Category Archives: Michael Beltz

What Do Students Owe Their Teachers?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

As the modern university system becomes more focused on a contractual model of education, an increasing attention ends up being paid to the various obligations and rights that the different members of the contractual relationship have to one another. This focus seems to have its philosophical basis on the notion that higher education is a social institution. Like any social intuition, higher education not only has common goals and values, but it also establishes distinct role morality for all of its members. The social institution places individuals into discrete positions and establishes the proper standard of conduct for individuals within those roles. One important aspect of social institutions is that the roles and obligations generated by those roles are primarily in relationship to the larger collective values and goals. Thus, the responsibilities of a student role end up emphasizing what students owe higher education itself.  For example, a student may have the obligation to be academically honest. This obligation tends to focus on how dishonesty undermines the goals of higher education, like creating an informed citizenry; if large numbers of students are regularly dishonest, the end result is a citizenry that is no more informed than if those students had not attended a higher education institution.

Understanding the contractualization of higher education as only establishing obligations between the individual roles and the goals and values of the social institution misses a key component of contractual relationships. Contractual relationships do not just establish obligations between the roles and the social institution; they also establish the obligations that the individual roles have to each other. Instructors in the higher education social institution often think through what they owe the students. What is less often considered is the question of what students owe their teachers.

In his 1988 book, Another Sort of Learning, James Schall directly addresses this question. Schall focuses his third chapter on the title question “What a Student Owes His Teacher.” Before explaining what students owe teachers, Schall gives a compelling vision of the social benefits and core value of education. He argues that education is about finding ‘inner truth.’ By this he means that students will come to a better and more accurate worldview that is based in reality. When the student has done learning, they will grasp the working of the world they live in better than they did before starting the educational process. Schall states: “The student ought to become independent of the teacher to the point of even forgetting his name, but not the truth he learned.”

To reach this goal, Schall lays out a list of four obligations that the student owes his or her teachers. At first glance this list may seem overly narrow and modest, but this is intentional. Schall is attempting to focus on the interrelational obligations of the student to the teacher, not the student’s obligations to the social institution or the student’s obligations to himself or herself. He argues that the student owes: (1) In the first week of classes, at least, the student owes the teacher a moderately good will towards the teacher. This is a confidence to admit to oneself that the teacher probably has thought through the subject and knows where the instruction will lead. (2) An amount of faith that the student can learn something that seems unlearnable in the beginning. This is a trust the student must have in himself or herself. (3) “The virtue of docility,” which is the fact that they must allow themselves to be taught. He further articulates this as open-mindedness to the subject and instruction. (4) A willingness to engage in the effort of study. This is the ability and desire to ignore distractions and other desires to try to learn.

While some may look at this list of obligations and consider it to be too small to capture all of the things a student owes a teacher, my reaction is that this list may actually include too many obligations. When we consider the nature of obligations, we must be able to find a harm that might occur if the obligation is not fulfilled. In the case of an obligation to a person, there must be a potential that the person to whom we have an obligation will be worse off if the obligation is not fulfilled. When we consider what students owe their teachers, as articulated by Schall, it is not clear how the instructor is being harmed when any of the obligations are not fulfilled. Consider two different students who might enter the classroom. The first student has good will toward the teacher; this student fully embraces the fact that the teacher has a more thorough understanding of the subject and knows where the course will lead. The second student has absolutely no good will toward the teacher; this student does not believe that the teacher better understands the subject matter or course trajectory. This second student cares nothing about the subject matter, but has the desire to meet the credit requirement. This student does not want to learn, but wants the outward benefits of passing the course (for example, they want the course credits on their transcript and want positive benefits to their grade point average). There is good reason to believe that the second student has harmed the goals of ‘inner learning’ and being party to an informed citizenry; that student has not learned anything and will not make more informed decisions that they would have without having taken the course. But this does not mean that the second student has harmed the teacher. We can further imagine that the second student has learned how to appear to be a student of good will. Without having learned this, the student might not pass the course or might negatively affect his or her grade point average. In short, the student owes it to himself or herself to appear to be a student of good will. The first student, on the other hand, we might imagine, has not developed the social skills to seem to have good will. When he or she attempts to make statements expressing good will, they come out awkwardly and are easily misunderstood as being of bad intention. Which of these students poses more potential harm to their teacher? It is the first student that is most likely to disrupt the flow of the teaching, to agitate the teacher, to undermine the confidence of the teacher, and to sow discord within the fellow students about the competence of the teacher.

It does not seem that students actually owe their teachers the inner mental state of good will. Instead, the student owes the teacher the appearance of good will. I believe that the same conclusions can be reached with the other three points that Schall argues students owe their teachers. The student owes the teacher the appearance of good will, the appearance of being open-minded, the appearance of trust in himself or herself, and the appearance of being willing to ignore other distractions. This does not mean that the four qualities that Schall highlights are not valuable for the student; they are. These seem to be qualities that the student owes himself or herself, but not the teacher. This is because it is the student who is harmed when they do not have these internal mental qualities; the teacher is only harmed when the student does not have the outward appearance of these qualities.

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Posted in Michael Beltz, Student Expectations

Blink Grading

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

As the fall semester at University of North Dakota comes to a close, many instructors, myself included, are shifting their thoughts to the most difficult and stressful aspect of the teaching profession: grading. The amount of work that needs to be graded at the end of each semester poses a problem that does not occur during the rest of the semester; namely, final grades must be submitted to the registrar within 48 hours of the administration of final exam. During the rest of the semester, when students submit papers or written exams, it may take me as much as two weeks to evaluate, comment on, and grade these types of assignments. While I have less other work to do during finals week, I still worry that the limited amount of time that I have to grade final work for students is not sufficient to accurately evaluate these projects, papers, exams, and assignments.

It turns out that having less time to grade this work might mean that I am more accurate in my evaluations than if I were to have more time. In his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell argues that we may be better in our evaluations if we think less about those judgments. He argues that snap judgments are better and fairer reflections than when long analysis is conducted before the judgments are rendered. This may seem counterintuitive, but Gladwell’s analysis consistently shows how immediate judgments tend to be more accurate and superior to carefully weighed judgments.

In the context of evaluating students’ work, the principle is simple. If we eliminate those factors that might produce biased evaluations, then allowing the intuition of a professional to come forth will make the evaluations quicker and a better reflection of a student’s work. Since most instructors have years of experience and have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of assignments, the subconscious of the instructor will be a better judge than when the evaluations are made consciously.

One area of Gladwell’s argument seems particularly troubling for traditional grading strategies. In what he calls “The Storytelling Problem” Gladwell highlights a variety of cases where individual judgments are different when the person is required to explain why they reached a conclusion. When a person makes an evaluation immediately, but are not forced to justify their evaluation, those evaluations tend to be more consistent with their previous judgments and with the judgment of others. However, when the same individuals are required to first establish criteria for evaluation or must first explain how they are thinking about something and then make the evaluation, their judgments become more sporadic and random. The reason for this, he postulates, is that your thoughts become confused and we end up focused on the wrong aspects of our evaluations. When professional tennis players are asked about how they hit a tennis ball, the top players in the world cannot adequately explain a skill that they have mastered. People engaged in speed-dating end up giving unacceptable partners higher scores and acceptable partners lower scores. In the context of grading student work, when we feel that we need to provide students with feedback, we are really providing a text designed to justify the grade we are giving the piece of work. During the process of justifying an activity that we have done innumerable times, like grading, we often end up talking ourselves out of our initial judgment.

