“I don't need to know everything, I just need to know where to find it, when I need it”

― Albert Einstein

I have difficulty remembering facts and figures, some issue with my long term memory i suppose. Right from my school days i started taking notes. I remember i also had an old used book in which i would paste important newspaper clippings which i could later refer back. These days i Google. The point i am trying to make is my education was my foundation. I am able to read, comprehend and analyse the information presented to me. Will these students (who pass an exam using cheat codes) be able to do that.

Informally self-taught in writing a programming code is good whereas informally self-taught to cheat in an exam is self-defeating.

Open-book (Not just text books) exams are the way to go. We need to do as Einstein said, check whether a student will be able to find the information when they need it and once they have found the particular piece of information will they be able to process it in the context provided.

• Midhun Sreenivasan

There are several issues in Losh article that require deep consideration: firstly the idea of ' cheating.
But is is also ironical that these students who are cheating using internet 'echo chambers', are actually, by buying into the subversion, simply playing out yet another unsurprising human character trait: that of saving energy.
Because, why would you work hard to learn something, when you can work less hard and get the same result?

Unfortunately, the result long term, may be that these students do not develop the academic and personal strengths necessary to deal with life's travails. If you don't know you 'can', how do you know you can?

So whilst they may be honing their social nous and surval kills ( playing the game of one-upmanship) ultimately they are cheating themselves.

And I think that possibly, like all knowledge, there is a place for knowing about it, and there is a place for practicing it, and it is more about knowing how to best utilise this personal judgement to maximise one's development as a sentient learner, and not to cynically undermine the institutions of learning because 'you can' or because you can't see the point of 'memorising facts'. It seems to me that the teacher needs to make it clear WHY you as a student might want to commit some facts to memory, and then, let it be your responsibility as a learner to do it or not.

I am sure that someone once said that the cheater only cheats themselves, and I don't see why that would be different now.

In terms of 'digital natives', there is no evidence to support this myth. And even if there were, how does that justify recruiting (or banning) digital tools simply because they are , well, 'digital? Tools are should be used when they are going to make the job ( of learning in this case), easier. I agree with Loth that by making assumptions about student's digital abilities or proclivities, we may be short changing them, and positioning them in a place where they are in fact, not at.

In terms of using technology to 'keep the youngsters engaged, otherwise they will be bored ( the astounding assertion of an admittedly now dated McLuhan op ed) is an insult to young people. It is surely all about, and always HAS been about teaching in a way that students are enabled to participate, rather than as passive recipients of 'knowledge'. Make the student responsible for using it (knowledge), not holding it.

But all learners must get the foundational skills first- and that is where I think a lot of the controversy may be for teachers, lecturers and professors.

Learning IS hard work; this is a cognitive fact, but it should be interesting ( teachers and their skill come in here) and fun will always be a subjective by- product of learning - and really , is not the concern of the teacher. Student's can do that bit for themselves in the right context.

Finally, the ubiquitous myth of 'multitasking' : multitasking in the sense of being able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, does not exist.

In the experiment, the reason that the students missed the gorilla is that their
'System Two' (the part of the brain focussed on conscious, effortful concentration), was focussed on the task at hand. (see Kahneman 2012).

Yes, multitasking is a myth that has been debunked; we can shift tasks, but we cannot multitask: yes we can only truly concentrate on one thing at a time!!

The whole point of that experiment was to show that people focus on that which is in their mind - (the task at hand), and when doing so, are effectively able to screen out other stimuli.

The experiment was not designed to show that we cannot 'multitask' (which we can't), or that we really need to be able to multitask because now we live in a digital era.

In fact, in a digital age where information overload is the norm, it is essential that we CAN focus and screen out the irrelevant from the relevant. Rather, we and our students have to be skilled information evaluators.

This is the the skill needed for the digital age, not 'multitasking' though thousands of Google infractions upon the senses.

• Jennifer Julie De Goursat

Is it important on the Internet to have formal qualifications? Your opinion on the internet doesn't depend whether you are qualified or not. Whether or not their are cheating video's on the internet, when schools go on teaching the old way students will put these video's on. The student who do, learn a lot of the item I think, so is that a bad thing? To the teachers: develop assignments where there is no simple cheating video to solve it.

• Thijs Heijman

There is certainly a popular movement that suggests in order to survive, universities have to stop acting as 'gate keepers of information' and realise that the information contained in expensive textbooks is available elsewhere (usually for free) and that the practice of memorising and reciting facts is no longer a useful and sort-after skill.

The real value comes from students who are able to locate, source and apply information that is relevant and reliable. Unfortunately universities and even schools are slow to adapt to the new soft skills demanded by the current and future employers.

