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vs | UCF Answer Leaks |
This is one of those blog posts that’s probably going to get me into trouble. But when has that stopped me.
Today, it’s about Wikileaks, a topic that, until very recently, I didn’t give much thought to. There are two main reasons I have virtually ignored this issue.
One, I haven’t read the leaked files and, therefore, do not know if what they include information that truly endangers the lives of people or merely reveals information that is embarrassing to the U.S. military and/or present or past administration(s).
The second reason, and more regretful one, is that I can’t fully trust those who have read it, neither our administration (the first U.S. administration with genuine integrity in a very long time, in my opinion) and certainly not the media (who is in the business of selling fear, in my opinion).
So I ignored it, except that it reveals an information environment that has changed, and, therefore, requires a change in the climate of how we conduct ourselves locally and globally. I successfully ignored it until just before my banquet speech at the Farm Cooperatives Conference near Denver two weeks ago — Wow, I had to stop and think too hard to remember where that was.
One of the organizers asked me, before the talk, if I would be willing to answer any questions about Wikileaks during the Q&A at the end of talk. From his expression, I must have reacted the same way I did when Belmont High executed an onsides kick, the end of the season, right into my 17 year old arms. Guys who play center, don’t carry the ball. Coach said my eyes got bigger than my head — and the same probably happened when asked to comment on Wikileaks.
I didn’t get the question, but I started to think about it — and even more so when I linked from a tweet by Joyce Valenza to an article (UCF Cheating Incident Sparks Debate about Academic Dishonesty) in the Miami Herald about a cheating scandal at the University of Central Florida. So I got to thinking, is there any way that this college cheating episode might be compared to Wikileaks — and here’s what I came up with…
| Issue | Wikileaks | Answer Leaks |
| How are they the same? | Both stories involved the (covert) leaking of information that was supposed to be secret and secure. | |
| Why are they important? | Damages U.S. foreign relations & endangers lives (?) | Jeopardizes the students’ preparation for business world and the reputation of the school (?) |
| Information revealed | U.S. Handling of Iraq & Afghanistan Wars and more | Answers to test questions on Entrepreneurship (MAN4802 MAN 4720 UCF) |
| Dangers |
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| Morality? | Two factions – Those who are morally indignant about the leaks and those who morally support them.
(I do not know enough about the episode to have an opinion though I’m pretty sure that Wikileaks itself should not be held responsible) |
Two factions – Those who are morally indignant about the leaking of test answers (cheating) and those who believe that it wasn’t cheating.
(I do not know enough about the episode to have an opinion) |
| Objective of the leaks | Transparency: “The truth is out there” | Practical: To accomplish the goal – pass the test. |
There is certainly a lot more that I could say about both stories, but not without a lot of speculation. I do know that today’s information and communication technologies have changed the climate of how nations and people should conduct themselves, and secrecy no longer empowers governments to conduct themselves in ways that they would prefer to remain secret. I am also fairly certain that much of what happens in school testing has less to do with preparing students for their future and more to do with the business of schooling. So I am left with two questions.
- If the actions revealed by Wikileaks endanger people today or tomorrow — then why?
- If passing that test by studying test answers from previous semester tests instead of lectures and assigned readings does not jeopardize the future success of business school graduates — then why not?
Dave,
What I’ve read of the Wikileaks releases looks like it is dangerous for only politicians. I’d recommend reading some of the literature out there from the alternative media rather than the mainstream media. Poured through a couple of hundred cables and see nothing that will cause lives to be lost.
There is a real movement underway to ensure that every piece of news we read is sanitized first. Control the information we receive, control the minds of the public. Wikileaks acts against this trend.
I’ve been reading your blog for quite some time and this is my first time commenting. I wanted to answer your second question: “If passing that test by studying test answers from previous semester tests instead of lectures and assigned readings does not jeopardize the future success of business school graduates — then why not?” (I apologize in advance for the length.)
I’m double-biased as I am a jaded recent graduate of a behemoth of a public university as well as an avid John Taylor Gatto fan.