If I read a student paper that initially seems to be a B+, I should be confident that my professional ability to evaluate an assignment is accurate. However, if I then look at the comments in the paper or at my comments on a rubric form, I will expect these comments to be consistent with that grade, i.e. the amount and types of comments should be equivalent with other papers that are earning a B+. They should be less critical and fewer in number than those receiving a B and more critical than those papers earning an A-. When the justifications on the paper do not fit within the expected severity or amount, we are faced with a problem. We might change the amount of comments to reflect our judgment. Unfortunately, in most cases we change our judgment to reflect the justification. Thus, we override our immediate judgment to fit our story (our justification). Why do we automatically believe that our comments or our rubrics are a better judge than our snap judgment? Galdwell provides an overwhelming amount of evidence that conforming our judgments to fit a story is less accurate than allowing the judgments to stand alone without any justification.

This does not mean that our snap judgments are always accurate reflections; personal biases and subconscious mechanisms can often make our snap judgments inconsistent and flawed. The good news is that these biases tend to occur in regular patterns and can be guarded against. Gladwell argues that there is an important way to guard against these biases. He argues that the more information we have when we make a judgment the less accurate it will be. This is not to say that we should make evaluations capriciously; instead, we should eliminate any information that might push us to a certain decision, when that information is not what is being evaluated. A well-meaning mentor of mine in graduate school gave me advice on grading final assignments. He argued that I should tally up each student’s scores before I started to grade the finals. This would allow me to know how many points each student needed to earn on the final to receive each grade. I then would only need to determine whether each student had reached that threshold score. When I tried this approach, I was amazed at how many students seemed to submit final work that hit almost exactly on the border score. Was it just a coincidence that this high percentage of students ended up right on the border of two grades? The more likely explanation was that this additional information was clouding my judgment. Since I had a score in mind at the start, when I looked at each paper that score would carry more weight and significance than any other grade. Thus, I was biasing my judgment towards those scores and was not accurately judging the student’s work.

So what additional information might get in the way of accurate snap judgments? There are three types of information that seem relevant in the context of grading finals. First, it is the information that identifies irrelevant features of the student. This includes their name, major, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. None of these factors are relevant to the quality of work produced by the student. If we know who a student is before evaluating his or her work, we are likely to have personal thoughts or feelings enter our evaluations. Knowing a student is a major or a first-year student or even a nice person, is likely to bring inappropriate emotions into our judgments. These emotions, since we are not evaluating how the students make us feel, can only skew our opinions of their final work. Second, any information about what students need to score should not be known. As mentioned above, this information plants a preconceived benchmark in our minds. To me, this seems no different from a student asking what they need to know on a test so they can get a C. When students ask me this, I find it very problematic because the question indicates that they want to do the exact minimal amount and no more. Instructors should avoid this temptation, just as we advise students to avoid it. Finally, instructors should eliminate knowledge of the previous work the student has submitted. If we know that a student has earned B’s on their previous exams, we are likely to end up starting with the assumption that they will earn roughly a B on their final work. While this assumption may be accurate in many cases, it does the student a disservice. Ideally we evaluate each assignment on its own merits, and not in conjunction with the student’s other work. This information is likely to end up biasing us towards the status quo rather than being reflective of the actual quality of the assignment.

Where does this leave us? Gladwell’s argument, when applied to grading, presents us with two core principles for more effective grading: 1) grading fast can mean grading better; and 2) less information can mean more accuracy.

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Posted in Final Exams, Michael Beltz, Time

Thinking through Attendance

Posted on November 10, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

Over the last several years, I have had a shift in my thinking about attendance in my courses. Now, as I think about my courses in the spring semester, I may be changing my views once again. The specific issue I am currently wrestling with is whether to formally take attendance every class period. This is not an issue I am concerned with for most of my courses. I do not feel that it is necessary in small seminar classes. In those classes, because of their discussion format, I am able to learn student’s names rapidly and naturally. Nor am I concerned with large lecture classes (over 75 students). In these classes, developing a personal connection with the majority of the students is unrealistic. My concern is whether to implement formal attendance in mid-size classes (between 25 and 75 students). My structure for this size of a class is a hybrid format of lectures, group activities, and whole class discussions. In the large scale lecture course, even in an active discussion, only a small minority of students will be able to contribute to the discussion. In the small seminar class, time typically permits all students to contribute to the discussion. The hybrid nature and the number of students in the mid-size courses make these classes problematic. In these classes, it is possible to hear from a majority of students, but not all students. This is a challenge because these mid-size courses demand that students be involved with the collective learning activities. This requires that students be present and prepared for the class; missing either of these undermines the class goals.

The question is: Should I formally take attendance in my mid-level courses?

Argument against attendance #1: Formally taking attendance is overly time-consuming (or counterproductive).

At the University of North Dakota, if a class meets three days a week, each class period is only 50 minutes long. Even if attendance is only takes 5 minutes (which for me is optimistic in a 75 student class), this means that 10% of any course is spent on this activity rather than on the course subject matter. There is a two-fold problem with this. First, students are paying for this time, but it does not have any direct value to their learning. Second, by adding formal attendance taking to a course, I would only be able to cover 90% of the material that I would otherwise be able to cover. In addition, since this missing 10% would not come from a single course period, all of the daily course plans would need to be revamped and revisited.

There seems to be at least two different responses that might be given to this argument. First, it might be possible to formally take attendance without spending valuable class time. One solution might be to hand-around a sign-in sheet (or some other strategy like daily quizzes) where students record their attendance while the class is going on. Unfortunately, this approach comes with two costs. There is the potential for students to cheat the system and falsify attendance (by having someone else sign them in). Additionally, having a sign-in sheet pass through a class means that every student will be distracted from the class concepts and activities at some point; thus undermining the argument in favor of the sign-in sheet. Second, this argument can be criticized for conflating amount of time in the class with productivity in the class. If taking attendance were to make students more attentive, understand concepts better, or learn more, then it would be worth the lost 10% of the total course. This, obviously, does not mean that taking attendance makes students learn more efficiently (more data would be needed for this claim); it simply means that the use of time in this manner is not sufficient grounds for rejecting attendance.

Argument against attendance #2: It is not the proper role of an instructor to take attendance.

An instructor’s primary role in any class is to provide a quality experience for students. This experience should be based on the professional expertise of the instructor combined with the instructor’s judgment as to what should be learned and how the content and/or skills are best covered in the course. Formally taking attendance is not often seen as the most appropriate role of the instructor. Students’ have a role in their education, too. This is usually understood to include being present and prepared for each class period.  In this understanding of the roles of the instructor and the students, being present would clearly be the students’ responsibility, not the instructors.  By taking attendance, the instructor is taking the burden of this responsibility.

This argument revolves around the idea that all individuals in the learning process have obligations and responsibilities; if either the instructor or the student fails to meet their responsibilities, the learning process breaks down. I am receptive to this general proposition, but the idea of multiple responsible agents does not mean that the responsibility rests just on one individual. Attendance in a class is not just the students’ responsibility, even if the responsibility is unevenly on the students’ shoulders. For example, one responsibility that students have toward their own education is to ask questions of the instructor when they do not understand the course concepts. Instructors have the ability to discourage or encourage this type of discussion. Even though it is primarily the students’ responsibility to ask for clarification, the instructor has a reasonable responsibility to be accessible to students, to answer questions, and to be open to a discussion of the concepts. This same principle applies to attendance. Attendance is primarily the students’ responsibility, but instructors have some limited responsibilities (like giving incentives for attendance and making sure there are not disincentives for attendance).

