Professor Stuart Urban

Learn to use your laptop

As a student, your laptop is your most important tool, and you should learn to use it from day one. As a minimum, you should make sure you know how to do the following:

• Create a new folder in your Windows or Mac file system
  • I teach courses that involve coding, and I am consistently shocked that there are times where I need to explain how to use a file system to a student during their final exam!
  • Do not create folders on your desktop – this will get messy very fast!
  • Create a folder on your C: or D: drive in Windows, in the Finder app on a Mac (see links above) or on your shared drive location provided by your school, that houses all your classes for your degree (call it something like JHU_MBA, for instance)
    • Then, inside this folder, create a new folder for each term (2023_Fall1, for instance)
    • And a new folder for each class under that one (CorporateFinance, for instance)
    • All your files from that class should go in this folder!
• Zip and unzip a file on your Windows or Mac
  • You will need to zip or unzip a file from time to time, and again, it is surprising how many students don’t know how to do so

Never, ever, ever cheat

The one part of teaching that I do not like is academic dishonesty. From an instructor’s perspective, I can tell you that this is soul-crushing stuff when students cheat. When I first started teaching, I was absolutely shocked by how often students cheat, and how brazen they often are. Do not cheat! It is not worth the risk to your investment in education, your reputation and your learning. I have found that so many students think it’s a game where their objective is to figure out how to find a way to take advantage of the professor not taking all precautions to prevent cheating. What a sad way to view your performance in class when most students are performing honestly! 😢

I love my students and want them to succeed. However, when I catch someone cheating, I have zero sympathy and I will enforce academic integrity rules and sanctions as strictly as policy allows me to do so. There is no excuse for it, and there are so many other ways to succeed or survive.

Here are some effects of cheating and reasons not to do so:

• If grades are curved, you are cheating someone else out of the grade that they rightfully earned
• You deprive yourself of an opportunity to learn
• You disrespect your instructor and your fellow students
• You cheapen the degree for which you are working so hard, both for yourself and others
• It makes life so much more difficult for Professors and TAs
  • Grading is more difficult when we need to look for cheating
  • Additionally, coming up with great homework and test questions is difficult and takes time
    • Because I know some people will cheat, I need to come up with new questions every time I teach rather than spending time on other materials to help enrich students’ learning
• It means that your Professors and TAs need to take a somewhat adversarial position relative to students rather than being fully supportive
  • This aspect of cheating makes me extremely sad

Alternatives to cheating

There are plenty of ways to perform better, even when things are looking grim, rather than cheating. Here are a few:

• Request some extra time with your TA and/or Professor
  • Whether you’re trying to finish a homework or study for an exam and worried about it, getting some extra time with your TA or Professor often helps a ton!
  • Your Professor will respect your eagerness to fill in the gaps in your understanding of the material, and some of us even have a tendency to reward students (with a step-up in grade) who have shown such eagerness and improved, even if you haven’t quite reached the next level you were hoping for
  • Also, since we are all now using Zoom regularly post-COVID-19, getting that extra time can be much less of a burden for both you and your TA or Professor
• Ask a classmate for some help
  • There are often students who understand material very well and are willing to help just as a TA or Professor would
  • This is rewarding for the classmate who helps out, too, as teaching something really does help you learn it to a greater depth
• Check out some of the great online resources available for extra learning!