And there are ways to engage students in learning. In fact, my experience humans basically come out of the womb with a burning desire to learn.
It's just that when you throw at them the 57th of the same exercise with some words swapped out, that desire is extinguished a little.
Humans do something amazing in response: they cooperate to reduce the damage done by the 58th such exercise.
Give them more interesting things to do and they will cooperate in more productive ways too!
----
I also disagree that you have to learn everything for yourself and stop relying on others. Granted, I only have a decade or so of full-time work behind me so far, but in all of it, I have been as productive as I have been thanks to the ability to rely on others.
I don't know how to pave roads, yet I rely on roads paved by others to even get into work. Well there, I don't know how to build refrigerators, but I trust it to keep my lunch safe. Even in performing my actual job, I'm not the sharpest at economics, so I often cross-check my reasoning with other people before going on to spend time on things.
I would be stuck in a cave looking for berries if I didn't rely on other people for skills I don't have, every second of the day.
Humans are built to survive by offloading work on each other.
> cooperate to reduce the damage done by the 58th such exercise.
This is laughably naive. Most of the cheaters I dealt with in my courses were masters students who had zero interest in learning. They were paying for the M.S. on their resume for job prospects or for visa reasons.
You’re right that some students will cheat on rote stuff because they just get bored. Where you’re wrong is thinking that’s the majority of the issue. Huge chunks of students are in college for entirely the wrong reasons.
Curious would you go to a surgeon who said he has his friend do all his brain surgeries? His friend might be out of town when yours is scheduled.
Of course we rely on others for stuff. But you don’t take a math class to simply say “I’ll just skip the classes and have my neighbor take my tests. My goal is to learn as little as possible.” Why even take the class then?
I'd much, much rather have the surgeon who asks a colleague for a second opinion when they are unsure, rather than just going ahead on the wrong assumption because "otherwise I would be cheating".
In fact, the medical profession has practically adopted cheating as a formal practise: they call it grand rounds and it consists of sharing "answers to exam questions" (outcome of patient care) with their colleagues, so they don't have to go through the effort of discovering them on their own.
In this case, the surgeon isn’t conferring with a colleague; the surgeon is wholly unable to perform the operation. Collaboration is not cheating. A WhatsApp group used to collaborate on simple assignments or complicated projects is one thing, wholesale copying multiple choice answers or plagiarizing whole essays or projects is something completely different.
Even so, if my surgeon for whatever reason signed up to do an operation they are unable to perform, I would rather they ask their colleague to step in than charge ahead to avoid accusations of cheating.
I suspect you aren't trying to argue about this situation, though.
I think you're asking about comparing the performance of the student who does know the material well, and the student who needs assistance with it. The answer is not to forbid assistance, it's to design tests where assistance becomes obvious.
edit: looking back at the thread here, I see now that we're arguing over semantics I think. To me, "relying on someone" means that they are incapable of doing it themselves. It seems your definition of "relying on someone" means to get help from someone. If so, I agree, if someone needs to get help from others that's fine. If they are completely dependent on the other person being there (my definition of "rely on"), then the surgeon is incapable of doing the surgery if their friend isn't there.
This thread is about engineers not surgeons. And it happens all the time when an engineer does not feel competent for certain problem, they ask friends for help. Would you ban such practice or what?
I sure as fuck wouldn’t want an engineer responsible for anything important if they cheated. The problem with engineering is that if you cheated through the fundamentals, you won’t even recognize when to ask for help. You’ll just build build something shitty or (depending on the field) sign off on something that puts people’s lives at risk because you missed fundamental flaws.
It's just that when you throw at them the 57th of the same exercise with some words swapped out, that desire is extinguished a little.
Humans do something amazing in response: they cooperate to reduce the damage done by the 58th such exercise.
Give them more interesting things to do and they will cooperate in more productive ways too!
----
I also disagree that you have to learn everything for yourself and stop relying on others. Granted, I only have a decade or so of full-time work behind me so far, but in all of it, I have been as productive as I have been thanks to the ability to rely on others.
I don't know how to pave roads, yet I rely on roads paved by others to even get into work. Well there, I don't know how to build refrigerators, but I trust it to keep my lunch safe. Even in performing my actual job, I'm not the sharpest at economics, so I often cross-check my reasoning with other people before going on to spend time on things.
I would be stuck in a cave looking for berries if I didn't rely on other people for skills I don't have, every second of the day.
Humans are built to survive by offloading work on each other.