200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant 693
Over 200 University of Central Florida students admitted to cheating on a midterm exam after their professor figured out at least a third of his class had cheated. In a lecture posted on YouTube, Professor Richard Quinn told the students that he had done a statistical analysis of the grades and was using other methods to identify the cheats, but instead of turning the list over to the university authorities he offered the following deal: "I don't want to have to explain to your parents why you didn't graduate, so I went to the Dean and I made a deal. The deal is you can either wait it out and hope that we don't identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor and you can complete the rest of the course and the grade you get in the course is the grade you earned in the course."
False positive (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Unlikely.
In criminal justice, the defendant least willing to engage in plea bargaining is usually the one who believes he has committed no crime. Here, where the stakes are far lower, I'd also expect non-cheaters to first off not think they'd be falsely accused, and defend themselves if they do get accused.
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Also cheating is very common in college. I have no difficulty believing that that many of those kids were actually cheating. There was a mini-cheating scandal in one of my course almost 10 years ago, and about 2/3 of the students were implicated in it.
The professor also suffered some mild repercussions due to his methods of running the class, which allowed him to remain purposefully ignorant of said cheating.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
From her experience, it is much more work for a prof to fail a student than to pass a student. There are usually numerous avenues for appeals and reviews. There is one particular case in which she spent god knows how many hours defending her decision to fail a student who was determined to exhaust every avenue of appeal. The student in question had done extremely poorly on the project component of his final mark (which was marked by the co-teacher) and
This happens all over the place (Score:2, Interesting)
Sad (Score:2, Insightful)
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Ethics aside... How? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't quite get (nor does TFA adequately explain) how such a large number had that chance to cheat, however - And on a midterm exam, at that? What, did he hand them out and leave the room?
Sometimes, it is too easy to cheat ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of the professors at universities are extremely research focused, and do not place sufficient attention on undergraduate teaching. In one class, the teacher scheduled five midterms. After each midterm, he would hand out the answers to the midterm after the test.
Very quickly, the procedure switched to leaving the answers at the front of the class, so people could pick up their answers on the way out of class. It is a boring to invigilate a mid-term, so the professor quit showing up at the midterms.
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Probably didn't make a new exam. Old exam banks are common for people with the right connections.
Re:Ethics aside... How? (Score:4, Informative)
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In the video he stated that he had used an exam bank to create the test. The first piece of evidence he really had, outside of statistical testing, was when someone anonymously dropped off the test bank at his office. One person found it, then it went viral.
He said later on in the video that he had contacted all of the other professors at UCF, and all of the publishers that he dealt with and let them know that the exam banks were all compromised. Hopefully this incident "ruined it" for other cheaters elsewh
Honor Code (Score:2)
What, did he hand them out and leave the room?
This is the way it worked where I studied. We had an Honor Code. The prof passed out the exam, and came back three hours later. I never saw anyone cheat, but I was always so concentrated on my own work that aliens could have landed next to me, and I wouldn't have noticed. If I witnessed someone cheating, I was required by the Honor Code to turn them in. This made a lot of students uncomfortable, and was often a hot topic for the university newspaper.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ethics aside... How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Judging from what the professor said in the video its clear that this is NOT a resource available to students unless they gain access illicitly. He specifically mentions that the question bank proprietors are looking at the problem from a legal perspective. It isn't like the students just went to the site and hit print. Much more like is someone gained access by breaking in or (probably more likely) someone with legal access decided to make a quick buck and sold a copy of the database to a student and it went from there.
Frankly, the whole question bank thing just makes any argument that's remotely pro-cheating moot to me. So you're willing to memorize hundreds of questions & answers that may not be on the exam, but you're not willing to learn the material?
Bluffing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you know the answers before hand without learning the material, then you are less likely to to know which questions are harder and which are easier, and very likely to get the easy ones wrong and the hard ones right. At the same time if everyone
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Yea and it only screws over 1 in 10 people.
And what the hell is with the "letter to your parents" BS. When I was in school you got your ass kicked out for cheating and your parents were only a part of it if they were going to back a truck full of money up to a loading dock to keep you in school.
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That's the EXACT thing I was thinking. Statistics are a wonderful thing, but it's not an exact science. At most he could, as he said, deduce that a significant amount of cheating was going on from the statistics. But mathematically narrowing it down to names? With enough certainly to get someone kicked out of school? Fat chance. At best I'm sure they were/are hoping to get students to rat about who exactly else bought/sold/traded the test bank answers. If it was someone online for download though, an
What I learned from this video, I already knew (Score:2)
- If you're going to cheat, you should attempt to not get caught.