Argument against attendance #3: Students are adults with free-will and should be allowed to make up their own minds as to whether they come to class or not.

Different individuals have different values. As adults, students should be allowed to establish their own priorities and act on their values (as long as those actions do not harm other individuals). If a student has determined that some other activity has a higher value to them than attending a class period that is his or her choice. To supersede this judgment is to see the students as less legitimate decision makers than the instructor. This is a clear case of paternalism. Equally important, students who do not attend class regularly will be found out. In the end, their grades will likely be lower than their classmates.

This argument hinges on the relationship between paternalism and attendance policies. It argues that formally taking attendance forces students to conform to the values of the instructor and not to act in ways that they might normally choose. There are two problems with this argument. First, there is nothing about formally taking attendance that undermines the students’ autonomy. They still are allowed to make decisions based on their values. Class attendance is still voluntary, but the consequences of noncompliance are clear and reinforced in every class period. If anything, attendance policies make students better decision makers because they have more information available to them when they compare their values. Secondly, paternalism is rampant and beneficial in mid-size classes. Instructors have guidelines for all sorts of class behavior (both within the classroom and outside activities involving the course). Students respond to these guidelines all of the time. Taking attendance shows students that the instructor values students being in class and that the instructor believes that regular class attendance increases the effectiveness of the course. This is no different from telling students that they cannot sleep during class. This is paternalistic, since it tells students how to behave, but this does not make it wrong to try to stop this behavior.

Argument for attendance #1: It holds students accountable for their actions.

Like most people, students do not want to do things that they will not get credit for. Since most educators see attendance as beneficial to learning, formally taking attendance creates a direct and immediate benefit to the student. It gives them credit for the action and costs them when they violate the expected behavior. Students know what is expected of them and can act accordingly. Even if attendance corresponds to success on class assignments, these evaluations are more sporadic. Formally taking attendance gives daily feedback to the student about whether they are meeting the course expectations. This direct and immediate feedback is more meaningful and lasting because of its regularity.

I am sympathetic to the idea of creating positive incentives to encourage beneficial student behaviors. However, it is not clear that formally taking attendance is incentivizing the right behaviors. Taking attendance does create an incentive to be in class, but only that action. It does hold students accountable for whether they are in class at a specific time, but it ends there. The incentives push students towards coming to class even if they have not prepared, are sick, or cannot stay awake for 50 minutes. Taking attendance, by itself, encourages students to come to class, but does not encourage them to be actively engaged with the class.

Argument for attendance #2: It provides data about the effectiveness of teaching.

In theory, there should be a correlation between class attendance and final class grade. This does not mean that a student with perfect attendance will get a good grade or that a student could not receive a strong grade despite spotty attendance. However, when we look at a cohort of students, there should be a direct benefit between class attendance and what students learn. Formally taking attendance provides direct evidence as to who was in each class and how often a student was not present. This data should allow us to determine whether what we do in class is effective. If the correlation between attendance and final outcomes are strong, this indicates that classroom time is important to student progress. If students who attend regularly and students that attend irregularly earn the same grades, this indicates that class times and activities do not provide students with information or tools necessary for success. (It is important to note again that this should apply to large groups of students and might not reflect every student outcome). The additional data provided by taking attendance also allows us to examine the success of class activities. We can compare the correlations between attendance and grades to determine what activities have the greatest impact (not just what students prefer).

This defense of formal attendance is nice in theory, but does not seem strong in practice. It is true that we end up with more data to think about, but that data is only useful when it is actually analyzed. This means that we would need to use this data in a systematic and sound manner to analyze a course. This seems unrealistic for most instructors, since it would require timely (and potentially massive) data analysis. Instead, it seems more probable that this additional data would only be used anecdotally and it would be susceptible to confirmation bias.

Argument for attendance #3: It provides supporting evidence for determining some components of students’ grades.

Many classes incorporate points in their grading schemes that come from discussion, participation, attendance, or some other structure that rewards students for being prepared and involved in collective learning. Unfortunately, most assessment in these areas is highly subjective. Having accurate and complete attendance records provides a defensive argument if a student challenges any of these subjective grades. If a student complains that they ended up with a B for class participation, an objective number can be used in a disagreement. As the university structure moves increasingly towards a contractual and legalistic framework, this objective data protects instructors’ interests.

This argument seems to be reversed from the previous argument. It may be great in practice, but it is problematic in theory. It may prevent challenges to individual grades, but it provides false security and seems to be based on a lie. Attendance is clearly a necessary condition for participation and active learning, but attendance is not a sufficient condition. Students cannot participate in class if they are not there, but mere presence does not affect participation. Using class attendance as a sole justification for a participation grade conflates these two aspects of education. It also provides a false sense of objectivity to how these grades are determined.

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Rethinking the Case Study Model for the Humanities

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

Over the past decade, there has been a resurgence within higher education teaching literature, of advocates for using case studies as a tool for successful student engagement. The idea is that instructors can increase learning outcomes by providing concrete and detailed cases for students to explore. This exploration can occur at many levels of instruction, from individual explorations, to small-group interactions, to whole cohort focusing discussions. What is most striking about this resurgence is how the values promoted by this approach have developed out of specific disciplines. Specifically, the benefits and weaknesses of the use of case studies are products of the two academic disciplines (Engineering and Health Sciences) that have been at the forefront of this resurgence in the use of case studies. It is my proposal that the use of case studies in the humanities rethinks the potential advantages of case studies, without abandoning the strengthens that have made their use appealing.

The use of case studies as a tool for educational development has three main advantages. The main strength of case studies is how they frame the students in their own learning. Caroline Whitbeck, a prominent engineering ethicist, warns against how modern engineering and modern ethics courses are structured. The danger is that we allow individuals to passively experience their educations. Formulas are presented in their finalized and whole forms; problems are explored after they have been resolved; and, entire educational fields are explained to students in linear and concise narratives. Whitbeck argues that the goal of ethics should be to design courses so that students will be engaged participants who design good choices, rather than detached spectators who merely criticize choices made by others. Case studies can help this transformation to occur within our students, by shifting their perspectives. Instead of being docile bodies that absorb completed solutions, well-constructed case studies force students to place themselves in the shoes of the characters in the case. They are forced to confront how they would act in the situations that are presented. This occurs in a controlled and safe environment, so there is less pressure; case study activities are akin to the science laboratory (constructed problems, all of the equipment necessary for completion is provided, assistance on working through tough parts, etc.). It is this advantage that has led many academics to include case studies as a form of experiential or hands-on learning.

The second advantage that the case studies provide is richness of details. When case studies are fully developed, they provide information and details that make any subsequent discussions more enlivened. This is because they provide situations that are overdetermined; there are multiple ways to explain the events that are presented and multiple details that may be addressed by different students. The idea is that case studies allow for the inclusion of details and contributing factors that are often left out of contrived and artificial examples. This helps students develop their critical thinking skills by allowing students to make their own determination of what details are important and relevant. The use of case studies in health service education benefits greatly from this advantage. Nursing students, when presented with a rich set of details need to be able to distinguish which details and factors are relevant to the underlying condition and which are red herrings. The same general principle is important for other disciplines, providing students with the opportunity to sort between relevant information and irrelevant information, argue for these distinctions, and defend those determinations.

