourself, memorizing something for an exam that you will just forget later seems pointless to me. I also had to take a programming course (in C) which is why I brought up my background.. I didn't study at all for that exam and yes I did well on it but my takeaway from the exam is that it focused way too much on just memorization of certain things that I can say for a fact most working programmers will not make conscious effort memorizing. I have documentation, a compiler to throw ideas at but the exam had me instead remember ascii-tables, decipher horribly written code and write code in text forms on a website. I realize this isn't your field but I couldn't help myself go off on a rant.. And with that, rant over. It might be tempting bring cheat notes on things you have to memorize, less so on actual understanding of concepts.

[@varrentnathanielwoodrow8291]

People cheat because it brings results. End of story.

[@xXpuppybreathXx]

man the people that get caught cheating in their senior years of art school with plagiarism by direct copying.... find me the math with that one

[@mohammadvandad8720]

"Cheating in Universities is a problem", a problem that remains there with different students in course of time which shows that most of the blame is on the universities and professors and not on the students. though unfortunately, experience has shown me that a small portion of people is going to cheat anyway, but when the whole class starts cheating it's almost always the teacher's fault, and since they are the ones controlling the class and somewhat in power, they are not the ones who are going to be punished and the students are always to blame. Honestly, I think cheating is good for people because that's one of the skills they are going to use in real life anyway (not in a way like a fraud but in a more constructive way) and it also helps students learn faster and better. it should also be noted that the present grading systems and the way people see these grades are one of the major factors in cheating too.

[@inorite4553]

Cheating, not in a fraud sort of way, is very beneficial in adult life because truly inventive individuals are always pushing the limits and finding new ways to solve problems.