Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by 3pt14159 » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:36 PM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #84

bdonlan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't prove anything. Sometimes you don't get enough sleep and do poorly on a test. Sometimes you just have a great day. Using statistics as though they are hard facts and not merely suggestions of likelihood is a terrible idea when there is a question of guilt or innocence. I have in the past had wildly fluctuating grades. Don't believe everything your powerpoint-prettied software stats tell you.

Does it 100% prove it? No. But what he can easily do is call up the top 200 most suspected students, get them to sit down in an office with nothing but a calculator and a pen and give them a very small subset of the original questions with the numbers changed. 20 people might be able to get them right, but a good 50 people arn't going to know where to start for any of the questions. Then all of a sudden it is "oh shit" time. If I were one of the "cheating" students I would come forward too.

This actually happened when I was studying engineering at Waterloo. The course was calculus 3 and the prof, who normally taught math majors, didn't know that there was a university commissioned exam bank with previous exams for courses. Course coverage was sporadic for all but final exams, so we normally didn't check it, but the previous midterm was actually there. One of us found it 24 hours before the midterm, so half of us got it and half of us didn't. The prof had reused the hardest question. Long story short, nobody got in trouble, but the prof made it so your top and bottom "midterm" (there were 5 of them before the final) could be optional dropped together or not at all.

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

#92

Post by steveplace » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:40 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #56

pohl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, the reality of having Greeks / Clubs that maintain a library makes this difficult

I was the president of a fraternity at this university. There has been no decent test bank for quite some time. However, I've heard that some of the archives from the international clubs are quite robust.

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

#93

Post by jeff95350 » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:43 PM UTC

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…

"I'll admit it's somewhat shocking to me as well."

Me too... I actually registered an account on HN just to reply. Society depends on honesty even in the face of complicating factors -- and if an intellectual community like HN doesn't stand up for honesty, that greatly disturbs me.

"There is a (probably minority) group here that seems anti-higher education"

I think most of it is more like a contrarian attitude. Some very smart people tend to pull in a lot of interesting -- though tangential -- perspectives and observations and then end up getting distracted from the fundamentals.

Cheating is cheating. Maybe the teacher or his teaching strategy was flawed. Maybe the students, at one point before test day, had honest intentions. Maybe some students were partially (or wholly) honest after the fact by alerting the teacher. But the rest of the students, who proceeded with the test even though they knew the test was compromised, were dishonest.

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

#94

Post by psyklic » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:46 PM UTC

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…

We both agree that the professor should have made his own questions. However, this does not get the students off the hook. They used a resource where the publisher clearly says: students, do not use this to study. So, this is clearly, without a doubt cheating. I'm sure that many students knew the professor would use the questions verbatim, making it even moreso questionable.

What if someone came up to you and said "here's a test bank man, the prof pulls the questions right off it!" Clearly it is unethical to study from these materials. Similarly, if the test bank merely says "STUDENTS: Do not use this to study" then it is also unethical to study from.

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

#95

Post by fleitz » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:46 PM UTC

psyklic wrote: post #87

irahul wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree with you, philosophically. But the issue is that if a professor or other relevant authority says "you cannot use X to study" and you DO use X, then you are definitely very clearly cheating. In this case, test banks are clearly labeled that they are not to be used for students. What if the professor says not to review past exams, because he may use questions from them. You still say it would be okay to use pas…

Isn't the whole point of schooling to know what's on the test? I mean if it was important to be able to do something with the knowledge then they'd focus on that instead of endless tests.

If a professor tells you to not do X and you do X you're very clearly not doing what he says, whether that is 'cheating' who knows. A degree is largely a check mark on a check box for a perfect little life of doing what you're told. Now, if people think that having a degree means X then they are free to do that and will reap the consequences.

Honestly, why should the students bother to come up with original work when the professor can't even be bothered to create original tests? Why is it not 'cheating' for the professor to use another persons test?

Obviously, what's on the test was taught in the class, so why not use an abridged format of the information that makes it unnecessary to learn information not relevant to the course? The test is the subset of the information taught that is relevant to the conferrance of a degree. To know more is to waste your time.

