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Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

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Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#51

Post by zacharypinter »

gojomo wrote: post #7

But was it really cheating? Some students have pointed out that the professor said repeatedly that he composed the tests himself. Given that, then plausibly, using example tests from other sources would be a legitimate preparation method. (For example, the SAT doesn't penalize people for reviewing lots of practice tests, because it's assumed the actual questions during a real test will be novel.) See: http://www.tech…

At about 12:47 into the video he mentions that the makeup exam will be open 51 hours.

The duration of the test might mean that students can leave and come back (or even take the test at home). If that's the case and students are looking up the answers from the test bank (as opposed to memorizing them all ahead of time), then I'd definitely lean more towards it being cheating.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#52

Post by brown9-2 »

gojomo wrote: post #7

But was it really cheating? Some students have pointed out that the professor said repeatedly that he composed the tests himself. Given that, then plausibly, using example tests from other sources would be a legitimate preparation method. (For example, the SAT doesn't penalize people for reviewing lots of practice tests, because it's assumed the actual questions during a real test will be novel.) See: http://www.tech…

If this was such common knowledge amongst his students at UCF, then why was this the first time that the professor saw the bimodal distribution in the test scores? Why didn't his Summer class's test scores have the same distribution?

I think a lot of the comments in this thread are making assumptions about what the students did or didn't do, and might possibly be excusing some unethical behavior because of faulty assumptions.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#53

Post by ltjohnson »

I'm a 5th year PhD student who is teaching a large (80 student) section of a course, this is the 4th course I've taught. I've also taken plenty of exams as a student, and they are still fresh in mind.

I would want to know more information before I decided the students were cheating or not. The instructor refereed to an "exam room", and gave an hour range that the new exam could be taken. So the students are not all taking the exam at the same time, this makes it seem possible that the exam is online. If the exam is online, and the students can take it at home vs take it in a proctored room, that would change what would be cheating. If it were online at home (I don't think so from the video) then reviewing the test bank while taking the exam would be cheating. If not, then having seen a question before the exam may or may not be cheating, depending on HOW you saw the question.

If you did not acquire questions in an unethical way, then it's not cheating, it's just studying. As an instructor, I will sometimes put problems from the book onto my exam. If the students worked the problems before because they were studying hard, then good for them! I want my students to study, because it will help them learn. I also provide a sample exam with previous exam questions on it; I write most of my own questions and it's important for students to get used to my style. As a student, I had to take a written exam for my PhD. When I was studying for the exam I asked Professors for help, one of my Professors gave me some of his questions. I worked out every single question. He also submitted one of his existing questions to the exam and I recognized it when I was taking the exam. Cheating? No. I just got lucky (and worked my ass off).

If test questions are acquired by malicious means, or knowing that they are going to be on the exam, or are the test bank that is going to be used to make the exam. Then it is cheating. So if students knew that the questions came from a test bank, and downloaded the test bank (I'm sure it's on the web somewhere) to gain an advantage they cheated.

Finally, as an instructor. Writing a decent exam is surprisingly hard. My goal with an exam is two-fold, figure out how well the class as a whole is doing, and separate the students into their grade groups. The ideal exam has some problems that even the D students can answer (to separate them from the F's) and some problems (usually just 1 problem) that are a stretch for the A students. And a mix of medium problems for everyone. If you have too many easy problems, the grades will creep up and you won't separate students. If you have too many hard problems, the grades will creep down and you won't separate students. Writing an exam from scratch is very time consuming. I use my private test bank, and try to add 1 or 2 new questions to the bank when I'm writing each exam. I can understand (but don't agree with) an instructor pulling entirely from an existing bank to write an exam.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#54

Post by gloob »

roadnottaken wrote: post #48
cool-RR wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if the instructors are allowed to be lazy enough to use a test bank, then students can't be blamed for using it as well.

This is completely wrong. If the students are allowed to use the test bank questions, then it's ethical. If it's not provided to them, or they obtain it surreptitiously, then it's cheating. Practice tests are allowed for the SATs, but previewing the questions was clearly not allowed in this case. These rules are arbitrary , but real. Just because certain exams are open-book, doesn't mean all students are entitled to…

If it's not provided to them...then it's cheating.

The idea that students are only allowed to study from materials that are explicitly provided to them seems questionable. I would preface this with a statement of my own ignorance of the matter, if I weren't presently an engineering student.

I have never encountered someone who said "reading material given to you by someone other than the professor is cheating."

