Unofficial Online Culture in
Large Undergraduate Courses
Jennifer Hodges, Michigan State University
ASHE Conference 2004
jphodges@msu.edu
Research Questions
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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?
The Unofficial Online Environment
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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
The Courses
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Introductory Accounting
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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
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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
Characteristics of the 147 Accounting
Message Threads (MT)
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102 conversations (69%) included more than one participant
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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
Institutional Assumptions about the
Cheating Culture in Undergraduate Courses
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Faculty and Administrators believed that the primary reason
students visited the unofficial site was to cheat
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“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)
Is cheating rampant on the unofficial site?
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Postings on the site which dealt directly with course
content can be put into three categories:
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“Help Room” postings – These posting were discussions
of problems that you might hear in a study group or help
room. The participants didn’t ask for answers but asked for
explanations of the process, typically after explaining what
they’d already attempted. (62% of Accounting postings)
“Double Check” postings – These postings were typically
one person asking for the answers with a clarification that
they’d already completed their own work and now wanted
to double check that they’d 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)
The Focus Groups
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Part one – Impact of online learning environments
Part two – Sample postings
Student Demographics
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10 females, 7 males
8 STEM, 9 Non-STEM
5 sophomores, 5 juniors, 7 seniors
Themes
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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
Views about Online Environments
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The majority had positive views
“I’m really in favor of online websites for classes just because as
college students we all have access to the internet and it’s a nice
way of keeping track of notes and seeing assignments, or even
your grades that you’ve received for assignments, because you
may lose a paper but it will always be online for the duration of
that class.”
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A few had less favorable views
“I sit at my computer enough. I don’t want my professor to say oh
I’m 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 it’s becoming so
impersonal that I can’t contact my professor, so I’ll come up to
talk to him after class, and they say no just email me, I won’t take
that note I’m sorry.”
Usage of the Unofficial Environment
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Proudly proclaimed participation
“By and large when it concerns homework, I will usually go straight
to [the site]. I don’t have time to do the homework so I’ll just go
and copy it down and do whatever.”
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Embarrassed to admit participation
“I admit to going on there for some of my classes, but usually I’ve
gone there like if I’ve felt like I’ve exhausted my other resources
for getting help and I actually have found that in many ways
more useful than some of the discussion boards.”
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Defending participation as not cheating
“I know I used the word cheating but I still, this might sound kind of
lame, but I still don’t necessarily consider it cheating because
when I go on and look at the forum, I’m 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.”
Role of the Professor
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Quality teaching could curtail online cheating
“I’d say that the professor’s responsibility is to teach the material
thoroughly and if there’s a lot of kids going to use [the site] to get the
answers because the professor didn’t teach it properly or thoroughly
enough for the students to understand it, then yes it is the professor’s
responsibility.”
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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].”
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Professors have a responsibility to know what’s going on
“But the thing that comes into mind is that they’ve got to know it’s going
on. And I have to question how effective do they think their homework
assignments are if they know this is going on.”
Role of the Course
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Value placed on the course content
“Do chem majors cheat in chemistry class if that’s 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 can’t afford to cheat, it’s going to come
back to get me, so I won’t. I’ll take the time to study and learn it.”
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Impact of class size
“Or even, I know it’s 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 you’re in a smaller class size, not a 250 person
class size.
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Differences in course subject
“Probably there’s more chatter on science courses because in some nonscience courses it’s fairly easy to go into a book and look up the answer,
while in the science course it’s an application of a problem that you
might have to derive.”
Role of the Student
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Recognition that there’s 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. I’m
not complaining about it because it’s just going to hurt them in
the long run.”
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Cheat now, Learn later?
“You just post your answers and then like they’re so close you can
go and compare what you have and kind of decipher it. It’s like a
process of elimination. It’s not doing the problem and it’s not
beneficial for student learning.”
“Yeah, that’s not right. But that should be somebody’s choice. If
you’re stressed out about it and just want to get done, then fine.
But me, I’ll go back and make sure I know it.”
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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.”
Cultural Norms Unofficial Online
Environment
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Rule 1 – Be polite
“Usually people are polite. You do say please and thank you. It’s one of the
only places where I see people using please and thank you. I would
assume it’s because you want the answer. You want help and there’s
really no compunction to help in an online situation. There’s no face to
see, you don’t see the person.”
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Rule 2 – Expectation of Reciprocity
“I know when I’m 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 there’s 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 won’t work, you’ve got to give and take.
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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
don’t necessarily know who you’re talking to.”