A story from Taosheng Liu, professor of psychology

[Jiang, John]

If you have similar encounters, please share your experience or perspective with Taosheng. Thanks.

John Jiang
Associate Professor of Accounting


Begin forwarded message:

> Dear John,
> I hope the end of semester is going well for you. I'd like to share
> something that disturbs me lately, regarding the Chinese undergraduate
> students at MSU.
> A colleague of mine teaches our introductory psychology course, this
> is one of the largest courses here, typically with ~500 students, mostly
> freshmen. She has reported to me that she has found cheating behavior
> during exams, and such behavior all come from Chinese students. She has
> told me this two months ago when she gave her first tests, but just
> yesterday she told me the same thing on her final exam. By her count, 10
> different students have engaged in cheating/suspicious behavior in 3 or
> 4 exams, and all of them are Chinese, while none of the American
> students cheated (there're other non-cheating Chinese students too).
> This made me a bit ashamed and angry. I don't know what to tell her
> really; I kind of apologized for the misbehavior of my country fellow,
> but both of us are aware that there is no real connection. I hasted to
> point out that there're many Chinese people around and there'll be some
> less honest ones. But I'm quite shocked indeed. I don't recall a time
> when Chinese students had such a reputation; we were all once students
> at US institutions and my impression is that we're perceived as a good
> group.
> So I'm writing to you because you seem to have some involvement with
> these students. Perhaps someone should advise them about this. Cheating
> is probably the worst thing a college student can do. Perhaps MSU
> recruited them to make tuition dollars, but that doesn't give anyone a
> license to cheat.
> I'm sure we're all aware there's a perceived credibility issue with
> everything China. One example is standardized test scores such as GRE
> and TOEFL from China are treated with a grain of salt in graduate school
> admission, not to say other bigger issues like product safety and
> intellectual property. Cheating incidents in my colleague's classroom
> don't help the situation, at all. My colleague didn't make a fuss about
> this. But suppose some of the remaining 490 non-cheating students
> noticed the trend and next thing we know there's a headline in the
> newspaper saying "MSU Chinese students' cheating problem". That would be
> rather bad, wouldn't it?
> While I believe/hope most of our Chinese undergrads are well-behaved,
> a few bad ones, even a small proportion, is toxic enough to affect
> everyone, perhaps even graduate students and faculty. I don't know how
> prevalent this problem is in Chinese undergrad population, but this one
> incident seems significant enough to deserve some attention. I feel
> something should be done to educate these recruits. I welcome your input
> to this. And if you think it's useful to forward this to other people,
> please feel free to do so.
> Thank you for your attention.
>
> Best,
>
> --Taosheng
>
> --
> Taosheng Liu
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Psychology
> Michigan State University
> 316 Physics Road
> East Lansing, MI 48824
> PH: 517.432.6694
>
>

[Taosheng Liu]

Thanks for your input, Juyang and Wenjiang.
Let me provide a bit more background info.: indeed this was not the
first time I was alerted about this. The same colleague actually told me
this last year when she taught the same class. Back then I kind of
ignored it and shrugged it off--I kind of treated it as a fluke, like a
type I error. But this happening again doesn't look like that. Indeed
I'm sure if you perform some statistics it'll come out significant. As
an aside, I personally have not taught Chinese undergraduates, as I'm
only teaching small upper level class and I haven't encountered them.
Whereas Psych 101 is probably one of the most popular classes at MSU; we
routinely have 2-3 sections of 500 students every semester. So it indeed
provides a more representative sample.

Let me also say my colleague does not have an agenda with Chinese
students, or China in general. She is a very reasonable and likable
person whom I have a lot of respect for. So in this case I'm confident
there's no abuse of power on the instructor's end.

Lastly, I'm sure you're aware that it's somewhat difficult to be
absolutely sure that someone is cheating during an exam. The bar needs
to be pretty high--assuming innocent until proven otherwise, standard
practice in law. She told me two types of behavior: looking at
neighbor's paper, talking to each other (in Chinese). All offenders are
talked but all denied any misconduct--except in one case, a girl
admitted cheating. She gave a zero to the last case; all the others are
reprimanded and warned. Because cheating is a serious offense, I think
we as instructors all are pretty conservative in giving out punishment.

So I'm not sure if John's solution really works, as we're surely not
catching all the cheaters. Talking in Chinese is especially hard to
persecute, isn't it? My point is that those "little behaviors" shouldn't
really occur in the first place. It's not like high school graduates in
China don't know the etiquette of taking an test. Why did they do it? Is
some moral education necessary here?

I invite you to reflect (and perhaps act).


