Cheating is such a strange issue to me. I understand where the desire comes from - we were all students with the pressure of passing and doing well on us at one point or another after all - but it comes from such a short sighted place. Before I was an RA, I taught anatomy and physiology for pre-nursing students. My second semester teaching A&PII we had a problem where for their weekly quizzes, students for earlier sections were giving answers to students in later sections.
What they didn't realize was that the prenursing program at my university is very competitive and it made it so students later in the week were getting near perfect scores making students earlier in the week look like they were falling behind. It was extremely clear and fortunately rectified easily, but it was a mess. I remember a student approaching me after the class where we announced (all the TA's and professors) that we knew what was going on. She was crying because she felt like she was doing well but refusing to cheat was making her lag behind in the class rankings. It was an absolute mess that's for sure.
It was a strange to have to inform people that cheating wasn't helping them get ahead, it was just making their cohorts fall behind in the rankings.
Cheating is such a strange issue to me. I understand where the desire comes from - we were all students with the pressure of passing and doing well on us at one point or another after all - but it comes from such a short sighted place. Before I was an RA, I taught anatomy and physiology for pre-nursing students. My second semester teaching A&PII we had a problem where for their weekly quizzes, students for earlier sections were giving answers to students in later sections.
What they didn't realize was that the prenursing program at my university is very competitive and it made it so students later in the week were getting near perfect scores making students earlier in the week look like they were falling behind. It was extremely clear and fortunately rectified easily, but it was a mess. I remember a student approaching me after the class where we announced (all the TA's and professors) that we knew what was going on. She was crying because she felt like she was doing well but refusing to cheat was making her lag behind in the class rankings. It was an absolute mess that's for sure.
It was a strange to have to inform people that cheating wasn't helping them get ahead, it was just making their cohorts fall behind in the rankings.