My confusion-radar perks up whenever I see the word "Postmodern" used, and especially when it is used in some neologistic phrase that I've not heard before.
The May 14 issue of BusinessWeek magazine had a commentary piece by Michelle Conlin titled
"Cheating -- or Postmodern Learning?". It mentions Duke Business School, and reports that they recently had 10% of their class of 2008 caught cheating on a take-home final exam. It doesn't mention any details of the Duke situation, such as what kind of final exam it was, or exactly how the students supposedly cheated. That would have been very helpful for the rest of this commentary, as you'll see. Instead the commentary wants to raise the notion that there is a fuzzy ethical line in such contexts between "sharing" or "collaborating" and outright "cheating".
I don't see it all. She writes:
It's easy to imagine the explanations these MBAs, who are mulling an appeal, might come up with. Teaming up on a take-home exam: That's not academic fraud, it's postmodern learning, wiki style. Text-messaging exam answers or downloading essays onto iPods: That's simply a wise use of technology.
One can understand the confusion. This is a generation that came of age nabbing music off Napster and watching bootlegged Hollywood blockbusters in their dorm rooms. "What do you mean?" you can almost hear them saying. "We're not supposed to share?"
Well, hold on. Teaming up on a take-home exam is OK if the professor has said it is OK, otherwise the assumption must be that your exam should reflect your understanding and work only. That is the basic difference between an exam and a group-project. Text-messaging each other answers during an exam is cheating, pure and simple. The folks who "nabbed music off Napster" were stealing property, pure and simple. The fact that most of a generation of young people don't understand this doesn't change the facts: it just speaks to a massive failing of education and personal responsibility in this country.
Conlin continues:
That's not to say that university administrators should ignore unethical behavior, if it in fact occurred. But in this wired world, maybe the very notion of what constitutes cheating has to be reevaluated. The scandal at Duke points to how much the world has changed, and how academia and corporations are confused about it all, sending split messages.
We're told it's all about teamwork and shared information. But then we're graded and ranked as individuals. We assess everybody as single entities. But then we plop them into an interdependent world and tell them their success hinges on creative collaboration.
Is this really all that confusing? I don't think so. I don't think we need to "reevaluate what constitutes cheating." If a professor's instructions for a final exam or a class project are vague or unclear, then they are at fault. And perhaps professors need to be even
more clear about what constitutes cheating and what does not, in light of the growing emphasis on collaboration in so many aspects of life (which is a good thing of course). But assuming that the professor is clear that their final exam is what most final exams are (whether take home or in-class) -- that they are intended to be assessments of the knowledge or skills gained by each individual -- independently of others -- then I just don't see that the students have much of a defense if they are caught copying each others work or whatnot. So that is why the lack of any additional information about the Duke case is so important here -- without knowing that, we can't make a judgement as to whether the Professor was vague or the students cheated. In either case though, I don't see the emergence of a fuzzy-ethics conundrum.
Her paragraph that begins "We're told..." is blantant context-dropping with the purpose of obfuscation of the issues. Teamwork and sharing information are praiseworthing in certain contexts only. Exams, typically, are for evaluating individuals. And the fact that we "plop them into an interdependent world" and "tell them that their success hinges on creative collaboration"... so what? This doesn't negate the fact that final exams are traditionally used to evaluate individuals as individuals, everyone knows this, and assuming the professor hasn't said otherwise, it would be bizarre to now just assume otherwise.
To be fair, her next paragraph shows that Conlin does understand the need to evaluate individuals as individuals:
The new culture of shared information is vastly different from the old, where hoarding information was power. But professors--and bosses, for that matter--need to be able to test individual ability. For all the talk about workforce teamwork, there are plenty of times when a person is on his or her own, arguing a case, preparing a profit and loss statement, or writing a research report.
And then her final paragraph she also writes: "This is in no way a pass on those who consciously break the rules." So that is good to see.
But I just think she is giving way to much strength to the potential claims of cheaters that they were somehow confused by "mixed messages" from society. As long as there are no mixed-messages or ambiguities coming from their instructor, there is no problem here and cheaters have no excuse.
And finally, getting back to the use of "Postmodern Learning" in the title of her commentary, what is "Postmodern" about it (whatever that even means)? And to what extent is the type of thing being described in this commentary "Learning" at all? I don't deny that people can learn by working together, collaborating on a project, and so on -- that is all obvious. But one example in the commentary was from a Stanford professor, who spoke approvingly of someone who "found somebody to help you write an exam". Well again, if the exam is a traditional one that was intended to test the knowledge of each individual, then this is cheating -- it isn't an assessment of learning, of any variety, postmodern or otherwise.
Labels: academia, technology