The third advantage that case studies have is their underlying reality. In both engineering and health sciences, case studies tend to be derived from existing real-world situations. Thus, when students are presented with a case study, the significance of the student’s decisions is amplified. The individuals presented in the case study are robust and complicated individuals; in many cases, these people’s health and welfare are in the balance. It is true that the student decisions do not change the outcomes, but they often provide glimpses of how options turned out for these real people. This allows students to see the actual ramifications that some of the decisions led to; ideally this can instill in students the costs that some decisions have for the participants.

It is my contention that the humanities could benefit by using case studies more, if the model for the use of case studies was reframed. The use of case studies by Engineering and health science has direct benefits that can be preserved. However, this experiential learning approach to case studies may not be appropriate for the humanities. There are many potential benefits that can be enhanced by shifting away from the hands-on paradigm to an alternative model. The model I propose comes from the idea of the natural philosophy experiment. This approach is the traditional thought experiment in philosophy. The instructor proposes a short, but complicated scenario and asks students to provide possible solutions to the scenario. A classic example of this type of thought experiment is to ask students: “Can you provide a solid argument for why you know that you are awake right now, and not still asleep in your bed dreaming this conversation?” These scenarios have two pedagogical advantages. First, they force students to take a position and defend that position. These types of scenarios allow all students the opportunity to participate, whether they have read or not and whether they understand the rest of the course material or not. This occurs in a classroom environment, where the risks involved in a wrong answer are low and potential for group contributions are high.

The second advantage that natural philosophy experiments have is less obvious; they have the ability to test the consistency of students’ thoughts. The thought experiments are constructed and controlled by the instructor. This means that the instructor has the flexibility to change parts of the scenario to challenge the students’ initial arguments. If a student argues that it is acceptable for a person to steal a loaf of bread to feed her starving family, the instructor can change the scenario to not be about theft of bread but the theft (and reselling) of illegal drugs. Any changes to the scenario are at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes in the way that a student argues his or her position can be highlighted and explored. The ideal situation exposes our unstated assumptions, the contradictions in our thinking, and any conclusions that are obscured by our own biases.

This approach to the use of thought experiments has been challenged in a variety of different ways. One of the strongest critics of this approach comes from the field of feminist ethics. Carol Gillian has used criticisms of this approach as the basis for her argument against traditional models of ethics. There are several criticisms that are leveled at this method. It is argued that these scenarios are too removed from people’s actual lives. The scenarios are presented in such abstract ways that the options do not seem real; it is rare for a person to have no other option than to steal a loaf of bread in order to keep her family from starving. The second criticism is that these types of scenarios privilege thought-patterns that move from abstract principle to concrete case, but not from concrete case to abstract principle. Students tend to get positive feedback when they start with a principle (like stealing harms innocent people) and progress to the case where the principle is applied (this is a case of stealing, so it is wrong).

By rethinking the way that case studies are used in the humanities, I believe it may be possible to maintain the advantages of the Engineering and Health Sciences use of case studies and the advantages of the natural philosophy experiment, but also avoid their limitations. Both the case study and the natural philosophy experiment move students from spectators to participants. Their value is primarily in encouraging students to actually engage in the decision-making processes, rather than just comment on the mistakes made by other people. Both of these methods allow students to explore their attitudes and assumptions in closed, safe environments. There are limited risks involved and the actual scenarios are created for a purpose and carefully controlled by the instructors. The second and third advantages of the ways that Engineering and health sciences use of case studies  seem missing from the use of natural philosophy thought experiments in the humanities.

This does not have to be the case, though. If we use case studies the same way that thought experiments are traditionally used, we can keep the advantages of both approaches to student learning. Instead of using short and direct thought experiments, there are advantages to using complex, dense, and real-live case studies. This does force instructors to give up control over how the discussions will progress, but this trade-off comes with many benefits. By using a case study as the basis of the thought experiment, we maintain all of the richness of details. This, in turn, requires that students be able to discriminate between the relevant and the irrelevant. It allows students to see the real world implications of some of the decisions. This combination also avoids the problems within natural philosophy experiments. First, the cases are not abstract, they are based in real people’s experiences. Second, the complex richness of the details avoids biasing the activity toward students who more easily work from abstract principles to concrete cases; instead, students who work from the particular to the universal have as much to work with as those who work from the universal to the particular.

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Posted in Active Learning, Michael Beltz

Anxiety over Millennials

Posted on October 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

Much of the recent discourse about higher education has become dominated by an anxiety over whether the modern university system is properly preparing Millennial students for the modern workforce. The two most recent examples of this anxiety have been presented in opinion pieces in major national news organizations. Kathleen Parker, in the Washington Post, opined that the university system is too focused on coddling students and is graduating them without the necessary skills employers need. Much of the attention this article received focused on universities that have spent money upgrading student housing and extracurricular facilities in order to entice students to those universities (as opposed to spending those resources on providing useful skills to the students). Jeffrey Selingo, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, makes the claim that the entire educational process, from kindergarten to the end of college develops ‘one-dimensional students’ who lack flexibility and creativity, which are the key to future jobs. Each of these arguments has merit, but I think they need to be viewed in a broader context.

There is a distinct generational anxiety that shines through these two articles, the practices being criticized, and the larger discourse about the future of the United States. At its heart, this conversation has a deep concern about whether the Millennial students are significantly different from previous generations of college students. This anxiety is presented in many different ways. It is at the heart of discussions regarding helicopter parents, students who have never done research in a library and get information from the Internet, the ease of online cheating, students who need constant praise because they received (meaningless) participation metals growing up, the lack of activism by college students, and even the amount of time students devote to social activities instead of studying. This level of anxiety over Millennials as college students can be most easily seen in the number of sessions at the most recent Teaching Professor conference dedicated to providing college instructors with an understanding of the worldviews and needs of current students (seven sessions in 2011, compared to two sessions in 2009).

The core question that we seem to be facing is: Are Millennials different from previous generations of college students?

On one level, the answer to this question is obviously in the affirmative. Traditional age college students today are different from previous cohorts of college students. A first-year student in 2011 was in early elementary school on September 11, 2001. They have spent their entire lives with the World Wide Web. They were tested throughout their careers under the standards established by No Child Left Behind. They have only been alive during three presidential administrations. These are just a few of the differences that make Millennial students different from their professors.

On a different level, it is unclear whether Millennials are that much different from any previous generation of college students. As Gertrude Stein claimed: “A difference, to be a difference, must make a difference.” The key question is: do the different features of the current cohort of college students actually make a meaningful difference? At any juncture in the history of higher education, we could point to unique and contingent factors that make students different from their instructors. This does not make each of these unique features a true difference, in Stein’s sense. Consider the concern over the use of the Internet in research, as opposed to using the library. Is there a meaningful difference? Today’s students have a different source of information than their instructors had at their disposal. But this does not mean there is a meaningful educational difference. The purpose of research projects has always been fivefold: 1) teach students to develop a research project; 2) help students develop a level of understanding on a topic that has depth, rather than breadth; 3) encourage students to formulate a complex argument; 4) encourage students to engage multiple sources to synthesize an understanding of the complexity of the subject; and, 5) teach students to evaluate the quality of multiple sources to determine the strengths and weaknesses. These goals seem independent of the location where the student finds the sources. The fact that it is easier for current students to have multiple sources at their fingertips does not seem to be a real difference. The educational goals are exactly the same.