I know for a fact that studying past semesters’ tests does not jeopardize the success of future business school graduates. The most telling part of Berrett’s whole article was, “Fishman said it was important to see the incident at UCF as a symptom of a larger problem of permissive attitudes toward academics. In part, she said, such attitudes among students can develop from the notion that all of education can be distilled into performance on a test — which today’s college students have absorbed from years of schooling under No Child Left Behind — and not that education is a process in which one grapples with difficult material.”
I was raised going to excellent schools my entire life but I can tell you that in spite of any and all rhetoric by educators and administration when the rubber hits the road (i.e. creating policy and allocating funds) the only part of a student truly valuable to a school is that part which is quantifiable: his or her test scores.
What this means is that from the beginning of our education the particularly difficult courses are not the same as years’ past where students were expected to summarize and analyze vast swaths of information and ideas into coherent syntheses. The particularly hard courses are not determined by the difficulty of the subject matter but by the difficulty of the exams.
In order to make a course difficult (especially in college) a professor will go out of his or her way to make the exams impossible. Because test scores are now the be-all and end-all metric of student success and college classes are getting larger every year creating logistic problems with grading, this means professors are creating incredibly tricky multiple choice tests as opposed to more comprehensive essay or work-out exams.
When a student studies the old exams for a class he or she is not simply memorizing. Usually the questions are not exactly reduplicated and the studying process involves going through each question and re-working the problem to figure out why the question is right.
Unless there is some kind of mammoth overhaul of the education system in America, this kind of focused studying is actually beneficial. Not only because it still impresses the class’s most relevant subject material (as determined by present and past professors) on the students, but because in a world where one of the most widely used communication tools in PR and journalism limits messages to 130 characters and the proliferation of information has become problematic, this method of studying also trains the students’ minds to focus on analyzing information in the way in which they will be expected to in the future.
In the hardest courses I’ve taken, the teachers did not just write ludicrous multiple choice questions but did everything they could to keep students from retaining or sharing those questions. This kind of behavior encourages students to practice for the questions in any way they know how.
The professor in this class said that he writes his own tests, and the test they took was from a test bank from the publisher. Going online and looking up the publisher’s practice questions (which are often free and open to anyone who buys the textbook, by the way) is not dishonest; it is a basic step any serious student takes when studying for a difficult multiple choice test.
The students who felt gypped weren’t merely being entitled or snotty. If the teacher teaches from the book and tests from the book, what value is he adding to these students’ education? What right does he have to get indignant and refuse to ever do anything for them again?
If students are taught to test explicitly with multiple choice, they will study to test explicitly with multiple choice. If there is a test bank available for students to study THEY WILL USE IT. This should be common sense.
The difference in attitudes regarding what is and isn’t cheating is not the difference that needs to be addressed; the difference in attitude that needs to be addressed is the difference between what teachers believe they owe their students and what those same teachers believed their teachers owed them. Why should students be expected to measure their success in a way teachers don’t? And why are those students punished or seen as acting in a morally reprehensible way when they strive to succeed using the metrics with which they have always been measured?
There are some corrections in order. First, the course at UCF was MAN 4720 Strategic Management. Second, the students really didn’t cheat on the exam. The professor stated he made up all the exam questions. So the students obtained the answer key to the text and used it as a study guide. If I were one of the students accused of cheating in this story I would have stood my ground.
Keith, thanks for the correction on the course identification. I’ve fixed that now. Also, I’d read about the nature of the cheating as presented by students and as presented by administration, and didn’t want to get into that much journalistic detail or judgement-making.
What I continue to question is whether the experience of academia has become so separated from authentic professional and personal learning that legitimate forms of learning and accomplishing of goals, in today’s prevailing information environment, still looks like cheating to them.
One of the biggest shifts that I think we all have to make is that education’s job is not to make students. It’s to make citizens. Instead, we continue to teaching learners “how to be taught.”
It is true that much of what wikileaks has published is of little substance. But as an aside, it brings to mind the purpose of ‘diplomatic immunity’. This privilege is granted to diplomats so they may conduct the business of state in an atmosphere of confidentiality without risk of harrasment from the host government. It is no surprise to diplomats that ther counterparts overseas might have said this or that about the situation or personel. The merit of publishing tittle tattle which happens to have been stolen escapes me.