I tried to enter an answer to the concerned professor (Slashdotted) who wondered what to do about Internet-enabled cheating, but you have to register to enter a comment etc., etc.  So here goes:

It is not that hard to solve (or, at least, significantly reduce) cheating. Here is what you do:

1. Have students turn in papers electronically through a service which checks for plagiarism (Personally, I use Blackboard’s SafeAssignment, which works fine, though Blackboard itself is crap). Yes, it will cost the university money. Control mechanisms do. Consider it an investment in academic reputation.
2. Institute a rule that any student submitting a term paper can be subjected to an oral examination about it within a specified time, making paper outsourcing risky. My institution has this in their student handbook.
3. Use multiple methods of evaluation, including class participation. This makes the whole course an evaluation, encourages preparation throughout the course, and might teach you something new.
4. Use fresh examples and/or new and ingenious questions every year, so that the pool of available papers to plagiarize or ready-made Wikipedia entries to amalgamate is reduced.
5. Design the content and teaching of your courses so that they value insight and deliberation rather than repetitive fact checking (for which you should use sit-in exams).

It’s not that hard. It just means structuring the control mechanisms to the content of your course, and getting to know your students well enough that you have a multidimensional view of their abilities.

PS: Incidentally, here is a to-the-point comic (removed, link rot) about this issue. Trouble is, not enough college professors read Wikipedia.

PSPS: The comments to this piece seem to take the same viewpoint, aside from lamenting the fact that teaching college has gone from scholarship to babysitting. It has, and that is lamentable. But if you are going to do babysitting, at least do it well, in a way that does not punish the real students…

From a comment at a Slashdot discussion on the use of WiFi in classrooms:

How they handle it at Harvard Business School (jwachter) on Saturday November 19, @01:53PM :
I’m a student at Harvard Business School, where they have a fairly interesting solution for handling this problem. While every campus building has wireless access, all the access points in the classroom buildings require a web based log-in that checks your student ID versus your class schedule. If you’re scheduled to be in class at that moment, you are denied wireless access to the internet (in any classroom building).

Draconian, perhaps, but very effective at keeping us focused in class.

Case teaching at HBS is a pretty intense experience, but this access system surprises me. – I have always held that if you cannot get the students to concentrate in class because they are surfing, then you don’t have a technical problem. This means students cannot google for updated information while in class, which I see as useful, not disturbing. Anyway, another person further down nails it:

[Georgia] Tech has a good solution to this problem too: they let you do whatever you want, but if you don’t understand the material they fail you and kick you out. It’s effective at keeping us focused (enough) in class, and also isn’t draconian. (mrchaotica)

To all my students who have a problem with the notion of future computers as intelligent – here is a twisted tale that just might cause you to reconsider: They’re made of meat.

Reminds me of a remark made some years ago by Ian Pearson, BT Futurist, in an MBA class teleconference (from memory): "In some years, computers will have evolved until they exceed human intelligence – but you won’t be able to have conversations with them. They wouldn’t want to talk to you. After all, you wouldn’t go out and have a conversation with a garden snail, would you?"

For the record: I maintain my right not to have a view. And to have fun not having it. 

(Via Vampus). 

According to PRNewswire, Blackboard and WebCT has announced an intended merger.

Two mediocre companies merging does not one great company make, only a big one. The sooner the university community starts to develop an open-source learning managment system, preferably based on a blogging interface, the better. Both Blackboard and WebCT are firmly based, architecturally and service-wise, in an era that predates Web 1.0. and reminds me of old "userfriendly" mainframe systems like PROFS.  Idiot-proof, but no room for user extensions.

I will start looking for good Open Source LMS’es….lemmesee, the first to come up in Google is Moodle.

(Via eBlog)

I suppose it is always dangerous to voice support for something without having heard both sides, but in the case of Jorge Cortell, I will make an exception. Cortell was fired from his teaching post at Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV because he held a conference on the legal uses of P2P file sharing networks. I only have Cortell’s story to go with, since I don’t know Spanish. But I also have Cory’s word for it. That being said, Cortell does not seem terribly upset by losing his job – only about the censorship.
Apparently, in a stunning display of academic cowardliness (not to mention PR ineptness), the Dean of the University not only gave in to pressure from the recording industry and fired Cortell – but now tries to deny that he ever taught at the place, and to pressure him to remove links to the university from his web page. Surreal in a world of free information and instant communication.
It will be interesting to watch further development – I think the dean will find that the world is larger, more connected, and certainly more vocal than he ever thought.
Update: Check the comments on this one – there are issues around this lecturer’s CV.

