Cheating At SFU Surrey

Hi guys,
I have a friend who went to SFU Surrey for the Tech One program. The Tech One program is an introduction to computers in general. It covers programming, math, digital media, communication in a text based medium and more. While enrolled in this, my friend found it very easy to cheat on much of her school work. The following is a first-person account written from my notes on my interview with her.

I'm not a cheater. I don't believe in it. I've always found that I can do my own work better than other people can and I actually like doing it. That was true before I went to SFU Surrey. There, everyone cheated. It was never cheating on anything major...well maybe a couple of things.
It started with this test we were forced to take every week for our "English" class. We were to go online and take this 10 question test. The thing was you were allowed to retake the test as many times as you wanted until you got them all right. What we would all do was sit around in a computer lab and make an answer key to this test and email it around to everyone in class. It was an effort to actually make it but it helped a lot of people and I was always gratefull when I got emailed it so writing it every now and then didn't bother me.
The next instance of cheating I was involved in was in my programming class. In this class we had two lectures and then, every week we had a practical test where we had to show a TA that we could do what was discussed in lecture. In the practical test, we were in a computer lab with 30 other people and the computers had the internet. What happened was we'd email around the correct code then simply copy and paste it from our hotmail into python. To avoid detection we would ctrl+C then close hotmail so our TA wouldn't get suspicious then look to be struggling away for a few minutes, then when he was on the other side of the room just ctrl+V and say, "Ok, I think I got it."
My final personal example was for the same class, the programming one. I hadn't been doing anything all semester because it was so easy to just cheat so by the time the final rolled around I was in big trouble. The task was to create a program in Python that would make a madlib. I understood the concept, make a program that can import a text doc, read it for an indicator, show the user a message and replace the space with the user's input, but I hadn't the faintest idea about how to go about doing that. In a final act of desperation I actually paid a friend to do it for me. This was my least proud moment as a student.
The last case of cheating that I want to discuss happenend in my digital media class. This time, I was not the perpetrator. Our assignment was to make a video that synced well with music. My group finished on time and handed our project in. When it came time to watch the other group's work, one group stood out among the rest. Not for its quality but for its blatant falsness. Their movie was about a what looks like a drug deal but in the brief case is a mens dress shirt. It was someones project where the assignment was to make an ad for something. The thing that stood out was that not one of the group appeard anywhere in the video. There were 8 people in the movie all together and not one of them was a person from the group. Everyone in the class, prof included, was too polite to just come out and say, "Bullshit!" Because it was just a video file on the disc it is impossible to trace but it didn't even have original credits. It seemed so obvious that they had just roughly taken this from somewhere else and showed it in class. But video can't be traced for plagirism like written work can and they got away with it.
Don't judge me. I'm doing that enough. I've never cheated since then and don't plan to but it was just so easy.

Ok, degeneracy in education facilitated by technology. It is clear that she learned very little while there because technology made it possible for her to cheat. Technology is then depriving this person of the education that they are paying for. If learning is not taking place can it still be said to be education?

Project Proposal

English 330 Group Project Proposal
Group Members: Kristina Larson, Nathan Bertrand, Molly Sotham, Jessica Cole and Hilary Snodden.

In 2006, Simon Fraser University instituted the “Writing, Quantitative, and Breadth” requirements for all undergraduate students. The most interesting of these requirements are those that oblige undergrads to take a course designated ‘writing intensive’ at both the upper and lower level. Why was this change instituted? Why did the University feel it needed to take a more active role in policing the writing skills of its students? We believe that this is an acknowledgement on the part of our administration of the academic degeneration that has permeated our society, a degeneration that became accelerate after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. By engaging issues of academic degeneration in both contemporary and Victorian times, our group polemical project will take the form of a blog, which can be found at: prasisebetodarwin.blogspot.com. We intend to discuss the topic of degeneration in education, and through individual posts and group discussion, we will try and prove the following thesis:
Since Darwin, society has degenerated due to the scientism of education in contemporary times, which is largely due to the inability of the traditional ‘classical education’ to adequately confront Darwin and science in the Victorian era.
So far, we have established that Mill on the Floss and Princess and Curdie, are fictional works that touch upon our thesis. We will also engage with the Matthew Arnold essays in Prose of the Victorian Era, as they along with George Elliot’s fiction, provide proof of the later half of our thesis in regards to the ‘classical’ Victorian education.
Potential lines of argument and topics of discussion include:

1. Prove through current and historical examples and journal articles that education has degenerated in both England and North America as Darwinian theories of evolution became more and more acceptable. Focusing on the increase in cheating and the degeneration of literary and communicative skills. We will also look at this issue as it pertains to Simon Fraser University, and the new “writing” requirements.

2. Prove that as scientific education gained priority, liberal arts education was ignored, and this has lead to the degeneration of society. We will try and make arguments that technology, especially technology and youth, lead to educational and social degeneration.

3. Illustrate that the Victorian’s recognized this eventuality, and resisted scientificism in education. However, we will also discuss that their immediate response of ‘clinging’ to a classical education was reactionary and counter productive. In essence, we will discuss why science cannot realistically be ignored. Examples would be Matthew Arnold’s essays, the notion of ‘bad teachers’ in Princess and Curdie, Thomas Arnold’s Public/Rugby School ideals, and Oxford University’s reluctance to form a medical school of physiology.

4. We will also look at the theme of education in Mill on the Floss as it pertains to Tom and his teachers, Mr. Tulliver and Mr. Riley, Philip Wakem, and Maggie. Potentially reading the novel as a response to both the increasing pervasiveness of science, as well as an argument against Arnold and other reactionary classicists.