<p>Yes. I should have said, the students’ cheating.</p>
<p>Hypothetical: Would it change anyone’s opinion of the cheating if they learned that the prof was not actually using the quiz scores to determine student grades, but was using the tests as a means to track attendance and using overall course attendance as a grading factor? </p>
<p>Hypothetical because I have no clue as to whether that was the case, but I know that student attendance is often an issue in a large lecture class. It’s also a problem when students show up to lectures but spend time in class using their laptops and tablets to surf the internet instead of paying attention to the teacher. It’s not clear to me whether the quizzes were given on a regularly announced schedule or were pop quizzes – but if the primary goal was to motivate students to attend and to pay attention in class, then it would be counterproductive to report students for academic dishonestly. </p>
<p>I do know from other sources that there were other class requirements beyond the quiz, including submission of a short paper and an oral recitation – so there’s would have been another mechanism for grading. As a management issue, it would be a hugely tedious task for a professor without a TA to track the scores of a dozen separate quizzes taken by 120+ students through the semester, but relatively easy one to simply tick off the names on the test against an attendance roster. </p>
<p>Easier still to simply count the total submissions and toss the actual paperwork without recording scores – which is what someone might do if the quizzes were being used wholly as a tool to force attendance and attentiveness. In that situation, the quizzes would essentially be a tool for surveying attendance numbers, but widespread cheating would undermine the goal of encouraging/forcing students to actually pay attention to the lecture.</p>
<p>“Hypothetical: Would it change anyone’s opinion of the cheating if they learned that the prof was not actually using the quiz scores to determine student grades, but was using the tests as a means to track attendance and using overall course attendance as a grading factor?”</p>
<p>If the students thought they were cheating and didn’t know that it made no difference, what difference would it make whether the professor used the scores or not?</p>
<p>Do prestige colleges now take attendance? (I really didn’t know - never happened in any of my d’s classes, nor in mine, nor in any that I ever taught. Attendance was taken at the beginning of term to see whether classes with capped enrollments could open slots.)</p>
<p>I can (and have) taught memory tricks (developed by the Greeks more than 2,500 years ago) that can be used to memorize poems or shopping lists or periodic tables or whatever. Takes about a half an hour to teach, and then one has to practice the skill. I’ve taught them to kids as young as age 8. Prestige college students get graded on memorizing and reciting poems? 123 students? How much class time would this take?</p>
<p>“As a management issue, it would be a hugely tedious task for a professor without a TA to track the scores of a dozen separate quizzes taken by 120+ students through the semester, but relatively easy one to simply tick off the names on the test against an attendance roster.”</p>
<p>Yup. Another way to maximize revenue? Let’s just call it for what it is: Barnard got caught overfilling the cookie jar:</p>
<p>“In addition, she [Vice Provost Link] said, the class size would be reduced to 40 students per semester.”</p>
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This post put my views about this in a nutshell. It seems obvious to me that the particular class was a notorious gut, and that the professor was looking the other way for years with respect to how students were performing, and then somebody complained about it. It doesn’t tell you much about Barnard, except that it tolerated some gut classes, as do (I suspect) virtually all challenging colleges, because most students need one or two guts along the say to help balance out a tough schedule, or get some distributional requirements without much pain, or to survive a sports season with reasonable grades. But you can’t major in gut courses, and there are only so many you can take. As a result, I’m not really sure how big a deal this really is–was there really shocking cheating going on, or was this a class in which the professor traditionally didn’t really care about grades and let the students grade themselves? This is a far cry from people stealing answer keys or anything like that.</p>
<p>I think it reached the point of shocking cheating when the teacher, reacting to reports of cheating, went from peer grading to selecting a few students to do all of the grading and those students were offered bribes to falsely grade quizzes.</p>
<p>DD will be doing biomed research this summer on social interactions using a microbial system to study cheating, conflict and cooperation at experimental and genomic levels, within and between species.</p>
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<p>Yes, that is indeed a different matter. Especially if the “bribes” were offered in all seriousness, not as a joke or semi-joke. (Which I can see happening. “Hey, Jane, I’ll buy you a latte if you bump my grade up to a B next week! Ha Ha!!”)</p>