This does not mean that all of the unique features of Millennial students are irrelevant to the core goals and missions of higher education. During his keynote address at the Reflecting on Teaching Conference, at the University of North Dakota, Ken O’Donnell presented a demographic look at the future of higher education. He directly connected how differences within current, and future, college students do have significant difference on the goals of higher education. He stressed the increased number of first-generation college students, the racial make-up differences, and high rate of college transfers within the current cohort of college students. These differences, he argued, do make a difference in the missions of universities. They make a difference because they have an impact on the dropout rate of these groups and the preparedness of incoming students. Each of these differences challenges the current effectiveness of traditional models of teaching and learning. For a more details on these points, please see the coverage of his keynote address.

The task of educators needs to be determining which differences are meaningful differences. We need to be careful in how we understand the characteristics of Millennials. We need to avoid placing too much emphasis on contingent differences that are superficial to the goals of higher education; we need to avoid complaining that students’ attitudes, behaviors, demands, etc. are so much worse now because they are different from past students or different from how we experienced college. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves, as instructors, do our expectations for student learning match students’ expectations for what they want in a college degree? Do we need to alter our own perspectives on what we are hoping students will gain from their college experience? If this type of reassessment is what’s needed, we should carefully ferret out which of the differences actually need to be addressed in order for Millennials to attain the skills they need for the modern workforce.

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Test Banks, Cheating, and the Moral Responsibility of Instructors

Posted on December 9, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Dakota

As universities around the country begin the bi-annual ritual of final examinations, it seems appropriate to spend some time thinking about how final examinations are put together and what our moral responsibilities, as participants in this ritual, are. A couple of weeks ago, a scandal rippled through the campus of the University of Central Florida. In a 600 person business capstone course, Prof. Richard Quinn discovered that close to a third of his students ‘cheated’ on the midterm exam. At the heart of this discovery was the accusation that some students got their hands on a publisher’s test bank for the course and distributed the questions and answers to classmates ahead of time (the allegations and response by Prof. Quinn can be seen here). Students responded to these allegations (found here), by claiming that Prof. Quinn had claimed that he was responsible for ‘creating’ the exams and all of the questions within the exam, when he had simply taken questions from the publisher’s test bank. The students’ claim is that looking at the test bank was not cheating because Prof. Quinn’s comments earlier in the course gave them a belief that working from a test bank would give them no advantage; since they had been told that the questions came from the instructor himself. Thus, any deception that they participated in would not have occurred had Prof. Quinn not deceived them initially; they claim that they did not know that their actions would constitute cheating.

While I could focus on many of the individual allegations and treatments of these events, I think this might not be very productive. This is a sad event, with many parties in the wrong. However, I do think there are some important lessons we can learn from this case and reflect upon as we head into finals and course preparation for next semester.

1) There is an optimal level of cheating on every assignment (and it isn’t zero). Most instructors operate under the mistaken belief that the goal of a good assignment (and good instruction) is to eliminate all possible cheating. While this is an excellent ideal, it neglects the realities of effective teaching. An absolute notion of cheating presents a situation where we create and administer assignments in such a way to eliminate all possible cheating or to catch all those that do cheat. This is an unreasonable goal. Every step that is taken to eliminate potential cheating comes with a cost. This cost may be in the instructor’s time or energy, the level of trust between instructor and students, trust between fellow students, creating questions that only those who could not cheat could pass (which only tests a narrow range of understanding). There are three important points to recognize: first, every step taken to address cheating has a negative trade-off to the instructor and the students: second, equally important, we need to recognize that not all of these trade-offs are equal, some reduce cheating a great deal but do not come with a significant negative cost; third, we should recognize that it is impossible to eliminate all cheating. There will be some students who are so dedicated to cheating that they will find a way to cheat in any possible scenario (for example). So if we cannot create a cheat-proof assignment, what can we do? A possible answer comes from economics. There is a point where any additional cheater caught has a cost that detracts from the overall benefits to the course. In short, there is an optimal level of cheating where the steps taken to catch an additional cheater is such that the class, as a whole, is harmed more by catching that student than by not catching that student.

2) Grades and assignments have only instrumental value, not inherent value. One lament that instructors often have is that their students are more focused on grades than on learning. This is certainly the case for some students, but it should be noted that this criticism could be made of instructors, too. The anger that Prof. Quinn has expressed, seems to stems from a belief that students received grades that they did not earn. A more fundamental question is: did the access to the test bank help students get a higher grade, learn more, or both? There is no way for us to know the answer to this question given the coverage of this scandal. However, we can infer some ideas given Prof. Quinn’s passionate response. His concern was that the exam scores did not fit a standard distribution. This puts all of the focus on the grade and where it is located on a chart, not on the material learned. This is a dehumanizing approach to education. It also creates two false impressions. First, it forces instructors to see students in competition with each other, rather than engaged in a cooperative learning endeavor. Grades become the end goal, because this allows us to measure students’ intellectual worth or compare one student versus another student. Second, it places the instructor outside of the cooperative endeavor. The instructor becomes the evaluator of students and the judge of their relative understanding of the material. Grades do have a value, but it is only because they give us (instructors and students) a benefit in the cooperative learning endeavor of higher education.

3) Cheating is not (just) a student problem, it is also an instructor problem. If we accept the argument that higher education is a cooperative and collective activity, this shifts the responsibility for avoiding cheating. When there is a level of cheating that is higher than the optimal level, all members of the group have some level of responsibility. This does not mean, however, that the level of responsibility is evenly distributed across all members of the class. There is an uneven power dynamic that also shapes the classroom. Instructors are not equal participants in the learning endeavor; they possess the vast majority of classroom power (they determine the texts, the assignments, the learning activities, and the grades).This hierarchy of power makes the instructor more responsible when there is a higher than optimal level of cheating. This does not mean that the student no responsibility (or even a lessened level of responsibility). It simply means that in cases of cheating, faculty should resist the urge to put all (or even most) of the responsibility for the cheating on the students (which is what Prof. Quinn clearly does). Instead, we should start with ourselves and ask: what is my responsibility for allowing the conditions for cheating to exist?

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Online Teaching, the Panopticon, and the ‘Unequal Gaze’

Posted on February 18, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Mick Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Dakota

It is my intent to explore the relevance of Michel Foucault’s insights, on discipline and the panopticon, within the context of the online educational experience. Bill Caraher, in his recent posting, “The Panopticon and Online Teaching,” explored some of the possible ways to use the work of Michel Foucault as a tool for understanding the online experience. While there will be some overlap between his thoughts and mine, the specifics of our discussions point to different conclusions.

Many people, when presented with Foucault’s discussion of the disciplinary principles of the panopticon, tend to view this discussion in a negative manner. They tend to read this harsh language of prisons, internalization, and discipline with a mild horror. They see the panoptic gaze in a purely negative light and take steps to chastise any structures that reinforce that gaze. I do not intend to defend every example of the ‘unequal gaze’ as being beneficial; however, I do want to highlight some positive consequences of the panoptic nature of online educational environments.

One of the most powerful concepts within the discussion of the panopticon is that of the ‘unequal gaze.’ For Focault, the ‘unequal gaze’ is a structural relationship where two individuals have different power relationships in their ability to monitor and survey the other person. In the discussion of the panopticon, the prison guard has the ability to completely monitor the actions and behaviors of the prisoner. The prisoner, on the other hand, never has the ability to monitor the prison guard, unless the guard allows the prisoner to have access to this information. This uneven power relationship usually means that the prisoner never knows if they are being monitored; instead, since there is the constant possibility of being observed, the prisoner must always operate under the assumption that they are being monitored.

