Unofficial Online Culture in Large Undergraduate Courses

1
Unofficial Online Culture in Large Undergraduate
Courses

• Jennifer Hodges, Michigan State University
• ASHE Conference 2004

jphodges_at_msu.edu
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Research Questions

• What are the characteristics of the college
  student conversations that occur on an
  unofficial, unmonitored online discussion board
  focused on an academic course at a large
  Midwestern institution?
• What impact does the availability of an
  unofficial, unmonitored online discussion board
  have on the cheating culture in an academic
  course at a large Midwestern institution?
• How do students perceive the conversations that
  occur in an unofficial, unmonitored online
  discussion board focused on an academic course at
  a large Midwestern institution?

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The Unofficial Online Environment

• Created in 1997 by an alum of a large Midwestern
  institution and focused specifically on that
  institution (originally focused on CAPA
  computer assisted personalized approach
  http//www.lon-capa.org/)
• Boasts over 50,000 registered student members
• Includes academic forums (related to specific
  courses), professor ratings, a dating service,
  classifieds, and an e-zine
• Requires that members verify that they are not a
  faculty or staff member of the large Midwestern
  institution

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The Courses

• Introductory Accounting
• About 800 students per semester (2 sections)
• 147 message threads, 673 posts, 167 login IDs
• Official online environment was a detailed course
  website constructed by the professor
• Postings focused predominantly on three large
  projects
• Introductory Chemistry
• About 1000 students per semester (3 sections)
• About 600 message threads
• Official online environment was the Lon-CAPA
  system and a course webpage
• Postings focused on weekly homework problems

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Characteristics of the 147 Accounting Message
Threads (MT)

• 102 conversations (69) included more than one
  participant
• Range of 2 to 84 posts per MT, average of 4.6 per
  MT
• Range of 2 to 35 participants per MT, average of
  3.2 per MT
• 139 (95) were directly course related
• 30 (20) used please and/or thank you
• 28 (19) contained swearing (8 of which were
  personal attacks aimed at a particular
  participant)
• 9 (6) mentioned forming a study group
• 6 (4) mentioned using the help room
• 20 (14) included contact info such as email
  address or phone
• 60 of the 167 (36) participants used their
  student ID as a login

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Institutional Assumptions about the Cheating
Culture in Undergraduate Courses

• Faculty and Administrators believed that the
  primary reason students visited the unofficial
  site was to cheat
• As long as websites like site address exist,
  it does not make sense to raise the weight given
  to homework we would be rewarding the people who
  do not take the effort to do the problems by
  themselves. (departmental website)
• Large Midwestern institution faculty and staff
  say they are wising up and cracking down on those
  who use a popular student Web site to access
  everything from test answers to entire essays.,
  they have been catching cheaters in the act. ,
  Large Midwestern institution faculty are now
  taking action against students who use those
  features. (Student newspaper September 2, 2004)

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Is cheating rampant on the unofficial site?

• Postings on the site which dealt directly with
  course content can be put into three categories
• Help Room postings These posting were
  discussions of problems that you might hear in a
  study group or help room. The participants didnt
  ask for answers but asked for explanations of the
  process, typically after explaining what theyd
  already attempted. (62 of Accounting postings)
• Double Check postings These postings were
  typically one person asking for the answers with
  a clarification that theyd already completed
  their own work and now wanted to double check
  that theyd completed it correctly. (21 of
  Accounting postings)
• Cheating postings These were simply requests
  for answers with no explanations or postings of
  answers with no explanations. (17 of Accounting
  postings)

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The Focus Groups

• Part one Impact of online learning environments
• Part two Sample postings
• Student Demographics
• 10 females, 7 males 8 STEM, 9 Non-STEM
• 5 sophomores, 5 juniors, 7 seniors
• Themes
• Views about online environments in general
• Usage of the unofficial environment
• Role of the Professor
• Role of the Course - context and content
• Role of the Student in the Learning Process
• Cultural Norms of the unofficial environment

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Views about Online Environments

• The majority had positive views
• Im really in favor of online websites for
  classes just because as college students we all
  have access to the internet and its a nice way
  of keeping track of notes and seeing assignments,
  or even your grades that youve received for
  assignments, because you may lose a paper but it
  will always be online for the duration of that
  class.
• A few had less favorable views
• I sit at my computer enough. I dont want my
  professor to say oh Im not going to tell you the
  assignment in class right now, you have to go
  home and get on Angel and see what I say when I
  could have just told you in class. I hate that
  its becoming so impersonal that I cant contact
  my professor, so Ill come up to talk to him
  after class, and they say no just email me, I
  wont take that note Im sorry.

