Coursera Turns to Student Honor Codes

Media reports have described how students are cheating in at least three Coursera classes. The charges came to light when students complained on course discussion boards about plagiarism, leading the massive online open course site to institute additional honor-code reminders students must read and sign off on before submitting assignments to be graded.

That development probably shouldn’t come as a surprise since student cheating is nothing new. In fact, a 2011 Pew survey found that 55% of college presidents responding to the poll said they'd seen a rise in plagiarism over the last 10 years and 89% of those presidents blamed it on Internet and online classes.

The real question is why bother to cheat at all since the class is free and the student doesn’t receive credit?

Torrie Bosch, editor of Future Tense, which covers emerging technologies for Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University, says she believes it has to do with the “gamification.” Some individuals are so driven to do better in everything, whether a game or an assignment, that they’ll turn to cheating when it becomes frustrating.

“Technically, using cheat codes while playing a game at home for fun or copy-pasting a couple of sentences from Wikipedia on a Coursera assignment doesn’t hurt anybody,” Bosch wrote. “But it does diminish the experience for those who are playing by the rules, as evidenced by the many Coursera students who took to their class discussion boards to complain when they uncovered instances of plagiarism.”

EPIC 2020: A Bleak Future for Higher Ed

William Sams, recently appointed interim associate provost for information technology and chief information officer at Ohio University, has a rather dark view of the future of higher education.

In his world, campuses will be reserved for the ultra-wealthy or athletically gifted because most college degrees will have been replaced by badges earned through free online courses. In addition, Apple will buy Amazon to become a learning resource giant, Google will deliver free online classes called Evolving Personal Information Construct (EPIC) where students can earn those badges, and all of it will happen by 2020. Sams presented his observations in a web video called EPIC 2020 (embedded below).

“It’s not my sole objective to be right or wrong here, but to get people talking about things that need to be discussed,” Sams told eCampus News. “All of us are trapped in the paradigm of how things have been, the system we’ve existed in all our lives. A lot of [educators] have a worldview that makes it impossible for them to even see solutions to problems that exist today.”

In the video, Sams predicts Congress will eliminate Pell Grants next year, students will demand colleges only charge for learning assessment, and new funding will go to free online learning platforms to fill the void left by the disruption of traditional higher education. In addition, Apple buys Amazon to create the world’s largest content-distribution site, called Applezon.

“I see some of those things happening,” Martin Van Der Werf, a blogger for The College of 2020 ed-tech site, told eCampus News. “They won’t replace higher ed altogether, but serve some pockets of higher ed. The video is almost a work of science fiction, and the value in sci-fi is that it helps you image worlds that don’t exist yet. Sci-fi stories draw plausible scenarios that make you think of what is possible, and that’s why this video might be valuable.”

One of Sams’ projections is already starting to come to fruition. On July 10, Google launched its first free online class, called Power Searching with Google. Students will use Google+ groups to discuss class materials and will earn a certificate when they finish the course.

Online Course Services Reaching Milestone Numbers

Coursera announced recently it has registered one million students for its free online courses, while rival Udacity says it has more than 739,000 students signed up for its massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The idea of free online courses is attractive, even though no university credit is earned in many MOOCs. It helps that a number of top-flight universities have signed on with Coursera and Udacity has some of the best-known scholars in the country providing its educational material.

While a million registered students sounds impressive, some details—such as whether a student signed up for a course but didn’t actually follow through on the assignments—are not spelled out. However, such milestone numbers are the type of figures that will make news as the media tries to explain how education is coping in the age of high tech.

Is the Time Right for BYOT?

Making use of the technology many students bring to class each day is a touchy subject. Many educators view it as a distraction and even more see it as unfair to those students who cannot afford electronic gadgets, such as an iPhone or Kindle. But that could be changing.

Eric Sheninger, principal of New Milford High School in New Jersey and education writer for The Huffington Post, makes a case for the idea of “Bring Your Own Technology” in a SmartBlog post,  claiming a BYOT program is a way to “leverage a variety of devices that many students already have.” His school piloted a BYOT initiative for seniors, and then expanded it because he felt the program provided real value for both students and teachers.

Sheninger found that students need to view their devices as mobile learning tools and that the school had to adopt language to promote that notion. It’s also important to have professional development and resources available to teachers so they can create lessons specifically connected to the device.

The New Milford BYOT program increased access to technology and encouraged students to use their devices for educational purposes outside the classroom. Acceptable-use policies were required, but it was found those policies could be aligned with policies already in place a school’s discipline code.

In addition, Sheninger knows equity is a large issue facing BYOT and agrees schools should provide for all. But he also considers it an excuse for not moving forward.

“Instead of bashing BYOT and saying how and why it won’t work or is unfair, we would be best served to brainstorm ways in which it can become an educational component of our schools,” he wrote. “The excuses to write off BYOT only serve to undermine the students that we are tasked with educating.”

Gates Talks About Transforming Higher Education

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awards grants to individuals and groups committed to fixing “inefficiencies” in higher education rather than hoping for change by throwing new gadgets at the problem. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, talks about his vision for using technology to transform colleges and universities in these videos from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

On the role of business in higher education:

On tablets in the classroom: On MOOC’s: