Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thoughtcatalog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 147 posts

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

#61

Post by boucher »

gloob wrote: post #54
roadnottaken wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I think the intent was to say that if the professor had a reasonable belief that the test bank was secured and not accessible to students, then they probably should have had that same belief, and not used it as a source.

I don't necessarily agree with that.

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

#62

Post by StavrosK »

protomyth wrote: post #55
psyklic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

I will agree with you. I'm not familiar with these test banks, but if they are publicly accessible, what's the point in banning them? Here in Greece, all our university teachers encourage us studying any material we can find, even past exam papers, and most provide the papers themselves. We are also allowed to take the exam paper with us when we finish the examination.

If you're a teacher, it's part of your job to write novel test questions. If you can't be bothered to do that, you can't tell people "this is what I'm going to ask in the exam, but don't read it". This isn't even the minimum amount of effort to keep honest students honest.

As another poster said, studying an entire test bank is studying the material.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

eightbitman wrote: post #34
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…

Hey, at least he feels better now that he grandstanded and made himself feel like a big man catching so many bad little boys and girls.

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by irahul »

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…

> In my experience, the professor almost always tells students what they can use to study from.

No one have any say (if they have, they shouldn't) in what a student chooses to study. The student might choose to study from some cliff notes, class notes, books or test banks.

The professors, at best, can make a suggestion/recommendation which the student is free to ignore, because hell, he is willing to bear the outcome. It's his test scores that are going to be affected.

If the professor recommends a sub-par C book and I prefer K&R, no one can stop me from doing that. Similarly, if the professor suggests "Computer Architecture(Hayes)", and I think the book is a bit tough for me or I am not that interested in studying Computer Architecture, I will go ahead and use cliff notes or solve some test banks. A professor can't shove something down my throat just because he feels otherwise.

I don't really see why the professor is entitled to tell students what to read, or more importantly what not to read.

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

#66

Post by ajays »

The solution, of course, is to have open-book, open-notes tests. Let the students bring any notes, books, etc.; anything but a communication device. The questions need to be novel and challenging enough so that the students who understand the material can walk out in no time; the students who don't, can sit around flipping through their notes.

Of course, this approach requires the _professor_ to do a lot more work. (The few times I taught, I used this approach and always got rave or begrudging reviews).

So really, I have no sympathy for this professor if he adopted the "security through obscurity" approach (as in, the problem set wouldn't be accessible to students). I don't blame the students for doing what they did; in real life, don't we expect employees to use whatever resources they can to solve problems?

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

#67

Post by gojomo »

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…

Perhaps this was the first semester that what had been known to a few people, or whispered about, became widely known. Perhaps this was the first time a digitized copy of the test bank got widely distributed -- maybe even because the publisher's standards for selling the test bank got loosened.

At a smaller but growing scale, over several semesters, this tactic of using the test bank might not lead to any striking anomalies in the distribution... just a gradual rise in the average, and fattening of the above-the-median tail. For a while, that might convince the professor he's doing better!

(Also, while we see Summer scores for comparison, he doesn't show the prior Spring or Fall. Often Summer students are a different pool, who in this case may not have been privy to the same campus folklore. Perhaps there was evidence of the same tactic earlier, or another professor with a different exam style taught previously.)

Lots of speculation, I know, and I would need more information to assign levels of culpability overall. Were students specifically warned off using test bank questions? Did those who obtained the questions lie to the publisher to acquire them? How similar were the circulated test bank questions to other official preparation materials? Etc.

It could also be interesting to see, on the makeup exam with presumably all-new but similarly-difficult questions, has the average mastery gone up? Perhaps memorizing the test bank questions does have some persistent beneficial effect for understanding the material.

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

#68

Post by JeffBlauser »

zacharypinter wrote: post #51
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.

That's the impression I got; they were bringing the answers to the lab.

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

#69

Post by gojomo »

kwantam wrote: post #60
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…

should have gone forward and admitted that they'd previously seen this material

Isn't that to some extent what the professor reports as happening? Both the anonymous test-bank drop, and the other 'emails' from students reporting that some peers had question access, are students blowing the whistle once they understand the whole situation.

Further, perhaps some of those talking about 'others' are being coy about their own involvement until they know how their study behavior, which they had previously believed was legitimate, will be judged retrospectively.

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

#70

Post by irahul »

irahul wrote: post #65
psyklic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In my experience, the professor almost always tells students what they can use to study from. No one have any say (if they have, they shouldn't) in what a student chooses to study. The student might choose to study from some cliff notes, class notes, books or test banks. The professors, at best, can make a suggestion/recommendation which the student is free to ignore, because hell, he is willing to bear the outcome…

@Downvoter So you are basically saying the student doesn't have the right to decide what to read and what not to read? Since he enrolled in the university, he forfeited his intellectual independence and is bound by the whims of a professor?
Post reply on HN