Cheating is a very complex issue because there are varing issues that precipitates the act. By no means am I justifying cheating but is the competitive nature of society causing an increase in its incidence? We all want to be sucessful, and the perception of success is good grades, good GPAs and recognition as we transition from educational institutions into the world of work. Maybe the delivery and assessment of students need to be redefined as our societies evolve.

@Kim - absolutely: delivery and assessment need to be reconsidered.

Society is a complex and emergent thing that results from the interactions of people, their history, their geography, their written and unwritten rules, their methods, processes and technologies. I think it is wrong to call society competitive: people within it can be competitive, and the processes we design or that emerge as a result of our design can affect the extent to which that occurs and the effects that result. If we design processes that enable and reward cheating and we don't like the results, then it is imperative that we change those processes. As @Jim says, re-examining the assessment is one way we inside the educational system can make a small difference and, if enough of us do that, we might help to bring about big change. But it is just part of the process. If we can change the norms, then we can prepare more fertile ground for disruptive innovations that will (I hope) sweep through the broader social system. I see some positive signs: things like the systemic disruption that MOOCs are bringing about (not MOOCs themselves, for the most part), the increasingly widespread use of social media to measure reputation, the growth of alternative learning organizations like free universities and the massive disruption caused by simple but large-scale learning tools like Google Search and Wikipedia appear to be coming together to at least stir things up a little. In its own small way, AU has helped to contribute to that change, by showing that distance education can work, by using methods that are outside the mainstream, and by piloting techniques and approaches that, while fitting into traditional structures, slightly undermine them.

Jon

Just a confirmation of what Jim and I mentioned:

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/asia-pacific/not-enough-jobs-to-go-round-for-chinas-6-3-million-graduates-a-year

We can disapprove of cheating, but to them completing the education almost means the difference between life and death, and even then the prospects are not good. Therefore it is necessary, and I would probably be tempted to do the same, considering these factors. It is not an education, instead it is nothing more than a competition for your existence.

Sasa

Yes - learners need feedback and we (both learners and teachers) need to know what works, but grades for learning are deeply harmful. By making success dependent on and measured by extrinsic factors you don't just take away the value of doing things for their own sake, you actively demotivate the very people you are trying to help, whether you give good grades or bad ones. Worse are the life-lessons we take away from it: we learn to work within such a system so grades become important to us (often the most important things) and drive our behaviour. And, for many of us, similar reward processes occur in a lot of workplaces with equally awful effects. Hard to think of anything other than physical punishment that could do more damage! It is an endemic sickness in our educational and business systems - although I do what I can to reduce the damage in my own courses, I am as guilty as anyone of fitting in with this terrible system, because the pressures to conform are intense. And yes, I feel proud when my own kids get good grades and concerned when they do not. It's a vicious system.

For unequivocal proof of the problem as well as some fairly good ideas about solutions, I very highly recommend Alfie Kohn's brilliant book, Punished by Rewards. It was written in 1999 but is as relevant today as when it was written. I challenge anyone who reads it to go away unaffected: it piles on layer after layer of meticulously researched and overwhelming evidence from decades of experiments and studies across education and business sectors that conclusively demonstrate the harm grading can do.

I was taking a break from filling in report cards when I happened on your posts - seems I can't get away from the questions report cards and assessment raise.  

Kohn's idealistic view of school overlooks the culturalization aspect of public education.  Ideally, schooling and education would allow people to pursue their passions and talents but those who pay for the privilege of education demand accountability.  So, in a tax funded system, everyone has opinions about how the education system needs to be accountable.

Education has different purposes for different parts of society.  For many parents, it's a daycare and education is a nasty side-effect that brings back the anxiety they suffered in school - a detrimental effect of assessment.  For seniors, it's a drain on their tax bill (the school tax) but it does keep kids off the street. (We were reminded of this by peoples' reactions when we had the kids in Jasper on a field trip.)  For businesses, it's a means of developing tools (employees) they can hone to improve their production and profitability.  So the unspoken belief that the person who pays is entitled to direct the process has a greater influence on education than is evident.

I understand the sense of ownership in education that comes from paying a share of it and I'd like to see an equally sustained effort at coming to a concensus as to just what the purpose of education is. Parents - at least those I work with - want their children to be happy and to not have to work too hard.  Employers want graduates with a work ethic and basic skills.  Alberta Education wants students with a work ethic, solid character and a good grasp of literacy, numeracy, technology, science, a bit of history and geography and exposure to fine arts.  Having said this, they maintain a policy that the parent is the primary educator and has the final say in their child's education.  With so many masters, it's no wonder that there are conflicting views of grading and testing.

At the risk of exposing my end of June cynicism, I find most telling part of your quote, Jon, states that grading and tests are  "devices whereby those with more power induce those with less to do something."  That often is a large part of teacher "conversations" with students. One of the original purposes of public education (in Canada at least) was to inculcate the dominant culture into the less dominant cultures e.g. original proposal for English only education in Quebec and the residential school systems for First Nations students. In the 21st century, our masters are large corporations, so we try to measure education in terms that can ultimately be measured in dollars and cents e.g. the recent funding changes in post-secondary education in Alberta.

Until educators claim expertise in learning and teaching and become masters of our destiny and the learning of our students, we will continue to be serving too many interests to be truly effective.  In a perfect world, Alfie Kohn is right.  Unfortunately, we're not in a perfect world yet.

@Mary - yes, a very imperfect world and the educational system serves a great many other purposes that have nothing whatsoever to do with learning. But wouldn't it be a great idea if it was about learning, given that it seems a fairly important part of the definition of it!  When things are wrong, though, we need to fight them and change them, wherever and whenever we can.

We might not be able to bring about immediate revolution but we can make little changes here and there that will slowly change mistaken, counter-factual beliefs. Getting rid of grades when they cause nothing at all but harm is one way to start. Even if we do accept that something like them is occasionally needed for now, that doesn't mean we should apply them to every piece of work our students do. Killing off performance-related pay is another -  given overwhelming evidence that it actively reduces productivity, job satisfaction and retention, even (in fact, especially) for those that are rewarded, it is hard to see why anyone would object to that. When people see higher profits and more motivated staff, it is difficult for them to argue for continuing the same counter-productive methods in schools and universities. Disseminating the evidence of the harm extrinsic motivators cause is another.  The more we do such small common-sense things and tell people about them, the more we can change attitudes so that, eventually, when we finally get round to doing something about the big stuff, no one will find it very odd.

Delicious irony: "... archaic learning management systems ..."

We can't even get our professors to stop using photocopied transparencies on overhead projectors!

(Edit: "our professors" means where I work - it wasn't aimed at AU. I'm not sure what classroom experiences are like at AU, but I suspect the large distance learning components probably drive technology adoption)

More links:

http://www.ht2.co.uk/ben/?p=478

http://www.downes.ca/post/60529

Update - much of the course is on Moodle!

I know I sound cynical - but my first instinct is that this is unlikely to drive acceptance by the established schools. On the other hand, we have just switched to 14 week semesters, delivered in a 7-1-7 block (the single week is a reading/project week). We are somewhat working towards a 7 week delivery model - but I think the idea is to compress 14 weeks of delivery into 7 weeks - so the total number of hours doesn't change.

Just to be completely sure I understand the graph - course length is in the x-axis?

Yes, the x axis is number of weeks.

Not cynical at all - quite realistic. I posted this as part of a blog post that I've been too busy lately to finish (coming very soon) which makes a similar point, that formal ed is driven by an assortment of forces that inevitably gravitate to a particular and counter-educational fixed size. I think the really interesting thing that the current trend in MOOCs is showing is that this is crazy and has to change!