McKeachie described recommendations to prevent cheating in Chapter 10. I felt this some of the most useful information in the whole chapter because, according to McKeachie, it seems that cheating is common and inevitable in every class. Therefore, tips to help reduce the instances and probability of cheating are going to be useful. Since I'm more interested in what the student's learned rather than if the students are getting good grades, I feel these tips are helpful to get that point across to my students. The author makes an interesting point that students often engage in cheating due to the pressure of grades and that they believe there is a large reward for success at any cost. This means that they are looking at the potential of a good grade, good GPA, graduating, and getting a job rather than the immediate cost of cheating. Thus the first recommendation is reduce the pressure. This could mean providing a number of opportunities, rather than just one or two exams, to earn a grade.
From the First Day to Final Grade, I felt some of the most useful information regarded fair grading strategies. Grading fairly is an important issue in all fields and from both student and teacher perspectives. I feel the advice this chapter gives helps because I constantly worry while grading the papers and exams as a TA that I'm grading too harsh or worry that I gave one student too little or too many points and spend too much time going back and re-reading student responses.
I particularly would like to implement one of the useful strategies in which the professor waits to assign grades until after he or she has read all of the papers. Then the papers are put in order of quality and the grades are assigned within that range. I like this idea because often as a graduate student, and I'm sure it will only get worse, I lose touch and forget what an average range of abilities for an undergraduate is. An alternative to this method, which I feel would be equally affective and perhaps the two could be combined, is to grade the paper immediately, but place the grade on a separate sheet of paper so that it can be reassessed. All too often when I'm grading I give a student a so/so grade only to find their answer was the best out of the bunch when I'm finished. Now I have to go through and regrade them according to the class's ability. The only time this would be difficult to implement in the field is that, psychology being as popular undergrad major as it is, many of the classes are very large. For example, this would be nearly impossible to implement in the current class I TA for of 200 and even harder in the intro class of 500 I TA'ed last year. There is no way I could remember each student's responses in order to put them in order of quality. Here I think the best solution would be to grade using criterion grading.I also felt the information on grading group work, found in First Day to Final Grade, was extremely useful because all of us have experience in being in a group, but I don't have experience in having to assess or grade a group project. I want to give the students the important opportunity of working together, but I also want to ensure that I am grading fairly. The authors state that professors tend to lean towards one of two groups: those who love group work or those who believe group work allows lazy students to ride the coattails of harder working students. I happen to belong to the group that believes group work allows lazy students an easy way out. I probably believe this due to my own personal experiences as an undergraduate student. Obviously group work is still important because it mirrors real life and provides students with an opportunity to learn valuable interpersonal skills. Therefore, I felt the book was useful in that it outlined pro's and con's of different grading styles of group work. Personally, I felt the pro they described of giving each student the same group grade that the book listed was soft. They said the pro was that it was easy for the professor to give everyone the same grade, and I don't feel this is a valid reason and that this grading method does not let the grade represent the achievement and ideals that McKeachie stated grades should represent. I feel a better solution was the alternative the chapter offered.
I would implement that each students grade is based on individual contribution to the group. I thought the step by step approach provided by the chapter (assign over all grade, ask each student to rate other student's contributions, average percentages, take percentage of overall grade). I also felt that the con (tension between group members) could be overcome. If each student knows they need to contribute before hand, why should they feel tension towards other members. Also, I've played with the idea of not letting the students know that they will be rating each other until after the group project is completed. Then I would ask the students to spur of the moment rate their group members. This way it would be confidential and group members could not influence other group members. After the first time, if i utilize group work again, students should understand that contribution to the group is important. I also feel that a solution could be to assign "roles" in the groups. Then each time a group project is assigned, the "roles" can be switched. This would eliminate the excuse that one student dominated the project and did not allow others to contribute. I feel that grading group work on individual contributions should be implemented in the psychology field. As a social science, much of the work we do concerns people, individuals and groups. Before we can understand group dynamics, we must first experience them. Psychology classes should implement more group work (but like I said, I'm against it purely because I have been abused by lazy students in the past) and grade it based on individual contribution.
A few final and quick suggestions from this weeks readings that I found useful and that I plan to implement in my own teaching is the suggestions of passing out grades at the end of class in order to avoid students looking over their grades or creating a negative atmosphere to teach in and the helpful hints on how to implement a successful discussion of difficult sections. Lastly, I personally have my own personal idea about missing exams. I had one teacher who I deeply respected who had a no missed exams at all policy. She stated that since we have the syllabus ahead of time, she felt we should be able to respect her enough to respect those dates and be there on those dates. I probably wouldn't go this far because I understand emergencies happen, having had family members funerals and things that are unplanned for occur last minute. I feel that I would allow students to drop one exam, as stated earlier it alleviates some pressure and hopefully prevents some cheating, and further than that, I might (might) implement all essay exam for those who need to make it up.
Additional Helpful Links:- I had some trouble embedding the video so here's the url for the TOP TEN WAYS STUDENTS CHEAT
- A very funny guide to grading exams
- Facebook use Linked to Lower Grades in College
- How to Grade Fairly and Accurately
- Tips: Grading Group Work from the Center of Teaching Learning and Technology
An interesting side note: One of my favorite ways a student has cheated in classes I've TA'ed for (other than the obvious of looking at others papers) involve the student taping a cheat sheet to the floor and placing his feet over top of it. Pretty smart right? In a class of 500 how would we ever see his feet? He sat in the last chair of the row, practically in the aisle up which three proctors paced constantly. Another, fairly common, way I've experienced here at MSU was students using their mp3 players to download vocab words and listen to them during the exam and also using electronic translators in order to look up definitions of word english (basically using only the dictionary function rather than the translator function).
Solid entry. I loved the images that you included for illustration.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason for giving each member of the group the same grade - beyond making life easier for the teacher - is to prepare students for the reality of group work in the real world, where they will be evaluated as a team, based on the overall quality of the project, rather than their individual effort. This may be more applicable in the Communication field than in Psychology, as P.R. and advertising people often work in teams.
That said, I understand your disinclination toward group work. As an undergraduate, I also resented it, mostly because I felt like others were less invested in doing well (and consequently put in far less effort). The grading schemas you described are one way to combat this problem.