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Usage of the Unofficial Environment

• Proudly proclaimed participation
• By and large when it concerns homework, I will
  usually go straight to the site. I dont have
  time to do the homework so Ill just go and copy
  it down and do whatever.
• Embarrassed to admit participation
• I admit to going on there for some of my
  classes, but usually Ive gone there like if Ive
  felt like Ive exhausted my other resources for
  getting help and I actually have found that in
  many ways more useful than some of the discussion
  boards.
• Defending participation as not cheating
• I know I used the word cheating but I still,
  this might sound kind of lame, but I still dont
  necessarily consider it cheating because when I
  go on and look at the forum, Im trying to find
  an explanation of this equation or how you solve
  this problem and once I see it, then I usually
  say oh and then I understand how to do it.

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Role of the Professor

• Quality teaching could curtail online cheating
• Id say that the professors responsibility is
  to teach the material thoroughly and if theres a
  lot of kids going to use the site to get the
  answers because the professor didnt teach it
  properly or thoroughly enough for the students to
  understand it, then yes it is the professors
  responsibility.
• Online interaction impacts participation in
  unofficial environments
• I think that his spending the time to do that
  (interact with the students online) really
  encouraged people to use maybe methods that he
  wanted us to use instead of just you know going
  to the site.
• Professors have a responsibility to know whats
  going on
• But the thing that comes into mind is that
  theyve got to know its going on. And I have to
  question how effective do they think their
  homework assignments are if they know this is
  going on.

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Role of the Course

• Value placed on the course content
• Do chem majors cheat in chemistry class if
  thats what they want to do for the rest of their
  life? Me personally, if I know I need to learn
  that for medical school or whatever, I cant
  afford to cheat, its going to come back to get
  me, so I wont. Ill take the time to study and
  learn it.
• Impact of class size
• Or even, I know its a radical idea, to cut
  class size. In a 250 person course, the
  opportunity or the impulse to ask questions
  during lecture gets a lot easier when youre in a
  smaller class size, not a 250 person class size.
• Differences in course subject
• Probably theres more chatter on science courses
  because in some non-science courses its fairly
  easy to go into a book and look up the answer,
  while in the science course its an application
  of a problem that you might have to derive.

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Role of the Student

• Recognition that theres a trade off
• You always have the people who just post all
  their answers or who ask for all the answers and
  they never do it for themselves. Im not
  complaining about it because its just going to
  hurt them in the long run.
• Cheat now, Learn later?
• You just post your answers and then like theyre
  so close you can go and compare what you have and
  kind of decipher it. Its like a process of
  elimination. Its not doing the problem and its
  not beneficial for student learning.
• Yeah, thats not right. But that should be
  somebodys choice. If youre stressed out about
  it and just want to get done, then fine. But me,
  Ill go back and make sure I know it.
• Benefits of Unofficial Participation
• Sometimes it helps you if you spent a long time
  trying to figure out the equation then you go
  online and write up an explanation. It kind of
  cements it in your mind.

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Cultural Norms Unofficial Online Environment

• Rule 1 Be polite
• Usually people are polite. You do say please and
  thank you. Its one of the only places where I
  see people using please and thank you. I would
  assume its because you want the answer. You want
  help and theres really no compunction to help in
  an online situation. Theres no face to see, you
  dont see the person.
• Rule 2 Expectation of Reciprocity
• I know when Im completely lost on a question I
  go to the site and usually someone will explain
  something in a way and a light bulb goes off and
  I understand it. And so when theres a question
  that people seem to be having trouble with and I
  understand it, I want to go on and put up a post
  that will hopefully do the same thing for
  somebody else, because if nobody puts up posts
  then it wont work, youve got to give and take.
• Rule 3 If someone breaks rule 2, you can ignore
  rule 1
• I think people are a little bit more bold
  because its anonymous and you dont necessarily
  know who youre talking to.