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#55

Post by protomyth »

psyklic wrote: post #28
gojomo wrote: post #7

But was it really cheating? Some students have pointed out that the professor said repeatedly that he composed the tests himself. Given that, then plausibly, using example tests from other sources would be a legitimate preparation method. (For example, the SAT doesn't penalize people for reviewing lots of practice tests, because it's assumed the actual questions during a real test will be novel.) See: http://www.tech…

Yes, it is really cheating. A publisher's test bank is very clearly not made for students to study from. The publishers warn students not to read them and try to make them inaccessible. In my experience, the professor almost always tells students what they can use to study from. Whether students can use past exams is almost always clarified - I wonder if a student asked in this case. However, here the instructor has…

No, I really don't think this is actually cheating. He handed out a test that, while claiming to be original, was actually from a standard bank provided by the publisher. This isn't a SAT or GRE that is standardized by an organization or the U, it is a test in a class that he claimed to be the author of.

What really annoys me about this story is he is covering his laziness / inattentiveness to his class of paying people and having "fun" doing mathematical analysis of his class to prove "cheating" instead of spending time creating a test. If he won't even put effort into original tests what effort does he really put into the class? Are all his class lectures equally canned? Would these students be better off with a video lecture series from the publisher and taking an online test? What value and insights is he bringing to the lectures. He sure isn't testing on those insights.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#56

Post by protomyth »

pohl wrote: post #38
cool-RR wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if the instructors are allowed to be lazy enough to use a test bank, then students can't be blamed for using it as well.

I'm shocked to see so many pro-cheating comments get up-voted on HN. Why shouldn't a community of professors be able to cache and re-use questions? The bank should have been secured, yes. But caching/pooling is on ethical ground more solid than that of cheating.

I am no pro-cheating (as I said in the other thread on this) but I don't see this as cheating.

"Why shouldn't a community of professors be able to cache and re-use questions?"

Well, the reality of having Greeks / Clubs that maintain a library makes this difficult, but even worse is what it actually says about the class and the teacher. If the class is so cookie cutter than why not just have videos from the publisher and an online test? What has this teacher learned from previous offerings? A test is a teacher's summation of the important points taught in the class. It should be improved and modified to account for new information and improvements in the teacher's teaching style. Cookie cutter tests lead me to believe he put the same effort into the lectures. I question anyone who probably spent more time proving cheating than creating the test in the first place.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#57

Post by thisisnotmyname »

brown9-2 wrote: post #52
gojomo wrote: post #7

But was it really cheating? Some students have pointed out that the professor said repeatedly that he composed the tests himself. Given that, then plausibly, using example tests from other sources would be a legitimate preparation method. (For example, the SAT doesn't penalize people for reviewing lots of practice tests, because it's assumed the actual questions during a real test will be novel.) See: http://www.tech…

If this was such common knowledge amongst his students at UCF, then why was this the first time that the professor saw the bimodal distribution in the test scores? Why didn't his Summer class's test scores have the same distribution? I think a lot of the comments in this thread are making assumptions about what the students did or didn't do, and might possibly be excusing some unethical behavior because of faulty ass…

As someone who works with data I can tell you that distributions can take on all kinds of unexpected shapes, especially when n=600. I think he's bluffing - the stats can't prove that anyone has cheated. That said, the deal he offered sounded pretty good when compared to the alternative.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#58

Post by bdonlan »

holdenc wrote: post #25

What the professor knows: - Some students had an advance copy of the test - The grade distribution indicates cheating What the professor doesn't know: - Who cheated Unless the university has access to a students network traffic proving they had access to the test, there's no way to be sure who cheated. The fact that the professor trudges through threats and vagaries for a full 15 minutes only seems to underscore this…

On the contrary - there's a few things they can do. They could examine the difference in results between the two tests at the individual-student level, for example. Or, using the set of students who admit to their cheating as a training set, do a question-level analysis.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#59

Post by AndyKelley »

cool-RR wrote: post #27

What a petty man.

"The days of finding a new way to cheat the system are over."

He's full of crap! He doesn't do any attempt at proving at all. He merely keeps threatening and intimidating, and the only thing he knows is that the numbers are suspicious.

Re: Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

#60

Post by kwantam »

gojomo wrote: post #7

But was it really cheating? Some students have pointed out that the professor said repeatedly that he composed the tests himself. Given that, then plausibly, using example tests from other sources would be a legitimate preparation method. (For example, the SAT doesn't penalize people for reviewing lots of practice tests, because it's assumed the actual questions during a real test will be novel.) See: http://www.tech…

Even if you think it's fair game for students to have access to the test bank, at the point where they started to take the test and realized "uh-oh, I've seen every one of these questions before," they should have gone forward and admitted that they'd previously seen this material.

I agree that it's arguable before the fact that using the test bank is just studying. Once the students realized that they'd effectively gotten an advance copy of the test, deciding to benefit from it rather than admit it was unethical.

Another commenter here has already voiced the question about how so many HN commenters are apparently pro-cheating; I'll admit it's somewhat shocking to me as well. There is a (probably minority) group here that seems anti-higher education (or, said more fairly, anti-the present envisagement of higher education); is it possible that it's this bias showing through?

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