Best regards,

--Taosheng



On 12/12/2012 07:59 AM, Wenjiang Fu wrote:
> Thanks, John, Taosheng and others to bring this to our attention.
>
> I think this is a very serious matter, but many students from China may not realize and recognize it,
> given the background that cheating and plagiarism is so rampant in the academia in China.
> I have a lot of experience with this.
>
> I believe the students should be educated first when they arrive at MSU or even before that at a gathering party in China (Beijing or Shanghai).
> I've been on the student appeal committee of MSU and I have seen several good cases and bad cases regarding cheating and instructor's abuse of power.
> It should be good for the Chinese students to know what they can do to protect themselves in a dispute, and yet more importantly what they cannot do and
> should never try to do and the consequences of violating the rule.
>
> Academia misconduct can be punished. But the penalty does not stop with a failing grade. The bad reputation of the individual student and that of the student body
> make things much worse than the penalty on the transcript.
>
> I would suggest that CFC engage in the student association and provide advice to the students in a workshop. Such preventative procedure may need to be reinforced
> each year when new students arrive.
>
> Best,
> Wenjiang
> ________________________________________
> From: Juyang Weng [we...@cse.msu.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 1:06 AM
> To: Jiang, John
> Cc: c...@panda.msu.edu; cfsf...@googlegroups.com; Tom Buffett; Chao, Georgia; kang li
> Subject: Re: A story from Taosheng Liu, professor of psychology
>
> I think that we should stick to the MSU policy and report such instances
> to the college
> undergraduate dean. The dean will process. Once the students get zero
> for the cheating work, they will stop.
> If we do not report, we are tacitly encouraging them for the next.
> I guess that he dean will not fire them for the first instance.
>
> -John

> --
> --
> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
> 3115 Engineering Building
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
> Tel: 517-353-4388
> Fax: 517-432-1061
> Email: we...@cse.msu.edu
> URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
> ----------------------------------------------
>

[Gao, Bin (gaob)]

Hello all,

I think Taosheng raised two critical questions, "... Why did they do it? Is some moral education necessary here? ...".

The reasons why the students are trying to cheat may be very broad. Cheating is a universal issue -- it happens in all communities and groups. At this moment, there are two significant reasons we may consider:

1) environment -- people tend to cheat if they are in an environment, where cheating is not treated as a serious issue.
The environment can be large as a country, and small as a family.

2) consequence -- consequence/penalty on cheating is hard to conduct, which may implicitly encourage people to take a risk.
I believe each social entity, even a family, has formal/informal punishment on cheating.

Now, we can focus on how to improve environments and enforce consequences.

"Education" may be a good start point, so moral education must be necessary. In this case, education activities must be conducted for both young students and the instructors. Everyone should get a message "cheating is a serious problem". I believe such message can be really powerful in the context of higher education. In practice, instructors must enforce this message in time for each class. Also, I would like to suggest to do a research on this topic against Chinese students and publish the results on local news paper, which can be a part of education.

"Penalty" must be conducted. Any suspicious cheating must be pointed out, and reported if serious. Instructors have the right to do it by their professional judgments, though most of them try to avoid the lengthy and messy process. In practice, localized penalty/punishment may be effective. Actually, "Penalty/punishment" is an extension of education.

In a word, as a group here, what we may do at this moment is to educate those young Chinese people to do right things. We can develop some materials on some main topics, and organize a series of basic presentations around the campus and communality. Hope those activities can minimize the number of incidents, and help the young students thinking right.

Thanks,

Bin

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[Yuehua Cui]

I have also heard about the cheating incidences even for graduate students. I have a colleague recently told me that several Chinese master students in her class cheated during an exam. She immediately stopped them, but they intended to ignore her warning and did it again. She was very upset. I guess this type of misbehavior maybe is rather common among Chinese undergraduate students.

I think those students should be punished and they should learn from the lessons. This should be part of their training in school to learn to be honest. If not, there should be consequences. Otherwise they will bring the same type of bad behavior to their future career.

But one thing I am a bit concerned is how to record the evidence of cheating. Showing evidence will also help avoid abuse of power by an instructor. Any thoughts on this?

Yuehua

[Qing Xia]

Great input!
I believe the majority of Chinese students are earning their credits by working hard. This is what I learned from Chinese undergraduate students directly. They told me about cheating among them. One thing is cheating is very common among a few difficult courses (by their standard). Some students cheat because they don't want to make effort and believe they can get away with it. Some cheat out of desperation (they know they can't pass no matter how hard they work. Sadly it's true in some cases). Some cheat in exams because they just can do it due to incredibly tolerant instructors or supervisors. I have heard a few ways of cheating in and out of classrooms among Chinese undergraduate students.

I was told that the instructor of one course uses the same exam for years and students just pass it on to the next generation, and everyone gets a Four points, happy ending.

So how to address this issue is something to think about.

Best,
Xia Qing

-----Original Message-----
From: CFSF...@googlegroups.com [mailto:CFSF...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Taosheng Liu
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 10:55 AM
To: Wenjiang Fu

[Yuehua Cui]

I agree with Wenjiang's 2 cents and support George's idea in educating students with concrete actions. I think all students know it is unacceptable to cheat, but they just want to take the chances without seeing serious punishment. More "moral" education is needed and occasionally serious punishment should be taken to reduce such misbehavior to a minimal level. Think about why the rate of drunk driver has been largely reduced in China since heavy punishment being taken against such illegal incident in recent years.

