Prisoner's Dilemma with 44 Students

Not sure what all I am going to put on this blog.  I have in the past posted about technology and things that make me angry.  There will probably be some of that on here but what I really want is just to post things that pop into my head.

One thing that occurred to me last week is a new take on the prisoner's dilemma.  Most of you will know what that is but if not, you should watch the short video below.  Imagine a cop putting two suspects in two interrogation rooms.  The cop tells both suspects that they will get off if they rat out the other one.   What do the suspects do?  If only one rats out the other then he "wins".  If they both rat out each other then they both "lose".  If they both keep their mouth shut then they both win.

So I occasionally teach software development courses at the University of Mississippi. Inevitably, at the end of each semester I have a line of students in my office asking me to change a grade on some assignment or asking me to give them extra credit. Now, if I have graded something too harshly, then I am glad to adjust a grade and I do make mistakes so some of these requests are justified. The majority are people just trying to get those extra couple of points to move from a D to a C.

The problem is that this is detrimental to the rest of their classmates.  See, my grading curves are based on how well or poorly the entire class does.  So, the more points I give to these students, the less likely it is that the entire class will get a curved grade.

Here is my entire class unwittingly playing with the prisoner's dilemma. They know, because it is in my syllabus and I have repeatedly told them in class, that my grading curve is dependent on the entire classes' performance.  One thing I have learned, I never want to be arrested with any of these students.  They are really nice people but they will beg, borrow, and steal to get two extra points regardless of what it does to their classmates.