Students that are creating cheating videos are actually displaying the ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking required by jobs of the future. They are simply coming up with practical solutions to the predicaments they find themselves in: teacher wants me to memorise a bunch of stuff that seems pointless considering I could find it if/when I actually need it using a search engine in about .5 seconds...THEREFORE I create a solution to avoid this exercise that seems pointless to me rather than just going along with the crowd.

I applaud teachers that are writing cheat proof assessments that actually encourage skills needed in the real world like ingenuity and collaboration.

• Matthew Garratt

Fascinating article. You might have heard the phrase 'teachers that can be replaced by computers deserve to be', and while I don't wholly subscribe to that view it might be related to the idea of 'if your assessment design can be brought down by relatively easy cheats, it deserves to' - somewhat related to María's comment above. It's about time there was a genuine move to more applied learning and assessment, the sorts of tasks where you can't really cheat or there is little real point in doing so.

• Jason Renshaw

Let me cite a couple of paragraphs from this really provoking article:

What’s striking about the ABC coverage is that it lacked any of the criticism of the educational status quo that became so central for a number of readers of the earlier Chronicle of Higher Education story—those who were asking as educators either (1) what’s wrong with the higher education system that students can subvert conventional tests so easily, or (2) what’s right with YouTube culture that encourages participation, creativity, institutional subversion, and satire.

This is for me the key. What would anyone do, if he/she had the opportunity to cheat, and it would guarantee the success? More in a system where marks - and no real abilities, no matter what we say to treat to convince ourshelves - are the key for best universities, scholarships and other advantages.

No, we cannot blame the students for using the resources they have; it's our responsability to design teaching and evaluating strategies that go for real capacity building; building, creating and transferring knowledge.

• María Napal

I find this a very logical quote, but who can analyze this in just a few words;
Someone has to trace back to the roots of the first universities under the umbrella mainly of Catholics and Protestants, in west and middle Europe.
Formal education is strongly connected with the social and political arrangements of Western Civilization and is the foundation for organizing and certifying various professions, traditional and modern as well.
In my opinion, key issues in this conflict, is among others:
- “Certification”: if we manage somehow, to de-couple education and learning from professional certifications, only then formal and informal education can find a common ground.
- “Scientific reliability”: “googling” is not researching…
- “Curriculum credibility”: who is organizing curriculum in informal education;

• Apostolos Kostas

If we are assuming conflict then conflict theory assumes that the ideas of a society are the ideas of the ruling class, the institution. We then have to bring into play the idea of social control of excerpted by the institution, which refers generally to societal and political mechanisms or processes that regulate individual and group behaviour, leading to conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group.

Educational institutions can further goals of social control by socialising learners into behaving in socially acceptable ways. By means of social control, learners are taught the boundaries of acceptable behavior. We then must review informal social control as is exercised by a society without explicitly stating these rules, and is expressed through customs, norms, and mores.

Institutions Social control may be enforced using informal sanctions, which may include shame, ridicule, sarcasm, criticism and disapproval. Social control may also be enforced using formal sanctions and in this way education may maintain social control through various mechanisms, such as indoctrination, informal sanctions and formal sanctions. By means of social control, learners are taught the boundaries of acceptable behaviour for that institution.

Why are educational institutions afraid of freedom?

• JamesStuart Duffin

I worked tirelessly from 2003-2011 to create assignments short, personalized assignments for my College Composition, Introduction to Philosophy, Humanities in Western Culture, and many other reading and writing intensive courses. I needed to learn what I can (sort of) control and what I simply cannot (most definitely) control. I cannot stop a student from viewing sites run by immoral, bottom-feeding plagiarists selling links or texts or past papers like their 70s and 80s ancestors. I also cannot control the internet, its content, its messages that are oftentimes contradictory to my own values, the values I have tried to instill in my children, and the values I hope to transmit to my students.

But, I can control how the information enters my digital classroom. I do have a lot to say about how information is synthesized as part of a short assignment or research project. I also need to monitor discussion boards as participant, facilitator, and observer -- warning signs are clear. Some students copy, paste, paraphrase, and then move on.

It is important to view new media as a tool; more importantly, new media is a way of thinking. Helping students understand the ins and outs, pros and cons, and unknowables about digital media help me create what I like to think of as health ecologies. Or, a classroom space and interactive community that works to resist the toxicity of temptations like cheating.

I found the section about cheat codes most interesting because at heart, in some cases, students, like gamers, have now embraced a sandbox approach to courses, where learning is collaborative, and oftentimes subversive. If a group of students crack the code -- share information that may be part of an assessment -- perhaps the assessment shouldn't be so hard to hack.

Lastly, the more personalized we make our courses, the deeper the learning; and the more we seek to teach unlearning, the harder it will be to hack a course or share information for entertainment purposes only. (That's the Millennials throwing Boomer marketing back in their faces; and it's a wonderful, subversive event to watch unfold online.)

• Robert Craig Baum