Looks like a couple of schools are already investigating cheating on on-line exams during the spring semester.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/01/online-cheating-probes-underway-at-georgia-tech-boston-university/
Princeton cheating too.
I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I think it would be a topic for a different thread.
I teach online and while I am not sure if there is more cheating online than in person, I do see quite a bit of it. I once taught a “student success” course and focused a lot of plagiarism and how to avoid it and it was not unheard of for people to plagiarize their paper about plagiarism. Sigh.
My D’s school has a strong honor code. Many of their exams are given online or are not proctored. Kids do get into trouble for cheating, but it doesn’t seem as common as at other schools because the kids do take the code seriously. But, she said once they went 100% online there were LOTS of reminders about the honor code. Most of her exams were changed to being open note and book (just anything except for online searches) and I think part of the reason for that was to limit the advantage that those who might cheat would get. But her exams were formatted in such a way that you actually had to understand the material and using online sources wouldn’t be that helpful anyway.
D has a friend in a class at a Big 10 school who was given an exam with an unsolvable problem. The professor planted the “answer” on Chegg. 30% of the class got the answer “right”. Since it was obvious they coped from Chegg they all failed.
Cheating is an issue, certainly. Academic dishonesty is epidemic. I actually find that students who have college-educated parents are the worst in this regard. The parents will do the assignments for their student if they feel threatened enough.
Some very motivated parents will essentially “take” the class and do all the readings/listen to the lectures in order to ensure that their students pass. Yes, this is a big problem with “distance” education. It perpetuates class divides.
All of S19’s finals were open book open note. Maybe professors should write more tests like that. He thought they were crazy hard.
Tulane has put out out a pretty thorough plan:
https://tulane.edu/covid-19/reopening-recommendations
This all has me wondering if schools will welcome prospective students. We still need to get D21 out to some schools.
Tulane’s plan is well thought out. Good for them for putting so much thought into it and putting it in writing. I hope it rolls out well for them.
I can’t keep up with the speed of this thread:) but Rivet2000, I agree…Duke’s communication was well thought out. I have been struggling understanding how a university could possibly plan to sufficiently safeguard its non-student community while also bringing students back to campus (no matter how much my D wanted to return to school), but it does seem Duke is implementing many changes to minimize risk (and setting clear expectations of students who return), and also offering alternatives for those not able/willing to return to campus right now. I am encouraged!
I really like everything I have seen from Duke so far and they will have a lot more detailed plan by end of June. They have taken a very cautious and thoughtful approach since March.
College will start one week early and end finals by Thanksgiving. They will delay start of Spring semester by one week and won’t start until mid-January.
I know according to D, some Duke kids have been complaining on social media on all of the restrictions but this is the new normal this academic year and they need to temper expectations, a lot.
What is so different with what duke is proposing than we’ve heard on this thread from several other schools? Am I missing something? Common items we’ve seen recently-
-Calendar: start early, no fall break, no return after Thanksgiving (exams online at home)
-testing: promise to test every student on arrival and if symptoms appear
-quarantine- promise to set aside rooms so sick students can convalesce
-classes- online and hybrid online model so students and profs can get both in person and remote classes
-apps- promise of apps for tracking health and contact
-masks- required in class and public spots on campus
Ok here’s a petty question. If schools only offer takeout/boxed meals, will those that typically require you to purchase meal plan, still require you to do so this fall?
This is not my largest concern, and certainly not one that I would ever waste energy arguing with the university over. But my kiddos meal plan is very expensive at $35 per day. As it is, they are not actually happy with the food. But the surrounding community is chock full of amazing restaurants at all different price levels. There is no question my kiddo would prefer I gave them $35 per day to do takeout elsewhere.
I actually don’t completely understand the call for boxed meals-only from the dining halls. I am quite certain that in the state where their college is, indoor dining at restaurants will be allowed at 50% capacity within 2 weeks from today, and likely higher than that during the fall. Their dining halls have very high ceilings compared to typical restaurants—lots of air flow. I understand that they can’t have overcrowded dining halls, but they could certainly spread things out so everyone can’t come at peak hours. For example, freshmen get to enter for dinner from 5 to 5:45; sophomores 5:45-6:30, etc. If you can’t come at your assigned time, there will be boxed meals available. There are many ways to reduce dining capacity besides that. (Freshman and sophomores dine-in on M/T/W, juniors and seniors Th/F/S; take boxed meals on other days). If doing it by class doesn’t make sense (I know at some schools few upperclassmen are on meal plan; obviously things would have to be adjusted if there aren’t equal numbers), it can be by alphabet (last names A-G, H-O, P-Z).
Anyway, I just don’t completely understand why they can’t eat in dining halls with updated changes (no buffets with shared serving utencils, reduced crowding by staggering attendance times, etc). There could be less waste of plastic takeaway containers, etc.