- The more people that know, the more likely you're going to get caught.
Therefore, cheating only works when it's a small number of people who can keep a secret. Preferably one.
When you use the Textbook samples test or reuse th (Score:2)
When you use the Textbook samples test or reuse the same test year after year. This is what you get when some one passes it out.
200 Students doing real cheating seems unlikely and makes it seem like they just studied the sample test.
really? (Score:2)
I also don't think it's possible to know who cheated, just how many.
How did they get the answers? (Score:2)
You're telling me this guy has taught for 21 years and was blindsided by the oldest, most common cheating vector?
Why not just study the material? (Score:2)
WHAT?! They get off!? (Score:2)
What kind of deal is this? If they turn themselves in, they get to complete the course? That is absolutely ridiculous. If they cheated, they fail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Christ, they SHOULD be expelled.
What does he teach . . . ? (Score:2)
Being that I did EE & CS, and dabbled in a lot of literature courses at a top university, I was wondering what he taught. In any of the exams that I took, it would have been impossible to cheat, and we had an "Honor Code," so the profs didn't even bother to check. TFA didn't mention what Dr. Quinn taught, so I googled him. He in a member of the faculty in the Department of Management.
Management? Cheating? Sounds about right. Actually, he should give all those cheaters high grades; they seem to un
I used to procotor for one of my Profs. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I used to procotor for one of my Profs. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I used to procotor for one of my Profs. (Score:5, Insightful)
The prof felt that we were basically setting up entrapment and had a moral issue with it on the first test. From then on we told them we were doing this. To help combat potential cheating I added a D exam. Eventually the grades leveled out to a normal distribution.
After looking at this video, I have to add, this guy is a tool. He is EVERYTHING that's wrong with education today. He's a fat lazy ass who feels he's entitled because of his position. Yet he cheats the very students at whom he's pissed. If he felt like he was delivering a good product in his education career he'd NEVER used canned tests. He'd also have fresh material that needed to have a new test created each and every time. Instead uses canned lectures and he's got a bank of assistants to do his bidding while he packs on the pounds and years to get to retirement. Teaching is an easy job for this type of person because they do it once and repeat until they retire. Using the moral high ground is just a way of deflecting the fact that he couldn't even write a good test.
Re:I used to procotor for one of my Profs. (Score:4, Insightful)
After looking at this video, I have to add, this guy is a tool. He is EVERYTHING that's wrong with education today. He's a fat lazy ass who feels he's entitled because of his position. Yet he cheats the very students at whom he's pissed. If he felt like he was delivering a good product in his education career he'd NEVER used canned tests. He'd also have fresh material that needed to have a new test created each and every time. Instead uses canned lectures and he's got a bank of assistants to do his bidding while he packs on the pounds and years to get to retirement. Teaching is an easy job for this type of person because they do it once and repeat until they retire. Using the moral high ground is just a way of deflecting the fact that he couldn't even write a good test.
You are aware that he's an instructor, and therefore not tenured, right? And that all he does is teach classes like this one? And that his salary is probably inbetween that of a janitor and a nurse on a good year? Also, that he WRITES management textbooks that are in use in many classes other than his? And probably the test question answer banks as well?
Take a look at what they pay "instructors" at UCF. Consider that this man has been teaching for 34 years. http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/index.php?action=result&search=central+florida&state=Florida&year=2010&category=&withRanks=1 [chronicle.com] You could probably earn more teaching grade-school, not to mention you'd have teacher-tenure and a nice pension plan.
So I'm not sure where your 'tude comes from. Teaching on a contract is a miserable way to live, with 0 prospects for career advancement and constant uncertainty if you'll still have an income next semester even if you've got decades of experience.
There certainly are lazy professors out there that don't give a hoot about education, nor is the system set up to encourage them to change that in anyway, but this is one of the guys that has to pick up the broken pieces of the system. And when you consider that there are many schools that are now charging more for tuition per student per year than the non-tenured instructors actually make doing the instructing (in classes with triple-digit enrollments), you'll see they are being just as screwed by the system as the students are.
Re:I used to procotor for one of my Profs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheating is ubiquitous in our education system. I remember in high school, all of the "honors" students would sit around at lunch swapping homework and copying answers. Many of them cheated on tests as well. I don't think any of those "good kids" who took a bunch of AP tests and had a >3.6 GPA didn't constantly cheat.
