Wisconsin 2021

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BennyTheJett
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Re: Wisconsin 2021

Post by BennyTheJett »

Galahad wrote: April 25th, 2021, 1:52 pm
daycd wrote: April 25th, 2021, 1:47 pm
BennyTheJett wrote: April 20th, 2021, 2:00 pm Fair warning: the Wisconsin State Tournaments WAS open internet for those that might not yet know. There was clearly a lot of miscommunication about this.
Why on earth would it be open internet? That makes no sense.
Hawaii was also Open Internet. I think it falls more under the reasoning of "we can't stop you from doing it, so we may as well let everybody use it so it's a level playing field."
This was the reasoning of the state director. Unfortunately, this was not communicated very effectively to the teams in the state. I will not go further into this on the main server.
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Re: Wisconsin 2021

Post by sciolycoach »

Regardless of the issues at the state tournament, I want to extend a huge congratulations to everybody and the entire state tournament team for being able to pull off a state satellite Science Olympiad tournament! There was a lot of work put in by many people all year long to make this possible and give the students an exciting competitive opportunity, and I am so proud of our state for doing an outstanding job.

Congratulations to Marquette University High School and Hamilton Middle School for their outstanding finishes and good luck at the national tournament!

And congratulations to all of the medalists! Please don't ever lose sight that a state medal is a tremendous accomplishment and one you should be incredibly proud of. You have all worked extremely hard and remember, it is the process that is to be celebrated as much as the final result. Don't lose sight of all you have learned this year!

As a former SO coach in Wisconsin said to me many years ago when I just started as a head coach..."There are no losers in the advancement of science education."
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Re: Wisconsin 2021

Post by daycd »

Galahad wrote: April 25th, 2021, 1:52 pm Hawaii was also Open Internet. I think it falls more under the reasoning of "we can't stop you from doing it, so we may as well let everybody use it so it's a level playing field."
Well, I suppose if everyone is playing by the same rules it works. But that definitely changes the nature of the exam you write. And I'm assuming that Nationals will not be allowing access to online search tools and resources, so it does not serve the winning teams for the future.

I would have thought that this could have been a good lesson in academic integrity, rather than a defeatist attitude of "everyone cheats and we can't stop it". What message are we trying to send to our students?
Last edited by daycd on April 25th, 2021, 6:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wisconsin 2021

Post by BennyTheJett »

daycd wrote: April 25th, 2021, 6:19 pm
Galahad wrote: April 25th, 2021, 1:52 pm Hawaii was also Open Internet. I think it falls more under the reasoning of "we can't stop you from doing it, so we may as well let everybody use it so it's a level playing field."
Well, I suppose if everyone is playing by the same rules it works. But that definitely changes the nature of the exam you write. And I'm assuming that Nationals will not be allowing access to online search tools and resources, so it does not serve the winning teams for the future.

I would have thought that this could have been a good lesson in academic integrity, rather than a defeatist attitude of "everyone cheats and we can't stop it". What message are we trying to send to our students?
It's more that people want an even playing field where those that will cheat (because it happens) won't necessarily win solely because of it. While I agree the message sent isn't very great, it does allow for cheating to be nullified. I think it's wrong to just push integrity, because having written tests for several tournaments this year, the percent of teams I assume to be cheating is fairly high (much higher than I had originally anticipated). I also think that the tone I am inferring from your comment is quite flippant. I understand the frustration, but please try to consider how difficult a lot of the decision making process for these tournament directors are. If you would like to argue further, PM me on here or Discord. My discord tag is BennyTheJett1#3979.
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Re: Wisconsin 2021

Post by daycd »

BennyTheJett wrote: April 25th, 2021, 7:11 pm I also think that the tone I am inferring from your comment is quite flippant.
I assure you, I am not trying to be flippant, maybe you meant naive?

I teach at UC San Diego, and I have found that at the end of the day I need to trust my students not to cheat. We need to instill a culture of not cheating, because they only hurt themselves in the long run. Employers will recognize those that took the short cuts.

There is zero tolerance for cheating in professional science, and the stakes are high. Here, I mean with regard to faking data for grant proposals or publications. These scientists will usually lose their career. But they don't just hurt themselves, who will trust science if even a few bad apples demonstrate this lack of integrity?

If our future scientists think that cheating is normal, then we are in trouble. This is why I think it is wrong for us to send the message that cheating is the norm and change the rules. Better is to enforce the written rules and explain why cheating is not acceptable. Some may still cheat, but most will not, if we explain what is expected and why.
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Re: Wisconsin 2021

Post by BennyTheJett »

daycd wrote: April 25th, 2021, 8:16 pm
BennyTheJett wrote: April 25th, 2021, 7:11 pm I also think that the tone I am inferring from your comment is quite flippant.
I assure you, I am not trying to be flippant, maybe you meant naive?

I teach at UC San Diego, and I have found that at the end of the day I need to trust my students not to cheat. We need to instill a culture of not cheating, because they only hurt themselves in the long run. Employers will recognize those that took the short cuts.

There is zero tolerance for cheating in professional science, and the stakes are high. Here, I mean with regard to faking data for grant proposals or publications. These scientists will usually lose their career. But they don't just hurt themselves, who will trust science if even a few bad apples demonstrate this lack of integrity?

If our future scientists think that cheating is normal, then we are in trouble. This is why I think it is wrong for us to send the message that cheating is the norm and change the rules. Better is to enforce the written rules and explain why cheating is not acceptable. Some may still cheat, but most will not, if we explain what is expected and why.
As a recent Scioly Alum (last tournament was last Saturday), I do agree that cheating is a problem and cannot be encouraged. However, due to the nature of Science Olympiad allowing you to have notes for your events (in a growing number of cases entire binders of notes) it is very easy to "note bash" for the answers ti tests. This is very very common in the ID events specifically. This leads to lots of teams just copy/pasting notes off the internet (which is a different issue in itself). This makes the teams that looked up answers on the internet versus those that didn't very hard to discriminate. Hence, teams can cheat to do well in events fairly easily. So while it is a minority of teams, the idea is to not destroy the tournament for the legitimate and hard working students, but to in essence avoid enabling people taking advantage of illegal resources to gain a competitive advantage. While I would much prefer to not have an internet-based test, there is at least some logical reasoning behind it.
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