thestudygroups

Seemingly as a direct response to the Facebook flap, thestudygroups.com is a website that has popped up to allow students to share answers anonymously. It’s already picked up some press (GN) and I’m sure the same circles that were involved with the facebook story will pick it up soon as well.

Now while I have nothing against students working together, getting together and sharing answers, this is something else. The only reason for this service to exist is to swap answers and to do it anonymously. What’s the difference? Well when you work with people/names/faces, then there is some social karma involved with getting those answers that you don’t work for because you have to (likely) give answers into the common pool as well, and if they are not done well, the network will quickly limit the value of your contributions. I don’t know if the same thing happens on this site, but I’m thinking that it doesn’t.

Now that we have sites that promote plaigerism and sites out there to stop it, it seem that the “arms” race for academic integrity is really starting to escalate. The ‘net has been a source of answers for a long time, and now it’s getting easier all the time. If people keep turning in answers that they didn’t work for then the already diluted value of a degree is not going to get any higher.

A solution? Don’t assign “homework” that has “answers” – assign problems that explore concepts. This way no site will be able to “help” students get the “right” answer for a problem set. But what is the problem with alternative assessments like this? They are more work for the instructor – instructors that are already overworked (and at the end of this last week, I was ready to tell many of them to freak’n cry me a river!) and underpaid and beyond caring to learn about how to even assess these alternative submissions.

So where does this leave us? Students have found a way around the “problems”, instructors are unwilling to change the problems (heaven forbid you change a problem set!) and both sides complain to the bitter end. In the mean time education as a discipline stagnates.