It is verification of attendance, specifically, that "endorses the culture of cheating... telling students they can't be trusted, and turning into yet another cheating challenge/task"? If not, what is fair game for verification, in the pursuit of finding students of integrity?
Finding students with integrity is hard now, because the culture is already full of poo.
But one starting point is to communicate that you expect and require integrity, explain what that means, and then expect it. Trying to make metrics or tests or whatever to detect, rate, rank, etc. it just turns it into a game, like the same load of poo.
Though here is one thing you can do. Explain that you expect integrity, and then watch the students raise their hands and ask how they will be tested on this. You say it's expected. Back and forth a few times, until eventually some of them start crying, and then their heads explode, because they can't figure out how to game that. Those students sadly were too far gone.
Then, after that first semester of integrity culture, some of the students who didn't explode will cheat, and they will be expelled with the fury of an angry god, and everyone on campus will know why. News stories will be written, word will spread, college guides will be updated. The next batch of applicants after that will have fewer cheaters than before, and will have disproportionately attracted students who aspire to integrity and who wouldn't have known to apply to this school before the news.
A school with an honor code that students and faculty take seriously wasn't that newsworthy decades ago, but it's news now.
> Explain that you expect integrity, and then watch the students raise their hands and ask how they will be tested on this. You say it's expected. Back and forth a few times, until eventually some of them start crying, and then their heads explode, because they can't figure out how to game that.
This assumes that the students are untrustworthy and the faculty/institution are ultimately trusted. In a world in which that is not true (such as the world that produces the article we're commenting on), and students sometimes encounter problems due to unclear expectations or vague criteria that are not the student's fault, it is not unreasonable for people to ask questions whose goal is to find out the actual non-vague criteria to avoid unpleasant surprises.
By way of one of many examples: many excellent classes encourage students to talk about assignments with each other, as long as the work they turn in is their own. Now consider what happens if a student accustomed to such a policy encounters a class taught with a different policy, where that policy has not been made clear in advance.
Honor codes and integrity are excellent things to enforce. Transparency and crystal-clear criteria are also excellent things to enforce. Not to allow gaming the system, but to ensure the system doesn't game anyone.
> This assumes that the students are untrustworthy and the faculty/institution are ultimately trusted.
True. This proposal requires expecting and requiring the faculty to have integrity.
And you really need the college/university as a whole to commit to this, not just isolated professors, partly so that there can be no confusion by students.
(Some battle-scarred faculty and grad students could tell speak of entire departments that need to be shut down completely, because the administration and faculty are too far gone. I think you could never do this with one of those departments. You'd only get posturing, and the same arrogant and underhanded behaviors as before, and students would briefly be a little confused, but quickly realize that the old sketchy game-playing is still fully on.)