In their defense, their workloads were insane. I didn't take a lot of honors classes and only took a couple AP courses, and I still had 5 hours of homework a night. Every teacher acted as though they were the only ones giving homework. Meanwhile the homework was the most inane busy-work. History classes were all about memorizing names and places and dates, but you rarely got much insight into the complex causal links and cultural backgrounds underlying the events. Math courses were usually just plugging numbers into formulas that you were expected to have memorized. English courses spent a lot of time testing whether you remembered random facts and details about the book, just to prove whether you read it.
Meanwhile, kids were constantly being told that "doing well" in school consisted of doing what you were told and getting good grades. The purpose of all of this was explicitly to get into a good college. No one was focused on actual learning. No one expected classes to be interesting or worthwhile on their own right. This is why our school system is absolutely insane.
CONFESSION_MODE=ON (Score:2)
I cheated once. 't Was for a really crappy course on business administration during my CS study. Worst teacher I ever witnessed. Multiplied that by the un-interestingness of the subject and you get the incentive as to "why?"
No regrets here. I never needed anything that was mentioned in the course. I'm happy to say that I'll never be the BA god some people can be. OTOH, I'm not too shabby on my CS skills, which is what I wanted to study in the first place.
CONFESSION_MODE=OFF
Mr. Quinn
Test Bank (Score:2)
Hmm. This isn't so cut and dry. It seems that the midterm was using questions over again from previous tests, and some students had access to the previous tests. At my school, PSU, in the engineering department, this was fair game. In fact, the Engineering Library even had some old tests on file. Old tests and previous course notes were valuable study tools. That being said since it was engineering, we didn't generally have multiple choice style test.
If the teacher was lazy enough to use the same questi
Come on (Score:2)
I'd be offended if my morality was questioned because I had seen a test beforehand. I don't filter information based on what I should be able to know. I wouldn't steal the information from the professor to pass the test, but if someone handed me a copy of the test beforehand, I'd read it, not throw it away, and I wouldn't be ashamed.
Also, I expect the university where I pay tuition to work for my money, for example by not re-using publishers standard tests but instead writing new tests. Is the morality o
Cheating can be fun (Score:2)
I had math classes were we could have calculators but not a page of equations/identities. I developed a private code to store, say, a list of trig identities in a format only I could read. Thank you HP-41 and your alphanumeric storage. :) There were no worries because I never had a teacher who knew how to recall stuff like that from the calculator to check, and the HP-41 was relatively new.
This is EXTREMELY common today (Score:2)
Especially among fraternities and sororities. While originally these groups would keep older tests, which is NOT against the student code, access to test banks... that's all of the possible questions AND correct answers... is not only unethical... but illegal as they were obtained under false pretenses.
When I was in college I knew of two frats who had access to almost all of the test banks from the college of textiles at NC State. At the time I really didn't understand what it meant as I wasn't part of thos
Re:This is EXTREMELY common today (Score:5, Funny)
So how did he work it out? (Score:2)
The article is rather short on details.
Has to Deal With This Last Night (Score:2)
On a homework assignment. I considered yelling at everyone, but decided it was cleaner and more direct to just say -- pop quiz, do question #1 (very basic, 2nd week procedure) with any of the materials in front of you right now, and here's a formula card if you don't already have one. If you can't do it, then I'll retract credit for that assignment (everything else in the assignment was built on that initial result).
Now, I don't have a huge lecture hall (N=30), so it's more feasible for me to personally ove
Head of The Class (Score:4, Insightful)
Students cheat to appear more proficient than they are. The authority of the system says, "You were very bad, but we'll give you another chance if you pretend to be contrite." Students pounce on it.
Following this, the university was flooded with calls from law firms, congressional offices, and investment banks, all seeking contact information and resumes. "These kids have shown real initiative in both presenting a patina of proficiency, and recognizing a wristslap. In today's image-driven business and political environment, it is absolutely critical that we nurture these young charlatans to help them reach their full potential."
I think not, Prof (Score:3, Interesting)
1. You cannot punish a student if you have no proof they broke the rules.
2a. You cannot change the schedule of the class, especially exams, outside of what is on the syllabus.
2b. You cannot hold a student responsible for your own actions, ie changing the date of an exam and telling them they cannot miss it.
