[Bf-education] Student Cheating

[Peter Romero, M.Ed.]

I have been an educator for the past 30 years.  I started my first program
experience with Fortran on punch cards and started using Blender shortly
after it came out.  Here are my thoughts on this topic of cheating.

Cheating comes from two states: (1) a student who doesn't want to do the
work but wants to get credit. (2) The environment lends itself to
temptation.  The 2nd is easy, you must have a presence in the classroom,
and the students must know it.  Trust is admirable, but leaving a test
paper on your desk, not supervising a group, or moving around leads to
temptation.  Why offer it?

More technology (cell phones, flash drives) makes hiding and transferring
information very easy.  Back in the late 1990's, my students were taking a
math test and I watched with interest one young man who was very concern
with the time.  He continued to monitor his watch as if he were setting
times on each question.  I got up slowly and took a tour of the class and
eventually circled behind him to find his watch was a monitor with
equations he had typed and loaded into his watch.  My first tech cheat!

Of all the suggestions made thus far on this board, I think the best is
personalization.  Whether the assignment in programming or animation I
think having everyone make the same thing creates temptation.  What I do on
these type of exams is have students hand in a sketch of their drawing with
an explanation as to what they will develop on the screen, or how the
program should work if completed correctly.  Students are encouraged in the
programming classes to find ways on how to simplify the program for the
same results or to make comments in the program on their experiences in
developing particularly parts of the program that were hard to develop.

Modeling and animation should have pre-drawings in the form of
storyboards.  The storyboard would detail what initial steps the student
will start out with and how the rest of the piece will come together.
Having students share how they will create and develop gives us insights
into their thinking processes.  Valuable, if we can give the student
insights that might help them.  We as educators can move from teacher to
mentor and that also offers students an opportunity to seek advice and more
importantly learn how to ask the 'right' question.  I believe that teaching
students how to ask their own questions will be a life skill more important
than the subject matter we teach.
-- 
Peter Romero, M.Ed., B.S.I.T.
"I am not a teacher, but an awakener!"  Robert Frost
PST
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