Blog Post 7

Many classes I have taken have required attendance and require you to sign in or answer an I-clicker question in order to receive credit; however, all of them offered at least a few free absences. In my experience, most days this greatly increased the overall class attendance, but for a few days out of the year attendance would drop off significantly. Classes on Fridays before breaks or long weekends had a significantly lower attendance, even lower than those with no attendance policy. Much like the article that talked about how more parents were late to pick up their kids after a fine was imposed, students were more likely to skip classes that required attendance but offered a few days of allowed skips. When these students use their free skips, they are essentially purchasing an absence. They don’t feel bad about skipping class because they are giving up one of their free absences. Attendance in all classes before break is generally lower but having a certain number of absences seems to increase the number of students who skip class before breaks. This is also nearly identical to the example about the firehouse that imposed a strict amount of sick days, and after sick days were mostly taken on or near holidays. People don’t seem to care as much when there is a set price for their actions.

When I was in engineering, a few classes had quizzes that had to be taken at the CBTF (Computer Based Testing Facility). The CBTF is essentially a computer lab with a proctor and the computers had limited capabilities. This allows professors to use online exams and hopefully limit the amount of cheating. The one class that I had to take that utilized this facility was Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM210). In this class we had bi-weekly quizzes and were given a four-day window where we could schedule a time slot to take the quiz in the CBTF. The window typically started Tuesday morning and ended Friday night, and without fail Fridays always had the fewest available times. An optimist would likely assume that this is because that’s when students have the fewest classes or they want the extra time to study. However, the longer I was in the class the more obvious it became that the real reason was because it made it very easy to cheat.

I never cheated on these quizzes; however, a large portion of students did. The way these quizzes were created and taken made it very easy for students to cheat. Every quiz was only four to seven questions, and each question was some type of physics question. Solving these questions basically involved creating force equations from diagrams and then using these equations to solve for some unknown variable.  Each student that takes these quizzes would get the same scenario, but they had different numbers. This stopped people from remembering the exact answers and telling them to a friend, but because all these questions were the same situation it was very easy to remember the diagrams and the method to solve them. I knew people who would take turns taking the quizzes first so that every time at least one of them would receive a good grade. Cheating was so rampant that before classes within the quiz window, I could here other students discussing the quizzes and how to solve them. When given a set amount of time to take the quizzes, it makes cheating very easy. I knew people who would be considered moral and wouldn’t lie or cheat on nearly anything, but they cheated on these quizzes. It was so easy to talk about and so many others were cheating, they likely didn’t feel guilty. In the article about fairness it made it clear that generally people want to be treated fairly, so they could’ve felt that because so many others were cheating their cheating, in their minds, levelled the playing ground. These quizzes were extremely difficult, which could also likely explain the large amount of cheating. However, it was clear that the main driver of cheating was giving students a window to take the quiz. I didn’t cheat and didn’t want to get involved in it, so I never learned why so many students cheated. I also took this class nearly two years ago, so I’m not sure if the class is run the same way, but I hope that they found a better way to administer their exams or quizzes.