Category Archives: Academia

Tips for preventing (and my experience with) online cheating

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Once we switched to remote learning in the spring, I had issues with cheating on the first online exam through Canvas. My exam was multiple choice, with students allowed to log in and take it over a defined time range. I write all my own questions, so students couldn’t just look them up online, and students sign an honor statement before seeing the first question. However, in the end, 17 of 68 students admitted to cheating.  The main 2 ways I saw cheating were (1) a bunch of answers added as soon as the exam started (unreasonably quickly) and (2) members of the same group taking the exam at the same time and submitting answers nearly simultaneously.  The first way was a clear indicator that students were sent some/all of the answers by other students in the class. The second way was harder to find and required putting multiple quiz logs up next to each other. 

The only (major) mistake I made was misinterpreting Canvas’ settings for when students can see the questions they missed. The quiz setting says “Let Students See Their Quiz Responses (Incorrect Questions Will Be Marked in Student Feedback).” If you check this, then you can specify when students can see the correct answers. I checked it and specified a future date for when they could see correct answers, thinking that this would not give them ANY feedback until that date. However, they are immediately told what they got right and wrong upon submission (without being explicitly given the right answers). As such, they could easily share correct answers (and infer what should have been answered for the incorrect multiple choice questions). I would suggest not checking this box while giving the exam. You can always go back later and check it in order to let them see the correct answers after everyone has submitted.

An OM teaching blog that I follow has good suggestions for preventing cheating on online exams:

  1. Use varied question types. Refrain from having an exam with all multiple choice or true and false questions. Our MyOMLab’s algorithmic problems are a perfect complement to these questions.
  2. Creatively remind students of academic integrity policies. Create and post a video explaining the guidelines for the online exam and review the institution’s academic integrity policy and consequences that are listed in the course syllabus.
  3. Require students to sign an academic integrity contract. After reviewing the academic integrity reminder video, have students electronically sign a contract that lists what the university considers cheating.
  4. Restrict testing window. Similar to how on-campus final exams have a designated testing slot for each course, create the same online. Have every student start the exam around the same time and limit how long each student will have to take the exam. If you have students in different time zones, consider offering three sets of tests, at 3 different start times.
  5. Change test question sequence. In the test settings, have the order of test questions be different for each exam along with the order of answer choices for each test question.
  6. Delay score availability. Set a later date after the testing window ends for students to see their score and feedback and do not make the score available for immediate view after test completion. This way, one student who finishes early cannot see their score and then advise students who have not completed the test yet.

Book Review – Robot-Proof

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Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
by Joseph Aoun, 2017

Written by the president of Northeastern University, this short book makes numerous suggestions for crafting successful universities in the near-future. As more jobs become automated and skill upgrades become more frequent for workers, universities need to adapt. The whole book is worthwhile and suggested. Here are two suggestions I particularly like:

-Include experiential learning in classes, and focus on technological literacy, data literacy, and human literacy. Core cognitive capacities should include critical thinking, systems thinking, cultural agility, and entrepreneurship.

-In focusing on lifelong learning, allow students to build custom degrees/certificates, taking only the classes most relevant to their personal situation and goals. One possibility to promote lifelong learning would be to create a subscription model in which students can take X classes per semester/year as they move forward in their career.

Book Review – The Undoing Project

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The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
by Michael Lewis, 2016

Prospect Theory, along with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s other work on behavioral biases and heuristics, has significantly influenced modern thinking on human behavior. This book by Michael Lewis peals back the curtain to tell of the setting in which their work was created. You learn the story of Amos’ and Daniel’s past, as well as understanding the academic conversation that their work altered/overturned. I was already very familiar with their work (see review of Thinking, Fast and Slow, here), so this book didn’t add much to my academic understanding, but it did humanize scientific theory development a bit.

While the discussion of Kahneman and Tversky’s personal relationship and eventual difficulties may have been accurate, it was just sad to read. And I worry that Lewis may have been reading too much into it at points. With that qualification, I enjoyed the book. There are even ample basketball references to tide over the sports fan in me. I listened on CD.

Teaching Schedule

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At UC, I will be teaching Operations Planning and Scheduling (OM4076), a methodological course, this fall and spring to undergraduates. I will teach Operations Strategy (OM5085), which is a case-based capstone course, in the spring as well. All my work is going toward getting my fall course ready and getting some research submitted, so there won’t be many posts in the near future.

The Difficulty of Buying a House with an Academic Job Offer

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Here’s your academic minutiae for the week. I accepted a tenure-track job offer in February. Here are the roadblocks my wife and I encountered on the path to home ownership in our new city:

Roadblock #1. We contacted a real estate agent in March about house hunting in Cincinnati. She suggested we get pre-approved for a mortgage. We contacted multiple traditional and online lenders. No one can approve a mortgage more than 3 months out from the start date of a new job. Many won’t approve more than 2 months out. As my start date is August 15th, searching in March didn’t work.