Doc Searls has a great two-part essay in Linux Journal. The first part criticizes Tom Friedman’s new best-seller The world is flat (seemingly a “more of the same” book from The Lexus and the olive tree, my favorite book on globalization.) The second part criticizes the education system (what Doc refers to as “the bell curve”) and how the focus on measurement and conformity is ruining many children’s use of their own capabilities.
I don’t agree with Doc that an education system focused on measurement ruins childrens futures, at least not the way he describes. For one thing, I think lack of measurement – multi-dimensional at that – of students and lack of measurement – in general – of teachers is as much to blame for the many students not making use of the potential that is in them. Nevertheless, it is easy to agree with Doc and John Taylor Gatto, the excellent teacher he quotes a lot in the second part of the essay, that the chief problem of education is that it fails to unlock the wonderful potential inherent in every kid.
There is a small problem with implementation, though.
Starting with open source, which Doc says is an example of unlocked learning outside any classroom. That may be the case with Doc and Jon Lech Johansen and some others, but at a recent Linux conference, I was told that most open source software is written by those conformist, boring corporate programmers, not 16 year old whiz kids with home-built Linux workstations. If you check out the Gathering (not that I have), the biggest data meet in the world, you will find game playing and demoing, but not a lot of open source. So ideas can come from anywhere, but implementation, I suspect, is more of a sustaining technology kind of thing, patiently making it a little bit better every year.
As for the supposed genius inside every child – it may be there, but unlocking the potential takes enormous energy and resources. I teach myself, I like to teach, and I try to make my courses as good a learning experience as I can. But it wears me out – and I teach Master’s classes in a business school, meaning the students are preselected and fairly motivated. Focusing on teaching in an academic environment does not give me much to show for my efforts, except excellent course ratings and the occasional pat on the shoulder.
Good teaching is hard, not just because you have to make things clear and compelling, but because you have to spend such an inordinate amount of time motivating the students to prepare and think beyond what is in the book. That means discussion classes, preparing every class anew rather than run the old slides, and careful evaluation of every student’s participation after class. So much simpler to just run through the publisher-prepared text-book slides, give a simple exam that test whether the students can repeat the book, and spend my time consulting or writing.
Things would be much simpler if the students came pre-motivated. I did like the approach of Gatto’s grandfather. Gatto asks: Who is to blame for the state of boredom in the classroom? And answers:

We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else’s. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn’t know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student.

He goes on to describe how his unorthodox teaching methods landed him in trouble.
That approach requires teachers who are able to nurture the seed of self-learning and push students to think for themselves. And we probably can find them – most teachers want to do just that, but they don’t have the means, personal or resource-wise.
The real problem, I suspect, is a lack of grandfathers.

My colleague and fellow case teaching enthusiast Mark Kriger dug into his files a few days ago and showed me Robert Ronstadt’s The Art of Case Analysis, a self-published how-to for prospective students in a case teaching environment. This thing is fantastic – it has strategies for how to look smart in front of the teacher (see exhibit), where to sit in the classroom, and roles to play in the classroom. Also has pointers to preparation and case ethics, as well as some basic analysis. My, what a cheat sheet for students…..
Here are three alternative strategies for how to let the teacher form a good impression:

And here is where to sit in the classroom:

I recently upgraded from Mozilla 1.7.1 to Thunderbird and Firefox (email client and browser, respectively). The benefit of the upgrade is increased speed and certain features, especially in Thunderbird, that are useful (such as better search and stored searches (“all emails to and from Doug”, for instance).
Mozilla 1.7.1 is good, but a tad slow, and I have a tendency to have 10-15 windows running at the same time, with lots of tabs in each, three edit windows up at the same time, etc., etc. Since all this is essentially one application, a crash in one forced crashes in everything. Plus, modularity is preferable if you want to stay current.
All of which leaves me without the (annoying but simple) Mozilla editor. I have done all my editing either in Notetab light or in Mozilla, but it is about time I move to a better HTML editor, especially one that supports CSS. Free/cheap is nice, should be able to handle relatively simple web pages and it would be very nice it if could handle synchronization between my hard disk and my web server, as well as helping me manage my many course pages efficiently (especially nice if I could have sub-parts of courses, learning modules, that could be stored so that I did not have to make changes many places). There are lots of them out there – any suggestions?
Of course, I could create a blog for each course. I could also do everything in Blackbored, our lame courseware option. But I like straight HTML and open access to courses. I could also install Macromedia (we have a license at the school) but that is overkill for me, I just don’t want to learn all that. So, what to do?