The result of this ‘unequal gaze,’ for Foucault, is a level of discipline that shapes the individual to better fit within modern society and workforces. Any time that an institution has the ability to constantly monitor and record the individuals within those institutions, and the individuals internalize the disciplinary principles, they end up with a ‘docile body.’ That is a body that is disciplined in such a way as to fit smoothly into a society.

It is almost uncanny how the current online education model mirrors the idealized disciplinary institution of the panopticon. The power relationship between student and instructor is magnified in online educational environments. Any given student in an online course, only has access to material presented by the instructor. A student sees what the instructor wants them to see, and nothing more. For many students, this may even mean that they do not know who else (if anyone) is also taking the course. If an instructor decides to not include any group work, a student may never know if there are other students in the course. This isolation has a powerful impact on the internalization of the disciplinary principles. In traditional face-to-face classroom environments, students have the opportunity to talk with other classmates outside of the classroom. Even if this does not happen, a student will likely receive subtle verbal and non-verbal cues indicating the understanding of concepts and ideas by other students during class time. This eliminates isolation. If a student does not understand a concept, they might be able to see that other students are in the same boat. Most online teaching environments are not structured to eliminate this sense of isolation. Instead, since any given student does not know for sure if anyone else is in the course, they each are left with the potential of feeling that they are the only ones that are confused or lost. This feeling of isolation is at the heart of the internalization that comes from the ‘unequal gaze.’

The level of internalization of disciplinary principles needs to be much higher for online educational environments than it does for traditional educational environments. One of the major selling points of online educational environments is that they can allow students to be freed from the standard confines of the course structure. This means that they are freed from attending lectures at preset times or from needing to be someplace specific to learn. The difficulty is that these structures that students are being freed from are not arbitrary; they serve valuable educational purposes. They ensure that students are receiving the necessary information on the subject matter. They ensure that students are spending a specific amount of time digesting that information. They ensure that students do not fall behind in the course. If we free students from the repressive disciplinary structures of the traditional classroom environment, how can we avoid the negatives those structures are designed to prevent? This is the question Foucault was concerned with: how can we eliminate the repressive disciplinary structures and still maintain the results we desire? This is the importance of internalization. The panoptic nature of online educational environments provides this. Instructors are presented with a vast array of information that tells them how often a student views material, how long they view it, whether they have skipped over sections, etc. Since this information is unequally distributed in the instructor’s favor, the instructor has a much stronger level of power (not including all of the other power relationship that come in all educational environments). This ‘unequal gaze’ coupled with the potential isolation allows online education to free the student from the repressive structures if they are able to successful internalize the disciplinary principles.

Foucault argues that the goal of the panopticon is to create the ‘docile body’ within the prison population. By this, he is arguing that we need to shape the body to be better prepared to be a productive member of the workforce. Those people who cannot control their bodily impulses would be disruptive to those who can control themselves. This focus on the body seems anachronistic to our modern understanding of the needs of the workforce. Modern pluralistic societies have been arguing for decades that the body is not relevant to success. Instead, it is the capabilities of the mind that are relevant. The panopticon that accompanies online education seems to embrace this belief in a way that does not occur in traditional classroom environments. Since both the student and the instructor are disembodied representation of ideas, the focus on the body is eliminated. The race, gender, social class, age, or able-bodiness of both the student and instructor are obscured. This reinforces the expectations within the modern workforce. We are disciplining students to see that the presentation of ideas is the only relevant standard, because students cannot use any physical features as an excuse for their performance in a course.

I believe that there is a second beneficial consequence to the panoptic nature of online educational environments. I have argued, so far, that the ‘unequal gaze’ creates isolation for students. This is not necessarily a negative thing. Since the student’s primary contact is with the instructor, this can be used to foster a feeling of a personal educational experience. Instead of being able to blend in with the crowd, online students have no ability to see the crowd they might blend in with. Whether it is real or not, students internalize the personalized interaction with the instructor. For the student, he or she is likely to feel a personal connection with the instructor, since that is the primary voice they hear in the class. But from the instructor’s perspective, each student is just one out of many students. This gives the perception of personalized attention, without being as capital intensive as private instruction.

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Posted in Michael Beltz, Online Teaching, Technology

Teaching Thursday: Some Thoughtful Tips for Online Teaching

Posted on November 19, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Mick Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Dakota
Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota
Tim Prescott, Mathematics Department, University of North Dakota
Bret Weber, Department of Social Work, University of North Dakota

Yesterday at noon, the Department of History at the University of North Dakota, held a roundtable discussion on online teaching. We invited a group of experienced online teachers to join the round table from different fields. Mick Beltz (a regular Teaching Thursday contributor) from Philosophy and Religion, Bill Caraher, from History, Tim Prescott, from Math, and Bret Weber (another Teaching Thursday regular), from the Department of Social Work. The group focused on the differences between online teaching and classroom teaching. Moreover, the discussion was intensely practical. The Department of History, like many departments across campus, is exploring the potential and pitfalls of online teaching. The audience of graduate students and faculty enthusiastically engaged the panelists and the conversation spilled into the hall after the workshop was over.

For today’s Teaching Thursday, I offer the following brief summary of the Teaching Roundtable and, as always, encourage the conversation to continue in the comments section.

Bret Weber, of the Department of Social Work, offered a number of points which emphasized that teaching and learning need to be at the core of online classes. It’s not just about the technology! And it’s not an online class, it’s a class online. To go along with this observation he stressed that teaching online must be interactive both between students and between teacher and student. The more the students interact with each other and the instructor the more likely they are to achieve the course’s objectives. In fact, recent students have shown that the quantity of discussion posts, for example, correlates more strongly with learning than the quality of the posts. Finally, Bret emphasized that teaching online can be enormously time consuming in the course planning, set up, and the maintenance of an online class, but most importantly in terms of the amount of time that needs to be afforded all students especially during the early weeks of the semester.

Tim Prescott of the Department of Math emphasized the need for more steps in weekly assignments to make up for the lack of regular interaction. He said that this extended from actual content based assignments to the logistics of making sure the students set up proctored tests, completed assignments on time, and understood the basic mechanics of a class. Finally, Tim reinforced the difficulty of ascertaining whether a student understood complex material. Teaching online requires that we develop ways to ascertain how well our students are moving through material in the class so that our first indication of a problem is not a high-value assignment.

Mick Beltz, who teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, talked about how online classes followed a different rhythm from classroom courses. There was more weekly attention necessary to ensure that an online class functioned properly. The work also tends to be greater at the very beginning of the semester because the majority of assignments and activities need to be available to students at the first day of the semester.This different work rhythm sometimes made the workload feel more substantial than a classroom based course, which might experience hectic moments, like grading midterm exams, while requiring less daily attention. Mick also pointed our that online courses need to communicate the instructor’s expectations to students clearly and regularly. Unlike classroom taught courses, most students will be unfamiliar with the online learning environment. The irregular schedule of online courses, the different forms of peer interaction, and a perceived distance between instructor and student would sometimes lead students to neglect online courses more than they would classroom taught ones. The result of this was more MIA students who drift away from the class and do not succeed.