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

#96

Post by fleitz » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:50 PM UTC

Estragon wrote: post #35

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…

To me, the morality of what they did is less interesting than the practical ethics of it. The assessment they gamed by accessing the test bank is meant to provide feedback for how well they are acquiring the material. Getting the answers from the test bank means they were more interested in gaming the system for the credential than they were in feedback about where they need to strengthen their understanding. That su…

Have you seen how degrees are used in the workplace? If you have then not caring about the material and only on your GPA and getting a degree is a very rational choice. Cheating only makes rational sense when a few letters and numbers are vastly more important than the knowledge that is supposed to be conferred by the degree.

In most large businesses knowing how to make pretty graphs that trend upwards infinitely is far more important than anything taught in business school.

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

#97

Post by psyklic » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 10:54 PM UTC

ndl wrote: post #81

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…

Some other threads (and news articles) mention a video clip in which the professor claims he will write the test himself. By doing so, this professor implicitly declared the test bank (and everything else on the Internet) fair game for studying from. The students probably messed up big time by not reporting that the test was publicly available first, but I think we're missing some important facts and only seeing one…

That does not implicitly declare that a test bank is okay to study from, since it says on it that it is not for students. Any student would question to themselves whether they should use it. So ethically speaking:

1) Ask the professor before the exam if it is okay to use the test bank. He will say, of course not! Why do you have it anyway, it's not made available to students - are you trying to cheat?!

2) Astonished that the test bank was the exam verbatim (though I'm sure few students were), students should have told the professor that many students used the test bank, not realizing he would pull the questions directly from it. Of course, no one would do this directly since students aren't supposed to have the test bank in the first place ...

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

#98

Post by electromagnetic » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 11:44 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #88

electromagnetic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't a community of students be able to cache and reuse responses to cached and reused questions? Laziness begets laziness. I don't see how you can claim it's ethical for teachers to forfeit 1/2 of their job to a question cache. Cheating in this definition is using someone else's work to benefit yourself and by definition the teacher cheated too by using someone else's questions to form "his" alleged test. I…

Why shouldn't a community of students be able to cache and reuse responses to cached and reused questions? Call me old fashioned, but the roles of "student" and "instructor" make all the difference here to me. Although I'm not surprised that youngsters these days feel entitled to this behavior. Entitlement runs deep in modern American youth. Are students entitled to lecture, assign homework, and hand out grades too?

I think entitlement runs deep in American adults who are teaching it to the youth.

You blatantly feel that teachers are entitled to perform with a different ethics set as their students, which is personally abhorrent to me. If you have a problem with students cheating at their job of studying, you have to have a problem with teachers cheating at their job of teaching. It isn't an ambiguous issue, it's rather clear cut. If a student cheats they risk expulsion, however the teacher cheats and there's not even an eyelid batter - I call that a society of entitlement.

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

#99

Post by ohashi » Mon, Nov 22, 2010, 12:02 AM UTC

ajays wrote: post #66

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. (…

600 students in that course, that's one hell of a challenge.

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

#100

Post by pohl » Mon, Nov 22, 2010, 12:16 AM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #98

pohl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't a community of students be able to cache and reuse responses to cached and reused questions? Call me old fashioned, but the roles of "student" and "instructor" make all the difference here to me. Although I'm not surprised that youngsters these days feel entitled to this behavior. Entitlement runs deep in modern American youth. Are students entitled to lecture, assign homework, and hand out grades too?

I think entitlement runs deep in American adults who are teaching it to the youth. You blatantly feel that teachers are entitled to perform with a different ethics set as their students, which is personally abhorrent to me. If you have a problem with students cheating at their job of studying , you have to have a problem with teachers cheating at their job of teaching . It isn't an ambiguous issue, it's rather clear…

I may have missed something. What, exactly, is the ethical violation alleged against the teacher here?

I saw the video made by the students that attempts to "prove" that the teacher said he wrote the test questions himself, but it makes an extremely flimsy case:

1) It's a statement made on Day 1 of class, long before the midterm test

2) He only said that he creates the test, but does not state that he authors the questions. One algorithm for creating a test is to select questions from a question bank, so this statement has no evidential value.

3) The only remaining "evidence" in the video is a statement where he said that "he may write" a question that even he may not be able to answer. It's entirely possible that he intended on Day 1 to author the questions for the midterm, but ended up using the above method for creating the test by the time midterms rolled around.

The students are very eager here to turn the tables here and display some righteous indignation to deflect attention back to the instructor, but they haven't yet managed to make a compelling case.