Parent brings up an excellent point: throwing technology at students will not necessarily enable greater learning. At my university, a few professors started using tablet PCs during lectures to assess the effectiveness of the technology (as opposed to using PowerPoint, blackboards, overhead projectors) in a teaching environment. I participated in the study in 3 of my courses. The overwhelming consensus is that the technology was effective IF AND ONLY IF the professor is well versed in how to use it. Mind you, these were all upper level and graduate courses in engineering; the professors were not unfamiliar with high technology.
I believe this sort of funding would be better spent on increased science/math/engineering courses in public schools. Teach the children theory and ideas which further future technological development and stimulate their minds. Get them interested in learning - fund hands-on science courses, interesting niche computer/robotics courses (my high school did this), and/or pay teachers more competitive wages to attract a higher caliber of educator (Michigan may already have excellent teachers, I am not saying that they don't). Please don't spend the money on a piece of equipment that a large portion of the student body will end up using as a toy instead of as a tool.
Maybe you were in the wrong field of study. In all of my undergraduate major-specific courses, I always had a professor who loved teaching the subject, was passionate about doing related research, and was very knowledgable about the topic at hand. I never found cheating to be prevalent, simply because the answers to the problems did not exist (each professor usually made up the problems we were given). My undergraduate degree is in Aerospace Engineering, and almost all the homework and exams we received involved questions that simply could not be cheated on. I don't know how it would be easy to cheat on a homework involving the "prediction of viscous losses on overlapping rotor-blade interactions." Try finding more than a handful of relevant papers on the topic on Google.
I think that the problem may stem from people's majors being over-generalized by the professors. I know that if people did cheat in my major, they ended up hurting themselves; it's not easy to understand problem-solving methods when you never spent the time to learn them.
I am now in graduate school for Aerospace Engineering, and I find that cheating here is non-existant, if not impossible. How does one cheat on problems that the professor makes up during class, and expects to be solved by the next lecture? And cheating on a thesis? Good luck defending it.
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Parent brings up an excellent point: throwing technology at students will not necessarily enable greater learning. At my university, a few professors started using tablet PCs during lectures to assess the effectiveness of the technology (as opposed to using PowerPoint, blackboards, overhead projectors) in a teaching environment. I participated in the study in 3 of my courses. The overwhelming consensus is that the technology was effective IF AND ONLY IF the professor is well versed in how to use it. Mind you, these were all upper level and graduate courses in engineering; the professors were not unfamiliar with high technology. I believe this sort of funding would be better spent on increased science/math/engineering courses in public schools. Teach the children theory and ideas which further future technological development and stimulate their minds. Get them interested in learning - fund hands-on science courses, interesting niche computer/robotics courses (my high school did this), and/or pay teachers more competitive wages to attract a higher caliber of educator (Michigan may already have excellent teachers, I am not saying that they don't). Please don't spend the money on a piece of equipment that a large portion of the student body will end up using as a toy instead of as a tool.
Maybe you were in the wrong field of study. In all of my undergraduate major-specific courses, I always had a professor who loved teaching the subject, was passionate about doing related research, and was very knowledgable about the topic at hand. I never found cheating to be prevalent, simply because the answers to the problems did not exist (each professor usually made up the problems we were given). My undergraduate degree is in Aerospace Engineering, and almost all the homework and exams we received involved questions that simply could not be cheated on. I don't know how it would be easy to cheat on a homework involving the "prediction of viscous losses on overlapping rotor-blade interactions." Try finding more than a handful of relevant papers on the topic on Google.
I think that the problem may stem from people's majors being over-generalized by the professors. I know that if people did cheat in my major, they ended up hurting themselves; it's not easy to understand problem-solving methods when you never spent the time to learn them.
I am now in graduate school for Aerospace Engineering, and I find that cheating here is non-existant, if not impossible. How does one cheat on problems that the professor makes up during class, and expects to be solved by the next lecture? And cheating on a thesis? Good luck defending it.