SALT LAKE CITY — A New York University professor wrote a blog post earlier this week saying that he will never pursue cheating in his classes again.
The computer science professor used a plagiarizing detector program called Turnitin in his class last fall and after confronting the class about the results, he had 22 out of his 108 students admit to cheating, reported Business Insider on Wednesday.
"Most of the assignments included at least 20 percent plagiarized material, and in some cases far more," stated Bloomberg Businessweek, who interviewed the professor this week. "All received negative grades for the plagiarized assignments. Two of the students ultimately left the class."
But this incident of cheating is not isolated. NPR reported last year that in a survey of 14,000 undergraduate students over a four-year time period, "about two-thirds of students admitted to cheating on things like tests, homework and assignments."
But many professors are unsure of the best way to deal with this behavior and NYU professor Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis believed his pursuit of cheaters not only disrupted his teaching — as he told Bloomberg Businessweek, his class became "contentious and awkward" — but it also affected his pay. Ipeirotis received a low evaluation score that semester (about a point below what he normally gets) and he said his subsequent yearly salary increase was the lowest he had gotten (lower than inflation) due to the low student evaluation score.
"Was it worth it? Absolutely not," Inside Higher Ed quoted the professor from his now-deleted blog post. "Not only [have] I paid a significant financial penalty for 'doing the right thing' (was I?) but I was also lectured by some senior professors that I 'should change slightly my assignments from year to year.' (Thanks for the suggestion, buddy, this is exactly how I detected the cheaters) ... I also did not like the overall teaching experience, and this was the most important thing for me. Teaching became annoying and tiring. There was a very different dynamic in class, which I did not particularly enjoy. It was a feeling of 'me-against-them' as opposed to the much more pleasant 'these things that we are learning are really cool!'"
Although the original blog post was removed due to possible legal ramifications, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ipeirotis reposted part of his blog under the featured comments on Business Insider. In it, he describes his dilemma and believes that most professors just let the ambiguous cheating cases "slide" and that he too had done that in previous years. He also reiterates that "fighting cheating is just *not* advisable: it is emotionally draining, a time sink, and it is not advantageous to the career of the faculty member, financially or academically."
His solution to the cheating problem — "as educators we should be focusing on making cheating impossible. Not through enforcement but by designing evaluation schemes that are much less amenable to cheating."
His suggestions included having the projects be made public, having in-class competitions where winners get extra points (incentivizing students to work harder on the assignments) and having peers review projects and in-class presentations, which adds social pressure to do better work.
"I want to make my assignments structurally cheating-proof," the professor wrote. "Because simply detecting and fighting cheating is a losing game, no matter how many resources you put into it."
To see the top 10 cheating scandals in college history as reported by Online Degree Programs, click here.
For more facts about plagiarism and preventing it, click here.
EMAIL: slenz@desnews.com