Karen Allendoerfer (ravena at cco.caltech.edu) writes
......
> And that professors also play a role in creating an "us against them"
> atmosphere in the classroom, that I see as playing a role in
> encouraging
> cheating.
Is there any justification--EVER--for cheating?
> Out and out copying is of course wrong, but working together
> is something that happens in science all the time. It seems rather
> artificial to force everyone to work alone and penalize them for
> plagarism
> if they work together.
I agree, working together is productive and I'm all in favor.
But a student who copies a colleague's paper without
contributing anything to the work is not
the same as two students working together on a problem. And, yes,
I can usually tell the difference. The problem can be figuring
out which one was the cheater and which the cheatee.
And a student who cheats, cheats the faculty, and
cheats him or herself. The only thing that student cares about
is the grade, not about learning. I don't want such students
in my classes.
Karen is right about defining expectations, and complains about
some examples of rather petty professors. But I think that's a
different issue from the one of cheating. I maintain that there
is never, ever, any justification or excuse for a student to
cheat.
--
-susan
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