An interesting case from the University of Texas at Austin reported in the October 4, 2019 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (p. A28) calls attention to shifting ideas about cheating prompted by new technologies. More than 70 students in an online anthropology class had used GroupMe, a messaging app that supports group messages, to share information regarding lab and exam answers. Because the professor had announced a class rule that “Students are not permitted to ask about, discuss, or share information related to exams and labs.” the professor recommended that all students in the group chat receive an F. This led to some students who were on the group chat, but not participating to question the appropriateness of the action.
I am not interested in second guessing the professor who made the class rule clear at the outset, and I am not interested determining if the student members of the GroupMe chat who did not actively participate deserve the F. These are questions best left to the UT deans.
What strikes me as most interesting about this case is that it raises questions about how we think about exams, preparing for exams, and student collaboration. Keeping direct peer assistance with direct exam preparation off limits seems to be the result of assumptions we make about exams as they relate to the content of courses.
We think of exams as efficient ways for instructors to assess whether students have mastered the material in a course. Presumably, the content covered by items on an exam represents a small proportion of the total course content. Only by keeping the exam questions secret can the exam serve as a sample of student overall learning. If students have information about an exam in advance, they can study for the exam and not necessarily study the total content of the course. If many students pool their individual insights about an exam, (however they achieved them), then the problem may well be far worse. Of course, if students have limited or poor information about an exam, then pooling that information may provide them with little exam help even as it causes them to review information from the course.
It seems worth thinking more about the student behaviors that exams motivate and how those behaviors might be shaped to enhance student learning. The current dominant model is that exams drive individual study of a larger body of material than they will actually measure, but instructors might consider reshaping exams to alter student behavior to enhance their learning experience in a course. It might be possible to leverage student collaboration while still preserving the exam as an assessment of individual achievement.
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