As soon as the Week 2 essays were made available on Tuesday for evaluation, people started reporting serious problems with plagiarism. Apparently there had been some plagiarism in Week 1 (I had not heard about that, and I did not see it in the essays I read), but there seems to be a really significant amount of plagiarism this week - there are lengthy discussions at the discussion boards, for example, with many people remarking that they had clearly plagiarized material. I encountered plagiarism on the eighth essay that I was reading and evaluating. Aside from the fact that it is so incredibly depressing that people would plagiarize in a course like this, there is the practical problem: what are we supposed to do about this? There is no way to flag an essay as "inappropriate" for the Coursera staff to review, and we cannot even give an essay a score of zero. Instead, we are forced to give the essay a 1-1 score and it just goes back into the pot with all the other essays. In addition to the plagiarized essays that are inappropriate, other kinds of inappropriate assignments have also turned up: some students apparently turned in Grimm essays this week out of sheer confusion, along with some blank essays probably because of a technical problem - and one person let me know that he got SPAM in an essay, which I thought was both sad and hilarious (someone was promoting a novel, pasting a book review into the essay and including a link to the online bookstore where the book could be purchased!). We have no way to handle that within our current peer feedback system, and it is a source of real frustration to people who are putting a lot of good will and effort into the peer feedback system - good will and effort that Coursera really cannot afford to squander, in my opinion.
But has there been any communication about this from the Coursera staff? Even just something to let us know they hear us and are trying to figure out what to do? Nothing. By contrast, in the Internet History course, where apparently the same plagiarism problem came up this week also, a detailed email went out promptly to the students, identifying the problem, providing guidelines for how to respond, etc. A friend of mine in that class shared the email with me, and I was impressed. I expected we would get a similar email in this class, but so far we have not gotten anything.
Instead, we continue to have only an incorrect and outdated message on the homepage for the class which everyone sees when they log on to the course. The message says: "You may now submit your second assignment for the course. We appreciate your patience." (see below). Well, that is not correct at all - they put that message up when they were late releasing the new assignment last Thursday, but the deadline for that assignment was on Tuesday; we cannot submit our second assignment now, and the deadline for submitting peer feedback on the assignment is fast approaching. At a minimum, we should see an announcement that pertains to the current assignment on the homepage. More importantly, we should see an announcement about a pressing problem that is roiling the discussion boards: what are we supposed to do if we are given an inappropriate essay to grade?
There are other serious issues, too. For example, the Week 2 videos do not have the transcripts/captions needed by deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and which are also very useful to other students too (ESL students, people in a hurry who prefer to read rather than watch, etc.). One of the videos was released last Thursday and we were supposed to watch it before reading the Lewis Carroll books. The students started asking for the transcript of that video on Thursday (one week ago); no response from Coursera. The assignment deadline came and went and they were still not able to access the video. Then the second batch of videos went up on Tuesday, with yet more students asking for the transcripts (via the discussion boards, sending email to the Coursera Support Center, sending email to a special email address for accessibility issues) ... but to no avail. I don't mind that for some reason Coursera is slow with the transcripts/captions (although that is not good). The problem is that nowhere has Coursera acknowledged that they are working on this important problem to get us a solution soon.
The homepage prominently features an "announcements" area for Coursera to use in keeping us informed. I cannot for the life of me figure out why Coursera is not taking advantage of this channel for communication. Not good.
You can upload video to youtube and use speech to text from google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7amZKHZhog&feature=g-upl
ReplyDeleteAnd you can use auto translation to other languages.
I cannot publish this videos - they got coursera (c)opyright.
Marcin, yes, we can do that - but speech to text from Google is not the same quality that of real transcripts (which we had in the first week) and, because of specific accessibility requirements (ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act), this is something that Coursera must take responsibility for. I sure wish Coursera would put the videos up at YouTube the way other schools have done with course lectures (Yale, Stanford, etc.) - but for their longterm business model, I guess they have to keep the videos locked down.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering about that. That's super sad! So you have to download all the video lectures to refer to them later? (And maybe I shouldn't write "the download part" in case they drop it?) That #$%^&*! The business model might also explain the useless grading system. Another thing I hate is that, when you can finally watch the video lecture you have been waiting for, you have to hurry reading the next book and worry about the next essay, when your head is full of the last one. Instead of trying to deepen your understanding you just rush by. Leaves me unsatisfied, especially when I have to learn that all the material and forum notes might disappear as soon as the course ends. Disappointing.
DeleteHi Celine, yes, my guess is for sure they will take everything down the very moment that the class is over, so if you want to watch the videos later, you would need to download them. The discussion board is indeed destined for the virtual trash can... I have the vague hope that maybe, maybe, maybe Coursera staff will go through it looking for valuable ideas and suggestions to improve the class in the future, but I am doubtful. They seem to have zero interest in such feedback now while the class is ongoing, so I would be surprised to see them act otherwise once the class is over and they are probably busy with other things, other new classes, etc.
DeleteThe timing of this also seems odd to me. I'm not sure why it is so strictly regulated. In my classes, I put all the class material up for anyone who wants to work ahead. I figure it's good to work ahead - you never know when you might suddenly be busy at your job, or your child might have the flu, or you might suddenly have to go out of town - so I always encourage students to work ahead. Admittedly, they have to wait to get peer feedback until the other students have caught up, and they cannot do the peer feedback assignments early for that same reason - but everything else I make available from the first day of class.
If the idea is that we should keep our minds "pure" before writing our essay, I personally disagree with that. As always, I say LET PEOPLE CHOOSE. If they want to keep their minds pure, that's fine - they are not required to watch the videos. But for the people who know they learn better from a different sequences of events, they should be able to choose to do it that way. I just don't see how anybody could think that there is one way of doing anything that is going to suit the needs of thousands and thousands of very diverse students.