Thanks,
Yuehua

-----Original Message-----
From: Wenjiang Fu [mailto:f...@epi.msu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 3:06 PM
To: Chao, Georgia; Yuehua Cui; Jiang, John; c...@panda.msu.edu; cfsf...@googlegroups.com; Tom Buffett; kang li; Qing Xia
Subject: RE: A story from Taosheng Liu, professor of psychology

I have my 2 cents here.

I believe the education is good here in the US not only because it is more advanced in terms of acadedics, but also in terms of credentials and the honesty.
That's one of the important reasons why the US degree is worth more than a Chinese one, at least on the Job Market in China.

Education is not only in terms of academic skills, but also of behavior, the workmanship or the so called "spirit" in Chinese.

I recall that Bill Cosby once called to the African American community to have the youngsters educated to behave properly and speak well.
It is the same here. If our students behave well and try to keep such bad behavior as minimal as possible, we would not have to worry about being discriminated for behaving badly, at least. The Jews won the battle by earning their respect. The Chinese should follow, rather than wait till bad things happening and then fight back.

Fight for discrimination is important, but also an uphill battle. It's much better to discipline our own students to prevent such bad behavior to happen.
You can fight on the court, but never win in people's mind once the bad impression is made.

Wenjiang
________________________________________
From: Chao, Georgia [ch...@bus.msu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 2:05 PM
To: Wenjiang Fu; Yuehua Cui; Jiang, John; c...@panda.msu.edu; cfsf...@googlegroups.com; Tom Buffett; kang li
Subject: RE: A story from Taosheng Liu, professor of psychology

I would like to make 2 points:

1. I find it hard to believe that in a class with 500 students, "none of the American students cheated". However, I believe that most faculty at MSU are likely to notice that a cheating student is Chinese as opposed to noticing that a cheating student is Caucasian/American. When I catch a white student cheating, I don't immediately think "That white American is a cheater", but many minority/international students might be first identified by their minority status ("That Chinese is a cheater"). Thus, it may be more likely that a negative stereotype is developed for minority/international students. This is a major concern because many of our Chinese students are NOT cheaters, but may be stereotyped as likely cheaters. I heard from some undergraduate Chinese students that they were separated when entering an exam room, because they were suspected of cheating -- even before the exam started!

2. I think any student who cheats, Chinese or not-Chinese, should be punished. I am working with a group of Chinese undergraduates to make some educational videos to help them adjust to academic life at MSU. One topic that we have planned for work next semester is a video on "Academic Integrity". It will cover cheating and plagiarism. The video will be in Chinese with English subtitles. Hopefully, this will be one way to educate our Chinese students about the personal consequences of academic dishonesty and about the negative effects such behavior will have on American stereotypes of Chinese students. If anyone is interested in helping me with this project, please contact me.

Georgia

Georgia T. Chao, Ph.D.
Department of Management
North Business College Complex
Michigan State University
632 Bogue Street, Room N435
East Lansing, MI 48824-1122
voice: 517.353.5418
fax: 517.432.1111


-----Original Message-----
From: Wenjiang Fu [mailto:f...@epi.msu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:50 PM
To: Yuehua Cui; Jiang, John; c...@panda.msu.edu; cfsf...@googlegroups.com; Tom Buffett; Chao, Georgia; kang li
Subject: RE: A story from Taosheng Liu, professor of psychology

I think Yuehua made a very good point.
This will prompt the instructors to respond immediately to the cheating behavior during an exam so that Students around will serve as evidence. This will also make the case hard to be overruled through any appeal later on.
So the best strategy is to educate the students.

Wenjiang

[yuanch]

Dear Taosheng and All,

Unfortunately, the very conversation occurred yesterday during the
weekly tea time in the High Energy Physics group of the Department of
Physics and Astronomy. (The weekly tea time is an informal gathering of
the faculty to chat about almost everything, ranging from academic
affairs to politics, etc.) "Cheating among some Chinese undergraduate
students" was unfortunately the main topic of discussions here yesterday.

We, as members of Chinese community, should definitely do something
about it. I sincerely hope that CFSFC-MSU could form a committee to
study this issue and start a dialog with the student body and the
university.

By the way, is Dr. Steven Hsu, the Vice President for Research and
Graduate Studies, a member of CFSFC-MSU? Does he know about this issue?

Best Regards,
C.-P.

[Anning Jing]

I had Chinese students in my Asian Art History class attempting to cheat in exams. They typically sat together in  the back of the classroom. One of my general observations is that most of the Chinese students in my classes were least hard-working, and very often quite casual in their behavior, for example habitually coming late and leaving early without showing any sense of embarrassment.

Anning Jing

Art Department

College of Arts and Letters

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