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Re: [Phys-l] Cheating, a great argument against online courses.



This anecdotal evidence does show that it is possible to learn a lot from an
online course, but it of course does not show what fraction of students get
by with cheating. The dedicated student will learn, just the same as they
will in regular universities.

So has anyone done a serious study to figure out exactly how many students
do cheat in online courses?? The article that I originally cited was the
memoirs of a ghost writer who has written everything from theses to simple
papers, and lots of term projects.

Some of the students who purchased his services may have actually been
intelligent and may have learned the material, but were seriously deficient
in English. Others may not have learned and were just plain deficient.

Of course in this account, the final certification test is valid in the
sense that it measures something and presents a bar to be jumped. But many
of these certification tests really do not measure well the skills that may
be needed for a particular profession, just as the MCAT, SAT, or GRE scores
are only a very small predictive factor for the final graduation.
Professional exams are better than nothing, because they do keep out the
totally incompetent, but above that level they not as good.

Many of the online universities give degrees that are not accepted such as
nursing degrees. This is because the students do not have the practice that
is given in regular courses. The issue that their default rate on students
loans is high is a separate indicator that they are not doing as good a job
as bricks and mortar schools. But many bricks and mortar schools have
become very expensive with their country club atmospheres.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


I understand now. I do have to disagree with the U of Phx online comment,
however. I have my MAEd in Educational Administration from them and I did
10 times the work and read 10 times more articles and books and did 40-50
times more writing than my colleague who attended a private college in
person. For a degree like this, I think that U of Phx and online
education
is just fine. For a chemistry degree or a teaching credential, I
wouldn't.
I was able to communicate daily with people literally from around the
world
about educational issues and that wouldn't have happened in the classroom.
With one exception, the professors were excellent. I even ended up
working
alongside one of them in my first administrative job. She was a great
person and a great educator.

As for cheating on tests, in an Ed Admin program, there really aren't any
exams. There are papers, projects, online discussions, literature
summaries, assignments (eg. statistics problems) and an action research
project. I had to take a test to get the administrative credential, but
that was taken in person, not online.