"I just don't see how anybody could think that there is one way of doing anything that is going to suit the needs of thousands and thousands of very diverse students."
DeleteExactly!
That the discussion board goes to the virtual trash makes me angry and that the lectures are not public makes me sad. I am all for collecting and connecting knowledge and I don't believe in "pure" minds. These essays now mostly just show if somebody took the time to get some information by themselves or has a "pre" knowledge in history or literature studies. I just don't get it. If the lectures where up from the beginning (I want them up there all the time) then the tight timing wouldn't be as bad as well. I think I remember that Rabkin encourages in the course information (only thing up there in the beginning) to read ahead. But I love to read with lots of information and was disappointed, when I found out that the lectures are hidden till you wrote your essay. Oh well now I am depressed! In my opinion this is worse then all the boring plagiarism going on.
Celine, what you say about "pre" knowledge is so true... that is something I see my own students struggling with, when their frame of reference often just does not include a lot of literature. That's why I am actually glad to have them find meaningful connections with what we are reading in class and the storytelling styles and actual stories that they do know well from the world of television and movies. Plus, since many of my students freely admit that they do not like to read (that's something that is probably NOT true of people in this class), I really don't personally see the point of teaching them any kind of artful literary criticism - I'd rather stick with where they are starting from and what they are motivated to do. For the people who bring a lot of literary knowledge into the class, that is fantastic, and they do some really cool projects (like someone who did a Till Eulenspiegel on Twitter project last semester, or the guy who did a project on the ghost of Vladimir Propp)... but I don't think those students' work is inherently better than the students who start out without a lot of that prior knowledge. Instead, I'm more interested in seeing what people can do with what they've got, whatever it might be! :-)
DeleteI'm sure, that past text wasn't "real transcripts". I don't want to redistribute videos - it was only for my personal access (and you - to show you how). I will delete them soon. (Sorry for my poor english - I'm from Poland).
ReplyDeleteOh, no worries, Marcin - nie ma za co przepraszac! My real concern is with the deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the class. They deserve to have the transcripts with the videos without having to make any extra effort! :-)
DeleteInteresting stuff Laura. I am taking the Listening to World Music Coursera with Penn, I have not noticed any plagiarism as yet, although I have marked a couple of incoherent, rambling essays that seemed to bear no relation to the question we were asked.
ReplyDeleteI had fancied posting my essays on my blog, but do you think posting essays where the grading date has passed is against Coursera's terms ? I wouldn't want to get into bother.
Also, you write about the problems faced by hard of hearing students, my eyesight isn't great - it took me 5 attempts to get past the captcha system to post on your blog ;-)
ReplyDeleteHi Mike, I usually do the audio captcha - have you tried that? The problem with public blogs where anonymous comments are allowed is that the spam problems are just awful. For me, the tradeoff of allowing anonymous comments and using the captcha is worth it; I wish Blogger had a choice for captcha ONLY for anonymous comments, but unfortunately that is not on their list. That is the option I would choose, if it were available.
DeleteAbout posting essays, I think it is allowed even within Coursera's terms - the problem seems to be that they wrote up the terms and also the honor code back when they had only homework/quizzes/tests, and did not have writing-based humanities courses as they now do. The anti-sharing orientation of the terms and also of the honor code I think has to do with the fact that they didn't want people posting answers to homework sets, keys to quizzes and tests, etc. Original writing done by students for a class is something entirely different from a quiz or a test. As the professor in the class emphasized, the writing belongs to US - he didn't want people to just go start posting OHTER people's essays... and, sadly, since all the essays are anonymous we cannot even ask people for permission to do that, we cannot get permission to quote them even if we want to, etc.
Someone in the discusson board at class did raise exactly this issues so I would hope at some point Coursera would revise both the honor code and the terms to make that more clear. But since it doesn't seem like Coursera really is interested in what goes on at the discussion board or in getting feedback from people in the class, I doubt it...
Mike, I just went into the settings to see if maybe with all the upgrades and stuff they have been making to Blogger, there were a way for me to have the word verification be ONLY for anonymous users (or if I could do comment moderation ONLY for anonymous users). No such luck. But I did send feedback to Google asking for this feature... unlike Coursera, Google has a little "feedback" button down at the bottom of the page where I click and a very useful feedback form comes up. Over the many years I've used Blogger they have added lots and lots of good features, so I feel like it is worth giving feedback. So, thanks for prodding me to do that. I hadn't looked at the comment options in a while, but they are still the same as they have been for the past few years - you cannot set up special filters for anonymous users, and that's why I have the word verification in place. The spambots are so smart... and even with the captcha, I get occasional spam, but it is highly targeted spam, the kind where they pay some poor person to complete the captcha to get the spam comment published. What a world!
DeleteHow if we transcript the videos and post the link to the .txt in the forum? It might be better than waiting for nothing. I believe if we don't redistribute the videos it wouldn't be illegal to provide transcripts.
DeleteI can still access videos from my other class in Coursera that has ended months ago. They said it'd be open to access and download even if the actual course is finished to those who want to learn in their own pace, sans peer response and grades, of course. The discussion boards would also be there, though if they decide to open the class again, that'd be an entirely different story.
Coursera is still very new, so I don't think anybody really knows what the long-term accessibility of course content will be; I'm guessing Coursera has not told us because they have not really figured that out yet either. As to the video transcripts, I agree that it would be better than nothing to do it ourselves, but Coursera is supposed to provide the transcripts as a matter of equal access for students with hearing disabilities. Their failure to do that is really disappointing to me personally; there is a staff person dedicated to this class, and a teaching assistant - along with all the other resources that Coursera has at their disposal. At a minimum, they should COORDINATE our efforts to do the transcriptions, giving us some good tools to use in doing that.
Delete