Coursera Adds Honor Code Prompt in Response to Reports of Plagiarism | Hacker News Reader

Coursera Adds Honor Code Prompt in Response to Reports of Plagiarism

chronicle.com

16 pointsiProject15 comments

It's worth noting that this isn't the addition of an honor code. Prior to this, every student already agrees to an honor code when they visit the active class page for the first time. The new part is that they're adding a click-through reminder about the honor code when you submit an essay for grading.

“A large part of the plagiarism arises from lack of understanding of the expected standards of behavior in U.S. academic institutions"

Or maybe it arises from perfect understanding of the standard of behaviors in US academic institutions. As article notes, 43% in the US admit to cheating. Truth is probably even higher. I'm not faulting Coursera for doing what they think will work to curb cheating, but this idea that cheaters are the "other" from countries where they don't know any better is ridiculous.

> "As article notes, 43% in the US admit to cheating."

Actually, the article references another article on their site which references a survey:

http://chronicle.com/article/High-Tech-Cheating-on-Homework/...

The second article states the survey, done by "Center for Academic Integrity", found 22% admitted to cheating on tests, which is the traditional idea of cheating, and 43% admit to "unauthorized collaboration on homework".

Unfortunately, the article does not properly cite its sources. In particular, it does not name the survey, who did the survey, how many participants were involved, what the range of errors is, what the definition of "unauthorized collaboration" is, how the question was phrased, or which of numerous "Center for Academic Integrity" was involved. The most prominent according to Google seems to be the "International Center for Academic Integrity" at a Clemson University, but I was not able to find a reference on their site to such a study.

This is a good example of the problem with not properly attributing one's sources such as "The Chronicle of Higher Education" is doing. Readers can not evaluate the quality of claims in the article if they can not reliably locate the sources and read the parameters and constraints of referenced surveys and studies. It's very unprofessional not to properly cite sources in formal publications and articles.

> "this idea that cheaters are the "other" from countries where they don't know any better is ridiculous"

In my experience (personally as an adjunct professor, and in frequent discourse with other college professors making the same observations) most students in US engineering courses for the last 25 years are nationals from various asian nations. In many other countries collaboration on homework is expected and normal and students are not taught that failure to show sources is plagiarism. Only copying answers on a test is considered cheating in much of the world. Because of this, the majority of cheating in engineering classes is done by foreign students. Much of this is unintentional because they are simply unaware and were raised in a different system. In some cases, students receive sophisticated assistance from their home country, for example Chinese students in some courses have bound Chinese language translations of class-and-professor-specific course materials, including appendices full of past course exams for a given class, with answers and explanations. Making use of any and all resources one has access to, without feeling the need to attribute or explain its provenance is considered common sense, not cheating. Explaining US standards of academic behavior at least provides those who are unaware of these standards an opportunity to adjust their behavior to conform to US (or possibly western) standards of what is considered cheating.

Cautious readers will at this point be observing with delighted skepticism and awareness of irony that - as I post anonymously using an alias - my personal history claims above are not a reliable source and barely qualify as anecdotal.

A lot of people do not understand what plagiarism exactly means. Of course, there are those who do and brag about it but there are a set of students who do not understand what it means to plagiarize. Plagiarism is a wrong path to tread and this should be explained - perhaps a course on History of Plagiarism by Coursera?

It's adorable watching professors try to inflict their honor codes on the entire world. Honor codes only work in the context of a community. Universities can have honor codes because they control economic penalties if you violate them (failure/expulsion/non-transferrable records).

Is there any disadvantage to cheating on an anonymous website course (other than personally not knowing the material)?

You can't compare the motives of an upper middle class suburban American kid with the popular view of China/India/"Over There" where everything is copied, cheated, and broken down in a dog-eat-dog society.

Their official statement shows obliviousness to cross cultural issues and societal norms: “A large part of the plagiarism arises from lack of understanding of the expected standards of behavior in U.S. academic institutions, especially among students who have not been trained in such institutions,” said Daphne Koller, a co-founder of the company and a Stanford University professor, in an e-mail interview. “We believe that this language will be quite helpful.”

Is the answer truly "U.S. academic institutions are infallible and the world must comply to our standards?"

>>"Is there any disadvantage to cheating on an anonymous website course (other than personally not knowing the material)?"

Is there any advantage to cheating in Coursera? Coursera doesn't offer certification.

>>Is the answer truly "U.S. academic institutions are infallible and the world must comply to our standards?"

No the answer is "Students shouldn't be plagiarizing because they won't get any of the benefit from actually doing their homework."

>"Is there any advantage to cheating in Coursera? Coursera doesn't offer certification."

Yeah. I thought the whole purpose of the open courseware initiative was placing the learning of content ahead of the "credit". If you choose to cheat, who cares? You are only hurting yourself.

Coursera emails you a certificate of completion when you finish a course. From comments in their discussion forums, it seems like some students are using these certificates to get partial credit towards courses at their own university, or to show to employers as a proof of their development, etc. So unfortunately there is an incentive for some people to cheat on the courses.

Maybe to promote the "learning over credit" model, Coursera shouldn't attempt to stop any kind of plagiarism. This would make the certificate essentially worthless, which would promote learning only for the sake of learning.

That purpose doesn't obviate social proof.

Coursera is based in the US and taught by US professors. Their teaching methods are based on US societal norms because that's what they believe to be most effective. If you disagree, you're free to not take their classes. You're also free to take your unique insight into cross-cultural education and start a competing site that embraces cheating - I'm sure the students from China/India/"Over There" that you stereotyped as cheaters will abandon Coursera in droves and flock to you. Good luck!

Honour codes do work-- see Ariely's book on honesty: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062183591?ie=UTF8&camp... (quote from blurb: Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.)

Also, cheating on an exam is a classic tragedy of the commons-- if everyone did it, course grades are meaningless. And yes, this comment has rather misinformed views of "over there".

> You can't compare the motives of an upper middle class suburban American kid with the popular view of China/India/"Over There" where everything is copied, cheated, and broken down in a dog-eat-dog society.

Wow, you just insulted a significant chunk of the HN readership.

EDIT: You should carefully consider your words before you speak, and perhaps also re-consider your values and opinion of other cultures.

Hmmm. I think I must have clicked through this the other day when I signed up for the machine learning class. There was something that looked a bit like an EULA.

To people that think that this is about societal norms and people from Asia not understanding plagiarism is unethical ... How can you really believe that? That's just multicultural BS. They understand it is unethical, they just don't care for whatever reason -- they aren't that naive. You'd have to be mentally very childish to not to understand that. The same goes for corruption, people in the third world understand it's not good - they aren't deluded everyone.

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