Roadblock #2. Our real estate agent, who we had only talked with over the phone, wanted us to sign a buyer’s agreement that said we would use her on any housing purchase over the next 12 months. We hadn’t met her yet and didn’t know if we would get along with her or if she would do a good job. Such an agreement is non-standard and not necessary. We “fired” her. Later, we would find an agent without any buyer’s contract or agreement.

Roadblock #3. If you are moving to a different city, you won’t necessarily know the area or which communities to consider. Members of your new department can provide suggestions, but you’ll have to find a good fit for yourself. This may entail one or more house hunting trips. Luckily for us, Cincinnati is only ~3 hours from Bloomington, so it was a relatively short trip. However, once we started looking again in late May, it took 3 multi-day trips to finally find a house we were interested in. We had an accepted offer on June 1st, with a closing date of July 13th. If your new city is further away, you probably won’t have the luxury of multiple trips. Many people rent for the first year to give themselves time to learn the area and to house-hunt while in town.

Roadblock #4. The first lender we contacted in June would not approve any loan based on a job offer, so that was a non-starter.

Roadblock #5. The second lender we contacted (who had great rates online), was willing to approve based on a job offer. However, after multiple days, the lender came back and said that it could only approve if the job offer does not have any contingencies. My offer is contingent on a background check, a review of my academic transcripts, and a drug test. None of those will be issues, but I will not clear the contingencies until late July. As such, this lender wasn’t going to work for a July 13th closing date. We had to find a local lender who was familiar with job offers from my new university and was willing to ignore the contingencies.

Roadblock #6. We recommend putting an inspection contingency on any house offer you submit, so that you can back out of the deal if major issues show up during inspection. It’s highly recommended that buyers attend the inspections of the house they are buying. It is difficult to schedule inspections to align with your schedule, and this will often entail an extra trip to the new city. We were able to get a home inspector and chimney inspector to arrive at the same time on June 8th, one week after our accepted offer. Unfortunately for us, the inspection revealed several flaws in the house that we were unwilling to deal with. We asked for a release from the contract based on the inspection contingency.

Roadblock #7. After our contract release, it would be nearly impossible to find a new house with a closing date in July. Our lease in Bloomington ends at the end of July and there is no way to extend it. I don’t want to move our stuff into storage for any length of time. As such, we were out of options for buying a house. We will be renting next year in a single-family house that meets all the criteria of the house we were going to purchase (3+ beds, 2+ baths, garage, flat yard).

Good luck house hunting! Know that it is difficult with an academic job offer.

Monday AM (Academic Minutiae): Regalia

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During commencement, graduating students, faculty, and administrators dress up in academic regalia. Here is what I’ve learned about the regalia for those whose top degree is a Ph.D.:

1. The velvet robes are specific to the university from which you graduate. If you are graduating and staying in academia, it can be useful to purchase your outfit instead of renting it, as you will probably use it for future graduation ceremonies. Purchasing will allow you to have the correct regalia in those ceremonies. However….

2. Many professors/administrators never purchased their regalia. They rent them every time they need them. While your university may make a token effort to rent you robes similar to the ones in which you graduated, they are rarely perfect.

3. When you are graduating, you wear your robe and hat (called a doctoral tam) to start the ceremony. After your name is called and you walk across the stage, there is a hooding ceremony in which someone (typically your advisor) attaches your hood over your robes.

4. The color of the hood is specific to your discipline, with the caveat that everyone that receives a “Doctorate of Philosophy” gets blue. As such, most people get blue. If you are getting a doctorate of pharmacy/education/nursing/medicine/etc., your hood will be a different color.

Here is a picture of me on stage, shaking hands with Dr. McRobbie, president of IU. Note that I am carrying my hood still at this point and that Dr. McRobbie’s robes are different because he did not graduate from IU:

Here is a picture of my advisor hooding me after I walked across the stage:

IU Graduation and Dissertation Defense

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I graduated from Indiana University on May 4th at the Graduate Commencement Ceremony. All students who are graduating between February and August are allowed to attend, so I walked across the stage and received my Ph.D. hood despite not graduating formally until the month of June. Here are a couple pictures:

With my advisor, Owen Wu, before the ceremony:

The stage at the ceremony:

I also defended my dissertation in front of my committee on May 10th. Thanks to my committee, Owen Wu, Kyle Cattani, Gil Souza, and Kurt Bretthauer, for their help and support.

Post-defense:

Later, at The Tap, with friends from Kelley:

Monday AM (Academic Minutiae): Python Installations

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It is comical that today’s XKCD deals with bloated Python installations. I am in the midst of torching my old installation(s), which no longer seems to work.

I have previously advocated using Eclipse and PyDev as a Python development environment. But, as Java/Python/Eclipse updated and screwed up my workflow for the billionth time, I’m fed up with it. I’m switching to the Anaconda environment. It’s supposed to be good for data science related tasks, and seems to have an interface similar to RStudio. I’ve already learned that it’s important to install this environment locally instead of “for all users”, as it’s terrible at handling admin permissions.

Academic Minutiae will be my new Monday post series until I get bored of it. I’m sure there are an infinite amount of administrative or tedious tasks I can joke/complain about.