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Rules and enforcement |
I enjoy teaching and an open, academic interaction style. When I first started teaching at Mac, I was very open about enforcing rules and sharing materials, and very pleased with myself about it. But a minority of students take advantage. I've had students cheat on exams and assignments, and lie to me about class and tutorial attendance. I've had students offer to sell out other students' collaboration efforts in an effort to protect themselves. I was even famous (or infamous) on reddit for about an hour because of a technique I used to catch exam copiers. It's often unpleasant for me, and for the people I catch.
I want to make rules for the good of the whole class. I don't want to have to enforce most of them, because that is a lot of work for the teaching team, and often unpleasant for the students. Another way to put it is that you-all are adults, and I want to treat you like adults.
I could choose to:
- have the teaching team spy on people who browse the internet in class, and remove their participation points, or call them out
- take attendance in class or tutorial -- or randomly call out names to answer questions, and record who is present and ready to answer
- make everyone hand in their not-for-credit assignments and look quickly to make sure you did them (occasionally scanning for illegal collaboration)
All of those would make the class less pleasant for everyone.
I have been told directly that tutorials “aren't mandatory” because we don't take attendance or punish people who don't attend. Wrong. Tutorials are mandatory because I say so, and you are expected to make a good-faith effort to follow the rules. The same applies to class and tutorial attendance, and to using electronics in class. You should make all reasonable attempts to follow the rules (without me needing to enforce them), for the good of:
- yourselves
- your classmates
- the teaching team
Thank you for your attention.
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