Nothing really new in this interview with Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, but a good summary of the VC industry and what it takes to make it as a startup in Silicon Valley. I’ll point my students to this.

I have just finished teaching a graduate course in strategy at the Fudan University in Shanghai. The students were executives – all Chinese – from Chinese and Western companies. I haven’t been to China for ten years (and then I was in Beijing, not Shanghai), and the difference was dramatic – Shanghai is a modern city, with skyscrapers, a central shopping district with pedestrian streets, and any kind of hotel you want (if you can pay). Beijing ten years ago had ratty taxis and impressive, though dusty, tourist attractions, but not much else. Here is a random collection of some of my impressions:

• Lenovo, a Chinese company formerly known as Legend, and listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, had just agreed to buy IBM’s PC division – the second time a Chinese company had made a large acquisition of a Western company (the first was the takeover of Thompson, according to my students). Hugely significant to the students, as Lenovo took over a company about four times their size, and moving their headquarters to the USA. I detected quite a bit of pride – and a nagging wonder if not the company had sold itself too cheaply, that this really was IBM taking over Lenovo.
• The perplexed look on the faces of most foreigners – by that, I mean Caucasians – trying to take in all the Chinese signs and the incredible din of life in Shanghai. Reminded me of Chinese communist delegations to Oslo in Mao suits in the mid-80s.
• The many business opportunities and vibrant atmosphere. Shanghai is shock full of students and businesspeople with guts and smarts, primarily held back by a lack of fluent English. This will change – and this is currently the land of opportunity if there ever was one.
• The quality of the food. Shanghai knows seafood, and the hotel restaurant had a dish with small shrimp fried whole in Maggie sauce that was just incredible. Normally I an slightly squeamish about eating the whole shrimp, shell and all, but in these the shell had the consistency of sugar coating rather than plastic, and were a delight.
• The customer service in the restaurants – I finally understood why waiters are called waiters. They waited in the background, and as soon as you were finished eathing, they instantly brought the next dish.
• How wonderfully the skyscrapers add to the cityscape of Shanghai, and how bad they would look in Oslo. The difference lies in topography – Shanghai is flat, with many people, Oslo is surrounded by green hills, and has a small population. In a featureless landscape, skyscrapers provide definition. In a hilly city, they disturb the view, which is why skyscrapers don’t really look good in Hong Kong (but where the population density makes them unavoidable).
• How being a pedestrian single white male makes you an instant target for every prostitute in Shanghai, even in the good shopping streets
• I don’t know to what extent the European fashion brands do business in Shanghai, but their brands certainly are there. At ridiculously low prices, especially if you bargain a bit.
• How the Chinese have not been infested by the irony bug – an epidemic that, I think, started in California and moved eastwards with Starbucks. Makes you really careful about what you say, if you only shut up long enough to hear how they speak.
• How incredibly much more complicated life becomes when you have to express thoughts in pictograms rather than text. On a similar note, I was rather surprised that my Tablet PC attracted attention – would have thought that with the Chinese character handwriting recognition it has it would be very common – but I only saw one person with a Tablet, and that was a German businessman in the check-in line at the airport. A few of the students had Graffiti-style devices, combining keystrokes into characters, but that can’t be the be-all and end-all in Chinese character entry.
• The instant cognitive dissonance produced by seeing angels, Santa Clauses and snowflakes in shop windows in a country that is patently non-Christian (though it is very spiritual – several of my students bore witness to their Buddhist convictions when presenting themselves at a student dinner.)
• The ambivalent relationship I suspect people have to the Mao period. The Shanghai Bund museum, for instance, has detailed explanations about the situation during the settlement period, the early resistance against the European colonizers, and the resistance against the Japanese. But for the Mao period there are only large, captionless photos of parades and dignitaries. I wonder if not the rather sophisticated population of Shanghai pegged the Communists – including the people from Beijing – as powerful but rather annoying country hicks. Shanghai is brash, vulgar and modern, Beijing is cultured and political, and slightly out of touch with the business community. The relationship between Shanghai and Beijing is rather like that between New York and Washington D.C.
• The fact that China has many languages and many provinces. I was hitching a ride with three of the students. The two in the front seat were talking to each other, and the person I shared the back seat with turned to me and said “they are talking in Shanghai dialect, which I don’t understand.” Or the faculty member who described to me the problem of the Western provinces, who are “not open-minded”, like Shanghai and other areas on the Eastern seaboard. China is not one country, but many provinces – and sometimes it can be as hard, if not harder, to move goods or people between provinces as between countries.
• The incredible manual dexterity necessary to be Chinese – for writing, eating or making art. Everything is done in exquisite detail, at sometimes heartbreakingly low prices.
• That it really takes 5 days to get over the jet lag (from Europe)
• How human personality shines through cultural and physiognomic variations “like x-rays through a wall,” to quote Neal Stephenson. The students had every archetypical student personality – the kidder, the sincere woman with a social conscience, the experienced senior manager who thought through every slide and asked pointed questions, and the social facilitator who was mostly interested in having fun, volunteering to run the karaoke competition
• Speaking of which, karaoke and gift-giving is what middle-manager Chinese do for fun (at least in my limited experience), and they have a good time doing it
• That Chinese drive like crazy – apparently, they have 1.5% of all the world’s vehicles and 15% of all the world’s road accidents. More than 100,000 killed on the road every year…. People routinely weave, drive through groups of pedestrians, run lights, and speed. I never saw anyone letting another car into a line, unless the driver of that car pushed his way in.

