The first 2 questions of my exam
May
03
Here are the first two question of the exam I just gave:
1) My parents and grandparents would be most proud of me if:
a. I did not cheat on this exam and got the score I deserve
b. I cheated on this exam and got a score higher than the score I deserve
2) While taking this exam, I intend to:
a. cheat (e.g., by looking at other people’s answers, or showing my answers to others)
b. not cheat
I think it was effective..
How will you measure if it was effective?
Effective for what? Reducing cheating, or reminding students of easy ways to cheat and priming them to do so? And as ‘The Other Dan’ asked, how will you measure?
For my parents, and perhaps for many Asian parents, it’s definitely b).
Curious, would the response have been different by reversing the order of questions.
This is similar to what I and come up with for our non-profit, to nudge the public to provide first aid to others.
http://www.firstaidcorps.org/?page_id=1011
This reminds me of a similar trick played by my professor.
Last year the plagiarism problem in computer programming course is very serious.
But this year my professor did a similar trick to solve this problem…
On the first page of assignment, he write down:
“If you share codes, you share grades.”
and afterwards nobody share code with each other anymore…
They all fall into the psychological trap..
Responses interesting so far: They indicate who read and retained points from your book and who didn’t.
In my professional practice, I will:
a) only use my own work, remember from my own experience and reproduce that which has been given to me in my formal education.
b) look at what others have done, engage in open conversations and collaborate with as many members of my professional community as possible.
c) be completely confused about what I should do in my work as it was never on the test at school.
Shift Seven. Cheating becomes collaboration:
http://www.jarche.com/2009/04/nine-shift-in-saint-john/
Quite interesting. Congrats for innovating in exams and effectively put your “money” where your mouth is! Congratulations!
If we could only institutionalize this question for every situation in which dishonesty is too tempting for our own irrationality.
How much weight is given to these first two questions? and is extra credit given for supporting statements?
It depends on many things, I would be pround of cheating and getting a better score..not that I would halve to.
I think that that is a great idea.
Being at the begining of the test, makes the students think twice before cheating. If it was at the end of the test, the cheating may already happened when they get to those 2 questions.
Is that copyrighted?
I am planning to use it with my students.
If these were multiple choice questions with binary ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ responses, I think that it is clever, but not necessarily appropriate, as the correct answer to the first question depends on the student.
Assuming they’re not, though, this is both clever and relevant.
Mind you, I’d argue that a good extended answer claiming 1(b) and hence 2(b) should be given full marks (though one would hope the student was lying for the sake of argument, and not actually cheating).
To proceed in his studies or to get a job, a student needs good scores.
He should have learnt enough for getting good scores without cheating.
If not, he will be forced to cheat and take risks while cheating (he could be disqualified) and for future: Every time he will be confronted with his (untrue) score, he will remember having cheated. In the long run this will diminish his self respect.
Effectiveness? A good boy will not cheat and a bad one perhaps a little bit less. Above all, the bad boy will be much more careful while cheating..
Personally my answers would be:
1b
2a
for 3 reason…
i find the questions silly so they deserve a silly answer..
plus i was honest abt my dishonesty… which is still more honest than being dishonest abt my honesty no?
further more… it will get the tension off my head so no temptation to cheat… (anyways im too bright to cheat lol)
Sadly if they cheat, never confess, and never get caught, it would be the same as not cheating.
And the higher the grade, the prouder the parents would be.
Many years ago I worked with a person who did an apprentiship with Hoover, he once said to me,”Remember every task you do has your signiture on it”. I did not truely understand until, I put a peice of pipework in just slightly off level. Every time I walked into that plant-room the first thing I would notice was that bit of pipe. If you cheat you will always know that you have cheated
How about delivering a test where you randomly put one of two different intros:
1) Reminding students how much they know and praising them on their work so far
2) One that stresses how hard the following test is going to be and how much they should have studied
Then try measuring the differences between how the two different groups score.
The answer rest with the student and his up bringing.
While attending the Univ. of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine, we took all exams with the honor code in force. It was extremely effective and I became very proud of my fellow students as well as myself.
We are better people when given the chance.
To determine effectiveness, I would first ask you what you hoped to achieve as an outcome and secondly, how you were able to measure that effectiveness. Otherwise, you were just “thinking” that it was effective.
In my observations, “not cheating” seems to be related to 2 factors – 1) how a person feels internally (which is related to family) and 2) the risk of getting caught and the associated “penalties”. Of course, I have no empirical evidence.
I would be really impressed if you gave some students those questions, but others you did not ask the question at all. Was there any change in cheating?
After all, maybe your students are just naturally honest people. It is a possibility…
Does it affect the likelihood of cheating if they know why you’ve put the question there? Assuming they’ve read your book….
Did you offer them some SoBe as well?
Slightly off topic, but re: your book discussion of whether participants at the Harvard Business School would cheat if they could tear up their original answers after transferring them to a sheet on which the correct answers were printed, thereby getting a chance to slip in a few corrections. My thought on hearing about this experiment is, “What Ivy League business school student would think it was worthwhile to cheat for only a dime per correct answer?” You presented them with several ways to make their cheating undetectable, but what if you’d offered them ten DOLLARS per correct answer? I wonder if the financial incentive would have been even stronger than the chance to hide their cheating.
The answers are b & b. Parents would prefer to see the highest score no matter the tools used as long as they are not aware of the sinister way. You would be better of by not cheating because long run benefits of gaining the knowledge are higher than short run benefits of achieving the goal with the least possible effort.
Q3, students those days do not cheat because of the high cost of punishment rather than the integrity of modern character.
well.. it’s like I knew!
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Well those questions are certainly going to make students think twice about cheating. Good idea