If he has PROOF of cheating, punish those responsible. However, if I was in that class, and was falsely accused of cheating or was being punished for OTHERS' cheating, HE would have a serious problem with the ethics board and the dean's office.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It might not even BE that 1/3 of the kids cheated.
Heck - if I did amazing in the course, but bombed that test, I'd say I cheated if it meant exclusion of that test for my grade.
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Everyone's retaking the test, regardless. They can't trust anyone's result, even if they can't prove they cheated they still can't risk it.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a student, I would be pretty pissed off if I had actually studied for that test and had my work thrown out because other people cheated.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's at least partly the point. People don't help cheats if could cost them.
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Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
This document helps the students plan their term because often they are taking 4-5 heavy workload courses. If all of your courses are backloaded with big projects or exams, you may want to replan your semester. The document also protects students from lazy profs who fall behind and would then dump 3 assignments on the students by surprise at crunch time at the end of term, or from inventing course projects at the last minute, etc. Also from shifting weight to the final exam with short notice because their students did too well on assignments, or because they bombed the assignments, etc.
If a student lives up to his/her responsibilities as outlined in the document, but the professor does not, the student has grounds to file a complaint. Extreme cases are needed for anything to come of it, but it definitely happens. More often you would talk to the dept head and he might have a chat with a rogue professor who is abusing their students.
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Contracts can be verbal; contracts can be written and unsigned (when's the last time you signed an update from your credit card or cell phone company?). Legal theory often relates to offer, acceptance, and exchange of consideration. A syllabus in a course you pay tuition for fits this. I can't speak to case law, but you can probably get to trial on that.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
I know of no decent university in which a syllabus is actually required for each class, let alone given any binding status. When one is given, it's always been a guideline. It's ridiculous to me to hold a course to the syllabus since there is variability between groups of students, and any instructor (even the best, and especially the best) is optimizing their class as they go along.
Maybe a diploma mill works this way, but it's a ghastly idea to me that to avoid a lawsuit I would have to stick to a pre-established schedule when the students obviously need, say, more time on topic X; or have mastered and are bored with topic Y.
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You've just made a 'no true Scotsman' argument without actually citing anything to back it up. Perhaps you're in the education industry and you 'know of' the inner workings of multiple universities? But if so, you didn't say as much.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
I can hear your misguided e-rage (Score:5, Insightful)
Punishing the innocent to get at the guilty is an act far more despicable than the original cheating. The prof is an idiot and the school that allows him to get away with this crap is not worth attending.
I was once at a similar situation (college physics II). Some students cheated, and others (us) didn't. But the professor caught on and decided - for a variety of reasons - to have everyone retake the test. The primary reason for such a course of action is that it becomes almost impossible to determine who cheated and who did not (specially if those who did not did well comparably to those who did cheat.)
Those of us who did not cheat never contemplated calling the professor an idiot or thinking it was a horrendous, despicable act. We were pissed at the cheaters, but not at the professor. Right or wrong wrt the decision, it's ultimately caused by the cheaters.
Making us re-take the test was an injustice, albeit more of an annoyance, responsibility of which falls squarely on the cheaters. As for the professor, that's his right to order a re-test. Really, it is.
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Anyone can sue anyone for virtually anything. I could sue you for providing a misleading anecdote. I almost certainly would lose however I could file a lawsuit.
Lawyers filing a lawsuit. How utterly shocking.
Last time I checked the school offers no guarantees that you won't be required to retake tests. I doubt the lawsuit went anywhere.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Turned out several of the students parents' were lawyers, and the university got sued hard...
Interviewer: "Wow! You have great grades! You must have studied really hard!"
Interviewee: "No, my parents sued the university for higher grades for me."
Interviewer: "Well, being that we're a law firm, you're hired!"
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The point is that if you studied the subject, instead of the subset of questions you knew ahead of time would be asked, then your work is not thrown out, because the new questions will be about the same subject.
Still, of course, you could have had an especially good day.
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Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm proud to say that I never cheated even once as an undergrad or in grad school. I always pitied those who did, more than being angry at them, though. Most of them were only cheating themselves (especially in courses in their major, where they actually *needed* to learn the material). I knew one girl who threw her whole academic career away (not to mention tens of thousands in student loans) by cheating in grad school. They caught her late in the game and tossed her out. She lost everything, and all becau
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
I cheated once in undergrad.