All in all, it was a very interesting experience. I will definitely go back – and I will look into arranging tours for businesses interested in learning something about China.

I am writing on a document that mentions outsourcing at the moment, which made me remember the best explanation of Ricardo and the theory of comparative advantage I have found so far: Eat the Rich, P. J. O’Rourke’s brilliant a-bit-too-well-informed-to-be-real-gonzo “treatise on economics” (pp. 116-118):

There are, however, a few things about economics that don’t seem to make sense at all. Todd G. Buchholz, in his book New Ideas from Dead Economists, says “An insolent natural scientist once asked a famous economist to name one economic rule that isn’t either obvious or unimportant.” The reply was “Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage.”
The English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) postulated this: If you can do X better than you can do Z, and there’s a second person who can do Z better than he can do X, but can also do both X and Z better than you can, then an economy should not encourage that second person to do both things. You and he (and society as a whole) will profit more if you each do what you do best.
Let us decide, for the sake of an example, that one legal thriller is equal to one pop song as Benefits to Society. (One thriller or one song = 1 unit of BS.) John Grisham is a better writer than Courtney Love. John Grisham is also (assuming he plays the comb and wax paper or something) a better musician than Courtney Love. Say John Grisham is 100 times the writer Courtney Love is, and say he’s 10 times the musician. Then say that John Grisham can either write 100 legal thrillers in a year (I’ll bet he can) or compose 50 songs. This would mean that Courtney Love could write either 1 thriller or compose 5 songs in the same period.
If John Grisham spends 50 percent of his time scribbling predictable plots and 50 percent of his time blowing into a kazoo, the result will be 50 thrillers and 25 songs for a total of 75 BS units. If Courtney Love spends 50 percent of her time annoying a word processor and 50 percent of her time making noise in a recording studio, the result will be one half-complete thriller and 2.5 songs for a total of 3 BS. The grand total Benefit to Society will be 78 units.
If John Grisham spends 100 percent of his time inventing dumb adventures for two-dimensional characters and Courtney Love spends 100 percent of her time calling cats, the result will be 100 thrillers and 5 songs for a total Benefit to Society of 105 BS.
(Just to make things more confusing, note that Courtney Love loses 40 percent of her productivity by splitting her time between art and music, while John Grisham loses only 25 percent of his productivity. She has the “comparative advantage” of making music because her opportunity costs will be higher if she doesn’t stick to what she does best.)
David Ricardo applied the Law of Comparative Advantage to questions of foreign trade. The Japanese make better CD players than we do, and they may be able to make better pop music, but we both profit by buying our CDs from Sony and letting Courtney Love tour Japan. And if she stays there, America has a definite advantage.

Highly recommended!