Bill Caraher added that teaching online retained elements of very tradition instruction with its emphasis on lectures (as a formal means of instruction, information dissemination, and modeling of good practice). He also noted that the online environment is particularly suited to intensive writing because writing becomes the key means for interacting between the student and faculty member. Finally, he urged the group to embrace the panopticon of online teaching (with thanks to Mick Beltz for introducing him to the link between Foucault’s idea of the panopticon and the online teaching environment). He expanded this idea by asserting that in an online environment you have these decisively partitioned reports on student achievement displayed on the computer screen arrayed before your eyes. The students, on the other hand, can see far less of their fellow students achievements and, as Mick pointed out, tend to focus their interaction with the instructor far more than in a regular classroom where the physical presence of other students demands some, often non-verbal, form of engagement.

_______________________

While these perspectives hardly capture the full range of issues confronting faculty considering online teaching, we do hope that it’s a start!

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Bret Weber, Michael Beltz, Tim Prescott

On the habit of cheating

Posted on November 5, 2009 by | 3 Comments

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Daktoa

Much like Bill Caraher’s introduction to this topic, it feels appropriate to me to start with the most recent outcry about the rise in cheating by today’s youth. In a recent article published in the Grand Forks Herald, Helmut Schmidt describes the high likelihood for individuals under the age of 17 to be more willing to engage in lying. The data that Schmidt relied on for this outrage blends attitudes towards lying and cheating together to reach the conclusion that high school students are more willing to be dishonest than individuals over the age of 50. There is quite a bit of data available about academic dishonesty at all levels. In some ways that data can be very disheartening. In a 2002 book on his research into cheating, Willfried Decoo argues that 70% of high school students in the United States have cheated at least once in their high school career. Furthermore, 56% of middle school students have done so as well. But cheating is not just occurring among individuals who are under the age of 17. In the most definitive work on the subject, Donald McCabe, Kenneth Butterfield, and Linda Trevino, present some sobering statistics about cheating. They start be defining serious cheating as “plagiarism, copying or using crib notes on a test, or turning in work done by another.” Their data reveals that 56% of graduate business school students participated in serious cheating in the previous academic year; 47% of all graduate students, 45% of law school students, and 48% of graduate students in education all report serious cheating in the previous academic year.

While this data may be depression to some people, I am left with a feeling of optimism. I am left asking the question: Why don’t more students cheat? I certainly would like to have students of all academic levels NOT engage in these types of behaviors. I think that academic dishonesty does have negative consequences (for the students, for the instructors, for future employers, and for the institution of higher education). But this does not eliminate the issues of figuring out why some students decide to cheat and others decide not to.

Schmidt’s article points to a sense of entitlement among today’s youth. In his comments to Caraher’s introduction to this subject, Evan Nelson, describes this as a transactional model of higher education. Cynthia Prescott gives the most developed description of this understanding of student cheating in last week’s post. She describes the transactional model as “a transaction in which completing a certain quantity of work should get them a certain grade. They believe that those grades will, in turn, get them a diploma, which will aid them in their ultimate goal of a more desirable or better-paying job… This makes it even more likely that college students will look for the easiest way out on school assignments.” While this model may be intuitively applicable, it seems to be flawed in significant ways. First, this transactional model may be able to describe why students commit serious cheating. The problem is that it does not explain why some students do not cheat. What is it that makes one student cheat and another not cheat? If both of these students were in the same class, had the same major, and would be seeking the same employment, then they would presumably have the same incentives, desires, and goals that would lead to cheating. The best that we could say is that some students buy into the transactional model and others don’t. This answer does not seem satisfactory to me, because it simply moves the question to: why do some students buy into the transactional model and others do not? The second problem with the transactional model is that it does not seem to adequately connect with the data on cheating. Let us consider the aforementioned data on graduate students. The transactional model would indicate that roughly half of all graduate students see a graduate degree as merely an exchange of money for a higher-paying job. I do not doubt that there are graduate students in all programs that feel this way. The problem is that there are only minor differences between the rates of cheating across the different disciplines. The rates of cheating among business graduate students (who are trained to approach problems from an economic standpoint) are only slightly higher than education graduate students (who are inculcated with the intrinsic value of learning). The only way the transactional model can explain the similar results is to state that half of the graduate students in education see education as merely a transaction. If this is true, then we should probably not be worried about cheating in schools. If both the teachers and the students see education as just a transaction, the problem those teachers would have with cheating is that they feel slighted, not that the action was unethical in any way. I also do not feel that the data on the other end of the educational data corresponds with the transactional model. Among middle school students, 56% also self-report serious cheating. This is the same percentage as the MBA graduate students that cheat. For the transactional model to work, we would have to say that the same percentage (of 11 through 13 year olds) see grades as a transaction for a higher-paying job as do the adult graduate students. My third criticism of the transactional model is that it does not seem historically accurate. In the second part of her post, Prescott argues that we see an increasing amount of cheating because it has become easier in the Internet age. Part of Caraher’s speculations is that the increase in cheating might be caused by increased cynicism, changes in the focus of educators, or even that we are in a ‘post-everything nihilism.’ The premise of these speculations is that there have been changes that have led to an increase in the ease and amount of cheating. Unfortunately, the best data on this subject does not support these claims. As reported by McCabe et al., the most comprehensive research on cheating in previous generations, conducted by William Bowers in 1964, found that slightly over 50% of college students committed serious cheating in the years of his study (from 1956 to 1963). In their 1990 study, Emily LaBeff et al. found that 54% of college students reported at least one instance of cheating in the previous academic year. The McCabe et al. (2006) study found that 66% of college students reported at least one instance of cheating in the previous academic year. While there is an increase in the amount of cheating over time, this data seems to be a problem for the transactional model. It would mean that half of college students in the late 1950s already had the sense of entitlement described by Schmidt. This would also mean that the rise of structural and theoretical changes in higher education from the 1950s to the 1990s only accounts for a 4% increase in cheating. It would also mean that the rise of the information age only accounts for a 12% increase in cheating.

There is no doubt that some proponents of the transactional model would be able to look at this data and see it as supportive. I, however, would like to propose an alternative model that may explain these challenges in a simpler way. We might consider this a habit model of cheating. Instead of seeing cheating as a function of a conscious exchange of work for a higher-paying job, we should consider cheating as a set of reinforced behaviors that are learned. Instead of being left with the question of why some students buy into the transactional model and others do not, we end up with the question of why some students develop the habit of cheating and others develop a habit of not cheating. This second question seems explainable in a way that the first one is not. Because each student is trained in different classrooms and environments throughout their career, they will each have developed different habits. This would mean that instead of trying to figure out individual student’s psychologies (as the transactional model would need to do), we should instead look to examine what educational practices promote the habit of cheating and which ones promote the habit of not cheating. If we see cheating as a habit, we also benefit from certain realizations that apply to all habits. For example, every successful activity reinforces the habit being practiced. Thus, every time a student cheats, it becomes easier to cheat the next time. Every time a student does not cheat, the easier it is to not cheat in the future (assuming that both of these result in success).

There are two specific situations where I feel that the habit of cheating is being reinforced at the university level. I believe that there are many more places the habit of cheating and not cheating are reinforced, but the following two areas are the most blatant.