It was on a humanities class I took in my final semester. I didn't care about the knowledge, I only needed credit for completing the class. I miscalculated the minimum amount of work I needed to do to prepare for a test, and was really freaked out I would fail the class I be forced to enroll in another semester just to complete a humanities requirement. So I tucked my textbook under my shirt and took a bathroom break.
I am a little ashamed. Mostly embarrassed that I miscalculated so poorly. Given the moral and ethical greyness that I've come to expect in the adult world though, I am not sure that I can say that I wouldn't do it again in the same situation. I can't even recall what class this was for, so I don't feel that I robbed myself of any learning. In fact I think it taught me a greater lesson about being prepared, and gives me a great story to pontificate on when I lecture my kids about academic honesty.
(ack to Woody Allen) (Score:5, Funny)
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People talk about studying and cheating. I got a 4 year degree without doing either, so I don't get it. Of course, it took me 5 years...
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I've had a situation where I didn't cheat, but enough others did... The teacher's solution was to throw out all tests and -not- make us retake them.
I was -still- pissed that I put the work in, since the work then had no real point.
And before anyone argues that the point of education is supposed to be learning things, I've seldom found that to be the case. Most tests are just a way for teachers to meet the guidelines set for them. Only the really great teachers create tests that mean anything.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the answer is he made it too easy. From what I can gather, he was using canned exams that came with the textbook. Students obviously got wind of this and used their internet savvy to find a copy on line; there's a wealth of teacher and solution manuals out there.
He also says that the students can take the make up exam from 7:00 am on monday to 12:00am on wednesday. This seems odd to me, and it's either that the exams are on line or at a computer cluster of some sort. Either way it seems possible that students could be taking it before their friends and sharing their answers. Typically in this situation the teacher is using software provided by the textbook which randomizes questions, but there are only so many questions to ask a class of a couple hundred students.
The obvious solution is to design a test to disincentivize cheating. Tell them they can bring a piece of paper with definitions, terms, equations.... anything they can fit on the page. Then design the test to test a range of knowledge. Make 1/3 easy, 1/3 difficult, and 1/3 very challenging. The very challenging questions should really probe the student's knowledge of the material; pose it in a new way, ask them to extend a concept, and other questions you just can't look up or even anticipate. This way, if the student can answer the easy and medium problems, and some of the hard problems, he'll end up with a C, which is pretty much the objective.
The problem is, this is difficult and time consuming, something most Professors won't entertain. Therefore they end up recycling exams, or worse, outsourcing them, and end up with situations of mass cheating.
Re:Wow, tell people to stay away from that college (Score:4, Interesting)
You may be right.
But I too catch cheaters, and let me tell you my emotions start with nervousness at explaining to the student (individually), and then run to subdued anger.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps he was being modded "Troll" for trying to turn a conversation about cheating on tests into a forum for Tea Party propaganda....
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
So honest people have to do extra work, and cheaters get a second chance. What a great life lesson this school is teaching.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you not pay attention? Almost all the people that caused the financial meltdown walked away with boats of cash, while the honest people pay the price.
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"The midterm grades were all tossed out for everyone."
"Ok, children. Time to clean up your blocks and you will each get a piece of candy."
"Very good, but it seems that some of you cheated and simply pushed your blocks into the piles of those children around you and didn't actually put them away. Now, normally, we take such children and grind them up in the kitchen and make sausages from them, but this time we will let those that cheated admit it and we won't grind them up."
"Umm, teacher? I wasn't one of th
Collective punishment is a war crime... (Score:3, Interesting)
in some situations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment [wikipedia.org]
"Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions. Historically, occupying
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What surprises me is how emotional and "utterly disgusted" the professor was. Why? You are using standardised test provided by the publishers of the material. If you don't "know what the last 20 years was for", then change it. Make your own course material, with your own tests, and require students to show their work.
I understand this can undermine a colleges integrity, but I think it should. I think the students are absolutely wrong in this, and should be reprimanded, but on the other hand, I think th
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
What surprises me is how emotional and "utterly disgusted" the professor was. Why?
Because 200(+) students lied to him and thought he was stupid enough never to notice. Back when I was a TA, after I graded a test, I had a student erase his incorrect answer, put in the correct answer, and tell me I made a mistake. I was livid. Still gets me angry thinking about it. It's a good thing I made a mention of _why_ his answer was wrong, and had photocopies.
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Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
You photocopied all of the tests you graded?
Well, what do you think? Obviously it wasn’t the first time someone had thought of changing their answer.