<p>Interesting note on the biomed research, Kennedy. </p>
<p>I am familiar with social science/behavioral research on cheating – basically everyone will cheat (a little) under research conditions structured to encourage cheating. Self-reported quiz results is actually a pretty common experimental setting in which it can be shown that just about everyone lies about their results. This is one area where the social research is also particularly valid for college exam settings – primarily because so much social behavioral research is conducted on college campuses with student volunteers in both the experimental and control groups.</p>
<p>Calmom - so behavorial research finds that we all cheat given the right conditions. Sad. I am curious to find how DNA figures into the equation. It’s fascinating.</p>
<p>OK, insider information here from an extremely reliable source (*ERS) `who took the Ellsberg poetry class roughly 5 years ago. Source says that at the time there were roughly 30 students in the class, with course requirements being two short papers and a poetry recitation; does not recall any quizzes but says that if there were, they would have been poetry identifications requiring very little study. </p>
<p>ERS took course because of light requirements in order to fill distributional requirements, at a time when ERS was carrying a very heavy course load of other time and workload intensive courses. (See Hunt’s post above about balancing out a tough schedule)</p>
<p>Information on CULPA (fairly reliable) about the course suggests a transformation of course requirements over the years, possibly along with course growth. See: [CULPA</a> - Major English Texts I](<a href=“http://culpa.info/courses/1327]CULPA”>http://culpa.info/courses/1327)</p>
<p>CULPA reviews also show strong love/hate responses from students about the professor – her admirers love her enthusiasm for the subject matter and enjoy all the stories she tells in class; her detractors hate her disorganization and tardiness, and don’t like hearing her embellishments or trivia. </p>
<p>Information on BWOG (dubious reliability, but the original source for the NY Times article) suggests that cheaters were identified and names provided to prof; that roughly 20% of the class was involved in cheating; and that all identified cheaters were Columbia students who may now be facing academic discipline. The statement by the Barnard dean tends to confirm this (“No Barnard students were identified…”) </p>
<p>When the new requirement of the final exam was imposed but students were given the option to drop the class, the rumor is also that a bunch of CC students dropped, but apparently the BC students remained. See [Most</a> ?Barnard? Cheaters Are Actually Columbia Students | Bwog](<a href=“http://bwog.com/2013/05/08/most-barnard-cheaters-are-actually-columbia-students/]Most”>Most “Barnard” Cheaters Are Actually Columbia Students - Bwog)</p>
<p>So here’s my theory: I think the class was originally a typical size – 30-40 students – but at some point word got around that it was an easy course and large numbers of CC students started enrolling, pushing the class size up to the point of requiring a lecture hall. (It would probably have to be an influx of CC students because BC by itself probably doesn’t have the numbers to generate a crowd in a course that is not a specific requirement for any major). The BC administration would have just seen a popular professor and ok’d the move to a lecture hall based on space availability. (It appears that Barnard only has 2 lecture halls, one with a capacity of 111 and the other with a capacity of 242 – Ellsberg’s class was in the smaller hall)</p>
<p>As to the TA issue, TA’s are probably not available in “BC” labeled classes. The only large-lecture courses given at Barnard where I know that my d. had TA’s were a V-labeled class and a lab science where the BC class was given at Barnard but the lab was given at Columbia with a CC label. Most of her BC classes were pretty small, so I don’t have a large body of data to work from. Classes given at Barnard with either a “V” or “W” label are inter-faculty courses, meaning that they are jointly administered with Columbia and would qualify for assignment of a Columbia TA. (Barnard is undergrad only, so no TA’s of its own).</p>
<p>I’m guessing that as the class grew, the Prof lost control. The reports indicate that she was made aware of issue and tried to take action to address the cheating (assigning the task of grading quizzes to a handful of reliable students) but that she was then faced with the alleged attempt to bribe the graders. See [barnard</a> cheating scandal | Bwog](<a href=“http://bwog.com/tag/barnard-cheating-scandal/]barnard”>barnard cheating scandal Archives – Bwog) for a summary of the actions the Prof. took.</p>
<p>^Fascinating! It’s starting to sound like a made-for-TV movie. </p>
<p>ETA: I do find it sad that a number of students dropped the class when the extra (and legitimate) work of a final exam was imposed.</p>
<p>I love this comment from the BWOG:</p>
<p>“Can we have a sensible discussion about how Columbia College really isn’t part of Barnard and that CC students can’t hack the academic rigors across the street?”</p>
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<p>You mean you can’t even trust your yogurt not to cheat these days?</p>