1) Introductory science laboratory settings- Most universities require an introductory course in science with a laboratory component. Students are often graded, in the labs, based on upon how close their results are to the expected lab results. These experiments can be time consuming. Equally important, laboratory space can be limited on many campuses, making it difficult for students to take extra time during the labs or start the experiments from scratch on a different day. These factors combine to create a large amount of incentives for students to get experiments correct the first time they try them. Students are also told how to determine the results that they should expect from the experiment. The problem occurs when a student makes a mistake conducting the experiment. In these cases, the students have the incentives to fabricate the data, the tools to create expected results, and they are typically only tested on the theoretical components of the experiments on their exams. If a student decides to not cheat on these labs, the only way they will be successful (and reinforce the habit of not cheating) is if they never make a mistake in any of their experiments. This is a very high threshold for developing this habit. On the other hand, cheating to make sure that your data is close to the expected data leads to success whether the student makes errors or not. Students are often told that the most important aspect of the laboratory lessons is that they learn the theories being demonstrated. This is reinforced by the theoretical questions on exams and a low tolerance for error in the grading of the lab work. This form of fabrication is not tolerated by professional researchers, but it is subtly encouraged when those future researchers are first being trained in the long-term habits of scientific research.

2) When we discipline students that have been caught cheating – One of the questions that we must face with student cheating: what is the most appropriate way to punish the transgressor? The transactional model does not give us a straightforward way to determine what is appropriate. By shifting to the habit model, we can see why some forms of reprisal are more appropriate than other forms. When we discover that a student has cheated, we need to make sure that the actions taken by the educator promote the right habits. Too often educators take steps that teach a student that they do not want to get caught cheating, instead of that they do not want to cheat in the first place. The transactional model seems to promote the importance of not getting caught cheating. The tacit exchange involved in the transactional model is often reinforced in the classroom setting. When an instructor catches someone cheating, they will often penalize the student by giving them a zero on the assignment (or less often, failing them for the entire course). The rationale for this is that the student violated the social compact involved in the transactional model. If the student does sufficient work they will get a certain grade. If they do not do sufficient work (by cheating for example), they receive no credit for that work. In this regard getting caught cheating would have the same punishment as any action that violates the transactional compact. If a student falls asleep during class, they have violated the requirement for sufficiently meeting the transactional expectations, so they receive no points for participation that day. While the punishment may seem more detrimental in the case of cheating, that is only a product of the assignment being worth more points. The importance of this comparison is that this form of punishment does not necessarily promote the habit of not cheating. From the student’s perspective, if she falls asleep in class she will suffer the same type of punishment as if she is caught cheating. This student does not recognize that the harm of cheating is larger than just getting caught. Thus, when we connect cheating to a grade, we are promoting the habit of not getting caught cheating, as opposed to the habit of not cheating. This means that we need to radically rethink about how institutions (and instructors) deal with cheating. Students need to be taught that the harm occurs when a student cheats, even if the student is never caught. Students need to be taught the larger ramifications of cheating and not taught that it is just their grade that will suffer if they are caught. Some students have learned this, which explains why so many students decide not to cheat. However, institutions of higher education need to be more systematic about developing these positive habits. When a student cheats, it is not their grade that is harmed; it is the institution as a whole and the entire student population. As such, to decouple grades from cheating, the punishment for cheating should be dealt with at an institutional level.

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The Cost of Cheap Education: Another Perspective

Posted on October 8, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Daktoa

While reading the insightful exchanges about the changes in alternative modes of college education, “The Cost of Cheap Education,” I was struck by how the discussion was framed from an institutional perspective. I do not disagree with any of the specific details presented by these articles; I found them to be well reasoned and generally correct in their assessments of programs like Straighterline. However, I feel that part of this discussion might be better understood from an alternative perspective.

From a students’ perspective, should lower-level courses be used to subsidize the other components of a department/university?

I agree with the argument presented by Bill Caraher, Anne Kelsch, and John Tagg that these less expensive models of higher education pose a potentially dangerous shift in the economics of the university. From an institutional perspective, programs like Straighterline, by offering degrees on a flat rate monthly cost, have the potential for changing the ‘ecosystem’ of the university. The current structure of large lower-level, often general education oriented, courses are used to offset other vital functions of individual departments. These courses are the most economically viable, and lucrative, courses within most departments. The money generated from student tuition in these courses allows departments to offer smaller upper-level courses. These upper-level courses are designed primarily for departmental majors and tend to be small in size and for students with advanced levels of knowledge in those fields. The large introductory courses also provide departments with the economic resources to allow faculty to conduct advanced research. For individual departments, and the university as a whole, this system makes sense because it provides a base of resources for them to conduct critical functions.

The question is: does this arrangement make sense from a student perspective? As the system is arranged currently, students are being required to subsidize the upper-level courses and faculty research when they enroll in an introductory general education course. They are being required to have their tuition dollars support activities that they will not see the direct benefits from. As indicated by Caraher, these large introductory courses are often taught by adjunct instructors, post-doctorate fellows, and in many universities, graduate students. Since these instructors are the ones who generally receive the lowest compensation for their work, it reduces the university’s costs. There are two trade-offs that come with this current structure. First, since these classes generally have the largest enrollment, they tend to be taught in the least pedogically optimal manner. While there are many gifted instructors for these types of courses, the mere size pushes instructors to teach in a lecture format and assess student work in a minimal number of ways. For example, most instructors are reluctant to move beyond multiple choice and short answer examinations. These tendencies do not provide the best learning opportunities for students. Secondly, since these instructors are not tenure-line faculty, the quality of teaching can suffer. Again, this is not an indictment of all instructors in these courses. Resources for instructional improvements tend to be targeted for tenure-line faculty members and not those individuals who general carry the burden of teaching these introductory courses. If we consider the University of North Dakota, we can see how these resources are unevenly distributed. UND encourages new faculty to take part in the Alice Clark program. This program provides resources and training for new faculty to improve the ways that they incorporate innovative teaching into the classroom. While this is a great program, it excludes those individuals that are the core instructors in many of the introductory course across the country. Graduate students, adjunct instructors, part-time instructors, and post-doctorate instructors do not have access to these types of programs. They also tend to be excluded from departmental funding for teaching conferences.

Again, this system may make sense from an institutional perspective, but does it make sense from the student’s perspective? Consider a student who enrolls in an introductory level course in biology. If the student is not a biology major, why do they register for the course? Typically it is because it is one of a small number of courses that fulfill a science general education requirement. The tuition paid by that student for the introductory course goes to subsidize other functions of the department. This money enables upper-level courses taught for majors, where the tuition accrued by the smaller class sizes does not cover the costs of the salary of the faculty teaching the course. This may benefit the biology majors, but it does not benefit the student in the introductory course. It also enables the faculty members within the biology department to conduct research. We might argue that this does benefit the lower level students, but the benefit to the student is no greater than to any other citizen (whether they attend a university or not). A fairer system would be to not put the burden of financing faculty research on students at all. Since all citizens receive similar benefits from faculty research, the financial burden should be on the citizens of the state or nation as a whole.

This seems to be an insight that Straightline is capitalizing on. They are able to keep the costs to students low because they have eliminated many of the external costs associated with the university. The student tuition in introductory courses does not go to cover the costs of less financially viable upper-level courses, nor does it go to subsidize faculty research projects. In many ways, there is a greater transparency in where the tuition money goes. The tuition dollars go to the instructor’s pay per course, overhead costs, and Straighterline’s profits. When a prospective student selects to attend a program like this, they are making a sacrifice, though. They are sacrificing quality of instruction, in many cases, and the reputation associated with the degree granting institution. The value of these should be weighed against the costs of the individual credits. However, students should be given the autonomy to make these determinations themselves, based on their own goals.

See also:

The Cost of a Cheap Education
The Cost of a Cheap Education: Another View

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Posted in Anne Kelsch, Bill Caraher, John Tagg, Michael Beltz, Online Teaching