Plus all you really need to do is scan them all to PDF. It wastes no paper, it’s easier to organize, and you can delete them eventually.
However, to GP: Why get angry? Just get even. Take the modified paper, write a big fat ZERO at the top of the changed paper with a very short description of why, staple it to the original, file copies as always, and then send it in triplicate: one to the student, one to the prof, and one to the dean. See how the student likes that grade.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All of you who cheated, you're on the right track. For the exception of the students who admitted to the cheat and the ones who opened up their big mouths; please submit your resumes to:
Fortune 100 Big Corp.
USA
Looking forward to having people that meet our character standards come aboard!.
P.S. For those of you who blabbed, check the Wall Street firms, they don't give a shit and they get away with just about anything.
Yours:
Big Corp CEO
Re:BS. Call his bluff. (Score:4, Insightful)
In spite of your Insightful mod ups you must have meant this as a "funny" post because if you think that the Fortune 100 would hire students known to cheat in college then you are fooling yourself.
Re:BS. Call his bluff. (Score:5, Insightful)
In spite of your Insightful mod ups you must have meant this as a "funny" post because if you think that the Fortune 100 would hire students known to cheat in college then you are fooling yourself.
Yes, these companies prefer to hire students who cheat and don't get caught.
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"Successfully cheating is the only part of the curriculum that has any relevance in the real world".
So true...
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is it just because we are lazy and can
Yep. That's pretty much it. Collegiate teaching has been hit-and-miss for centuries; your lecturers aren't anything new.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait...
You're seriously trying to blame the professor for cheating? Seems to me that if it's "massive amount of materials," that's all the more motivation for you to actually learn the material.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new here (Score:4, Insightful)
If the schools realized that it's 2010, not 1810, and if teachers actually were a bit more passionated about learning than a corpse i'm certain cheating would drop a fair bit.
I don't normally criticise people for language and grammar, since it is beside the point, but I think since you are criticising university teaching quality and seem to imply that you are a student on one, it is fair in this case. So, don't you mean to say something like "If teachers were a bit more passionate (note the form of the word) about teaching (teacher may learn, but they are supposed to teach)"? It would lend more credibility to your arguments if you didn't commit such sloppy errors.
Apart from that - this is a university you are talking about. You are supposed to be an adult, who takes responsibility for what you learn, at least to the extent that you read and try to understand the day's subject before the lecture, so you can pick up the presumably few points you didn't quite understand. Lectures are only meant to be a minor part of your effort, so I think your rant is misplaced.
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"This especially for courses that are just there as a filler and that 95% of the students won't use in their professional life. If the schools realized that it's 2010, not 1810, and if teachers actually were a bit more passionated about learning than a corpse i'm certain cheating would drop a fair bit."
Don't you think that's a two-way street? If I read you correctly, you think universities should have evolved beyond their original purpose and be devoted to professional, vocational training. But of course, t
Re:Nothing new here (Score:5, Interesting)
If the schools realized that it's 2010, not 1810, and if teachers actually were a bit more passionated about learning than a corpse i'm certain cheating would drop a fair bit.
Hah, you say that like it's easy! I highly doubt you've ever been in that position yourself -- it's easy to say "all they have to do is..." when you have no first-hand idea what that means. Let me share a bit of my experience with you.
As a CS grad student, I paid for my education working as a Teaching Assistant. After my first two semesters, the TA coordinator assigned me to be the primary instructor for a night section of CS101: Introduction to Computing. I had control over what material to teach, I made the tests, I created the assignments, etc. I thought this would be great, as it would give me the opportunity to design some creating, engaging, interesting assignments and even participatory activities to take place during lecture. (i.e. I was very passionate about my students' learning.) I went into the first class very excited -- and it didn't take me long to see I was totally failing to excite my students even slightly. Still, I kept at it, hoping that it just wasn't what they were expecting, and that it might take a bit to sink in. Toward the end of the class, a student made a comment that made me realize what was going on. This class was required for all business majors; it had the potential to be a very useful class for many of them (it covered how to use both Excel and Access, among other things), but they didn't care how useful it could be. They also had no interest in being interested in the class. It was just a class they had to take, and they were hoping ideally for an easy A, or if not that then at least for the course not to bring down their GPA too much if they only exerted the minimal energy required to coast through the semester and cram for the exams. Let me repeat that, in case that didn't sink it -- they had no desire for the class to be interesting. They were not there to have fun, or even really to learn. They were there to get a grade because it was required for their major, and they wanted to do that by expending the least amount of time and energy that would yield a reasonable grade. So tell me: how many semesters in a row could you stay passionate about what you are teaching under those circumstances?
