Incidentally, I’ve seen students posting observations from their own schools, sometimes from accounts with what look like real names. Have they never heard of Stranger Danger?!
Not homework questions on the forum, but related: I’ve seen observations from at least one school that seemed to be part of a project (being made at roughly the same time, for example) but not taking care to do things like marking obviously cultivated plants as such. There was no indication of any oversight on the teacher’s part or any attempts to fix the issues or let the broader iNat community know they were working on it.
There’s one observation I’ve seen where a student included their student ID, name, number and all! At least two identifiers commented about this, saying it’s a privacy concern. Nothing changed, so it looks like one of those student accounts which were made for one assignment and abandoned, I guess?
So I did hear from the teacher of these students. They created a summer assignment and part of it was to use iNat and come up with a research question based on what they observed
In terms of the forums, I suggested that if they had a question about their research, they might be able to use the forum to resolve that question. I did not expect any student to ask another person in the forum to create a question for that student and answer any questions that should have been answered with their data or individual research.
I’ve told the teacher that the iNat Forum isn’t the best place for school assignments like this so it shouldn’t be part of any future assignments, but in terms of this specific assignment it’s probably too late to get that message out to the students. I suspect this’ll pass in the next few days.
Please treat the students kindly, and please don’t make complaints about the teacher or the assignment here. These kind of posts have never been in a significant issue in the past so there was no explicit policy addressing school assignments and the forum. Ergo, this topic.
If the question is one they should have been able to answer using their own research, let the moderators know and we can unlist it as that would not fit their assignment. Myself and the moderators are still working on a specific policy going forward. Please assume others mean well, of course.
Thanks for the update, I was curious about that. Coincidentally, I happen to live in the area where most of the questions were coming from (no, I was not involved ).
Prior to this assignment where it was clear part of the assignment was to actually post on the iNat forum I don’t think the whole homework thing has been a huge issue. One will come up every now and again and it’s usually very obvious (for reasons stated here by others) that they’re just looking for answers. Those are probably best just left ignored, and maybe put the onus on us to do so. Maybe continue to close/delist with justification, but no strong feelings on that.
I have sort of mixed feelings about everything. Clearly if it’s just to get an answer, no response is warranted. But, if the question is not for a direct answer but for discussion I think it could be a good thing to spark younger folks’ curiosity and engagement. Perhaps that’s what the teacher who assigned this most recent assignment’s intent was. While I don’t think it is appropriate to require as part of an assignment, I do think that a question every once in a while that is not for an answer but to discuss and engage on a topic is welcome. Any opportunity to get younger folks interested in the outdoors is a win in my opinion.
i’ve been thinking about this, and i think this does accurately capture most of how i think about it. the product of the research could have an impact on others’ understanding and enjoyment of the natural world. generally, doing something like answering survey questions doesn’t detract from the bulk of the student’s key work, which in that case would be things like experimental design, data analysis, etc.
on the other hand, the assignments for high schoolers seem to be more about figuring out how to ask questions, form hypotheses, and do general literature review. so it’s much easier to cross the line of completing their entire assignment for them.
the only other thing i would add is that graduate students working on research seem to be much more likely to explain exactly who they are and what they’re doing, which allows other folks to make better decisions about whether to engage.
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while we’re talking about scope, i think it may be worth extending the scope of this policy work to cover not just school work but also general work products (or at least thinking about how whatever policy is developed for school work could be extended to cover general work products in the future). as noted above, i think a graduate student working on, say, a survey will usually provide a fairly clear statement to explaining who they are and what they’re trying to do, but i’ve seen cases where folks are working on various work products or various commercial products when engaging the forum, and it may not be obvious that that’s what they’re doing. in some ways, some of those kinds of interactions share similar problems as the school work topics, where it’s too easy to cross lines that probably shouldn’t be crossed. i realize that it’s probably super difficult to police behavior here, but sometimes just setting up clear definitions of appropriate and inappropriate behavior is enough to deter the inappropriate behavior.
The graduate student surveys have also sparked plenty of discussion too - about proper survey design, errors in their survey, biases present, etc. which is a good thing to think about and talk about.
If other ages of students did the same (presented their work in some fashion, showing their background and their thought) it would fall into the same category (impo) as the surveys. There is the background groundwork completed, and there’s just a spot that is stuck, or the background work presented a question they are struggling to find answers to, etc.
I suppose for me, it’s intent based. Which is hard to tell sometimes.
It seems that engaging in Forum discussions was set as part of the coursework, or at least perceived that way by the students - see quote below:
That makes more sense to me. It’s not that the students are trying to take the easy way out and getting someone to do their homework, it looks more like they’ve been oriented to engage in the forums in relation to their question as part of their class assignment. It would be good to send some feedback to the teacher that they’ll need to rethink this for the next time they run this class.
Yes, as I mentioned above, I’ve been in touch with the teacher and engaging with the Forum was part of the assignment so I don’t blame the students for posting, although I think some of their questions were not discussion questions, but they’re learning. The teacher said they won’t make that part of their assignments in the future.
I’ve been having a hard time putting my thoughts clearly into words, but I think if students come to the forum organically and ask questions about something they’re intrigued by that’s one thing. It’s different when it’s part of an assignment and especially if it all comes at once and there isn’t any context. It does make it feel more transactional, as pisum noted.
As a student who was assigned this project and required to post on the INat forum and present my findings, I’m pretty sure it was the teacher’s intention to spark discussion. That was my intention at least, as I had already collected data and formed a hypothesis. For my project, I wanted to know the effects of drought conditions on a parasitic relationship between the Emerald Ash Borer-- a highly invasive species–and the White Ash Tree–a critically endangered species.
OK, so what is your hypothesis? Why have you decided on that hypothesis? And what data supports it? Otherwise, it’s just another homework question with some added pathos.
Let’s keep this discussion on the general issue of having school project/homework questions on the forum (whether related to the recent situation or more generally) and avoid focusing on any one specific question/potential answers.
Based on @charliemackenn’s interactions and observation count, maybe he/they could be a “budding naturalist” and hopefully our frustration at students rushing to get answers to homework problems doesn’t sour the iNat experience, discouraging them from iNat entirely.
I don’t see the problem with anyone, including students with homework assignments, joining iNaturalist and the forum and being able to ask any nature-related question they want on the forum. No one is forced to answer, but if people are interested in exploring the topic, why not? iNaturalist shouldn’t be the school homework enforcer.
I appreciate your response and it is an interesting question. Good luck with it! Hope you’ll stick around on iNat and the forums in the future.
Totally agree. I think we should also mind our tone so that comments don’t come off as rude, inflammatory, or antagonistic as many times these questions are from high school students or slightly older, who are totally green to iNat and the forums. Yes, we’ve seen these topics come up from time to time, but up to this point the posts have been a minor inconvenience and are in no way inhibitory to the overall forum experience. If it’s a clear instance of a user asking a homework question probably best to just leave the moderators to handle it.
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