And if they do insist on only takeaway food, I sure think it would be fair to let the kids off meal plan requirements. While that may jeopardize some dining hall jobs if the kids all prefer to purchase from surrounding restaurants, here are a few thoughts. First, good lesson on how to make competitively appealing food. Second, I would feel awful about job loss, but I don’t care disproportionately about the jobs of university dining hall workers vs. food workers at the town restaurants. Their jobs may equally be at risk if restaurants don’t rebound. So from a societal perspective, there may be no different harm done to food workers if kids are allowed to skip paying for sub-par, over-priced boxed meals.
Ok, this is not a huge concern of mine, but thought it might be fun to mix up the conversation away from some of the aspects of school-in-the-fall that we have gotten stuck on. If no one finds this interesting enough to comment on, please ignore!
^Letting students eat out or do takeout isn’t a good idea. It would necessitate interaction with strangers off campus, introducing another source of possible infections.
Regarding cheating in online courses - in the courses my kids have taken, which are a bunch from all types of providers whose business is dealing with homeschooled kids and/or gifted kids, cheating is not much of an issue.
One provider has an oral exam over Zoom/Skype with each test. It would be apparent if a kid didn’t know what they were talking about in person but somehow knew all the answers in writing.
Another has sophisticated programs I don’t understand to make sure homework is not copied from the web. Years ago, D23 got a warning when she looked up how to solve a type of math problem on the internet…her answer came too close to that website’s, so she didn’t get credit and was sent a warning. She thought she could use the Internet for help since it was homework and not a test - she didn’t mean to cheat and didn’t mean to copy. She remembered the explanation from the site too well and I guess incorporated their wording into her answer without meaning to (she was very young and this was a learning experience for her). Once that happened, the program went through every single one of her past answers to every single week with a fine tooth comb to make sure she hadn’t done the same thing in other problems (she hadn’t). They then made a note on their transcript that an issue had occurred but (in D23’s case) it was just a one time thing with no intent of cheating. But the note is still there. If she needed to use that transcript to apply to colleges (she doesn’t) then that would come across as a negative thing, even though it was not a test and she thought she could use the Internet to better understand that kind of problem. So woe to any kid who actually tries to cheat.
Other courses have very difficult timed open book/note exams. If you don’t already know the material before you start the test, using your notes won’t help you much.
Some have written papers as exams.
Still others have a ton of homework, and if your test grades don’t match the quality of your homework, they start to ask a lot of questions (this was once explained in an email to students at the start of the year).
And so on.
Oh, perhaps that’s true `NJParent. The way they are doing takeout/curbside pickup where I live, there is basically zero human interaction (you prepay with your credit card online or over the phone; they have outdoor tables under tents set up to grab your stuff with the workers far away, etc), so if they have the same protocols at the college town restaurants, then I’d argue that there really isn’t any (remotely perceptible) risk of transmitting the virus to the restaurant workers, but I guess we can’t be sure they have all designed such risk-free interactions. But assuming they have…
Of course there is the tiniest chance that the kids could catch it if the restaurant workers sneezed on their food bags or whatever (although the more you learn, the more you realize that isn’t a real way of transmission), but that would also be true of dining hall workers who go home to their own homes/communities during off hours and could also sneeze on boxed meal packaging.
Re: the online cheating. I see in the Princeton case, many students were caught cheating when a TA “planted” a phony solution on Slader. TA was frustrated, knowing cheating going on. Naturally, the STUDENTS are complaining because they thought they could “trust” the school. Nice pivot to taking the offense instead of taking responsibility 
YES!
I’d be interested in reading your thoughts on a different thread. I read an article just the other day about how students were able to cheat on AP exams. And if there was cheating on AP exams, there was and will be cheating on online college exams.
Couple of thoughts.
I don’t think college visits for high schoolers are going to be allowed in the Fall. Purdue’s plan is no visitors to campus. If they aren’t doing parent weekend, asking us not to visit our kids, now having guest lecturers, I can’t see them allowing campus tours. My D is hearing even recruiting us going to be online in the Fall (but still just a rumor).
I think food is going to be a combination. Sit down will be an option but also “to go”. Sounds like at Purdue, there will be more options “to go” than dining in in terms of food choice.
As for cheating, most of D’s on line exams were open note , open book, calculator allowed, but so long and difficult that you really needed to know your stuff because if you were stopping to look things up, you’d never finish. The mean on her thermo exam with all those things allowed was still only a 60. Other courses went to project based finals. I also heard that some profs used tracking software to try to cut down on cheating.
It’s unfortunate that cheating is such a widespread problem. Kudos to that Princeton TA. IMO those students should be reviewed for expulsion.
If a college does it correctly, its cafeteria/dining hall workers would be specially trained and monitored. Infections, if happened, would also be easier to trace compared to unknown off-campus restaurant workers or delivery personnel.