I lost a lot of my passion and motivation for teaching the course that day. It was very disheartening to discover that 95% of my students didn't care if I spent an extra 6 hours a week to make the course interesting -- why should I spend that extra time and effort myself if it wouldn't make any difference for more than maybe 2 or 3 of my students? In the end, I still made an effort to keep things interesting, and I'd like to think my section was more interesting than the day sections which had 300+ student lectures, but I didn't put nearly as much of myself into it as I could have.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting story and you're on the path to the reason I cheated my way through about 1/2 of college: bloated requirements to graduate. Out of the 120 credits I needed to complete, I'd say about 40 had any application whatsoever to my actual major or taught any sort of lesson I could use elsewhere in life. The rest were courses tacked on to bloat out the coursework and find a way to justify the extra wasted time before I could be given that piece of paper I still have sitting in the envelope it was mailed to me in and I could finally move onto working. Just as a small sampling of what I am talking about....
I had to go through Calc 1, 2, 3, and 4. All were a bit borderline useless, but all past calc 2 were completely useless and the professors actually only really cared to talk to/take questions from/address students who they knew were math majors and were going to take even higher level classes (ya know, the ones they actually cared about).
I had one WONDERFUL business course (and side-note, the tests in that course were all completely open-book and we could even take the tests home with us if we needed, since the class had under 10 students, attendance was mandatory, and the tests were 100% essays, the professor would know right away if someone was trying to cheat, compared to how the student did in class). The rest were all an utter waste of time asking me to regurgitate definitions onto a piece of paper.
I went to college for IT. I was told I had to take 2 physics classes (each with a lab included as well). Why? Because they felt like they had to throw some kind of science class in there and couldn't come up with a better solution.
I think you get the idea. So what was the result? I cruised through college well enough, and instead of wasting my time learning crap I would NEVER use again in my life, I could spend that time learning more about what I actually wanted to do in life outside of class, was able to put more extra-curricular activities on my resume coming out of school, and compared to others in my major who did play by the rules, am generally doing better professionally than them.
If, instead of bloating out a curriculum with garbage, more schools took the approach of actually adding in more appropriate classes and maybe even work to help students get some light real-world experience while there, there would be less students just there to coast through a class and more really interested in learning what they're being taught.
Conclusion: at worst, students just want to get a piece of paper to get them a job and get the hell out. At best, they want to learn about a fairly specific topic. None want to waste their time on things they will never apply in life, personally or professionally.
I like my comp sci instructor's approach.. (Score:2)
If you get caught cheating in his class, he immediately fails you, reports you to Academic Honesty, and does everything in his power to make sure you do NOT work in Computer Science.
By contrast, in the "comp sci for non comp sci majors" (how to use MS Office) in which the professor refuses to fail anyone. Catch the same ring of cheaters several times in a row, they just get 60% on each of the assignments they cheated on.
Re: (Score:2)
The real world, whatever your career will be, relies on the same behavior that is punished in school that they call "cheating."
That's what I told my wife, but she tossed me out anyway! Oh! Ding dong!
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I once had a teacher that assigned ridiculous amounts of homework, and whenever students complained he explained how they were learning to prioritize their time and work hard. I pointed out to him that it was a calculus class, but he didn't seem to agree his lessons weren't relevent.
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There is some truth to that, but a shitty attitude like that is the reason there are so many incompetent middle-managers and so few real achievers out there. Somebody has to actually do the work, and that means getting properly educated.
Let's take all measures to prevent cheaters from passing, and then only the truly gifted "creative" folks will succeed in cheating. If they're good enough to pull it off, their skills are probably genuinely worth something. Otherwise, I don't want to encourage a shitty syst
Re: (Score:2)
I remember having a professors look at me oddly for including a large bibliographies with my papers. They'd even say, "I only needed X number of cited references".
My reply, of course, was that it was necessary to specify my references, lest it would be plagiarism.
Although I shouldn't be, I continue to be surprised by how persistent plagiarism is, how *used* to it professors are, and how horribly terrible people are at writing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Holy shit.
You don't understand the historical uses of "compleat" and why I'd spell it that way to make a point in this case?
I see it's not just this professor who's a reason for me to weep over the current state of higher education.