How to Catch a Cheater
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How to Catch a Cheater
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Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#2run a proxy server company? this would be perfect material for a viral campaign.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#3That sounds terrible. If I saw something like that, I'd probably do the problem, then look up more information on it. I'd probably start with wikipedia but move onto google (well, ddg these days) if I didn't find anything.
The sort of policy that does not allow one to do basic research is pretty anti-academic if you ask me.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#4> We were explicitly told that searching online for answers to homeworks was forbidden.
I might be in the minority but I am of the opinion that if you are grading students on something that can be easily obtained through a google search you probably shouldn't be grading them on that.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#5That sounds terrible. If I saw something like that, I'd probably do the problem, then look up more information on it. I'd probably start with wikipedia but move onto google (well, ddg these days) if I didn't find anything. The sort of policy that does not allow one to do basic research is pretty anti-academic if you ask me.
I agree. In a similar vein, I took a bunch of electronics classes and wasn't allowed to use my TI-92+ on the grounds that other students didn't have them. I though that was the biggest load of crap especially for a program that was geared towards workforce training. My employer is hardly going to say "I need you to do X, and oh by the way, if you try to use all the resources at your disposal, you're fired."
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#6That sounds terrible. If I saw something like that, I'd probably do the problem, then look up more information on it. I'd probably start with wikipedia but move onto google (well, ddg these days) if I didn't find anything. The sort of policy that does not allow one to do basic research is pretty anti-academic if you ask me.
The early homeworks in this class (Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science) were basically puzzles, where if you've seen the style of problem before you more or less knew the answer. The goal was to expose us to these types of problems and teach us how to think them through properly.
It was definitely one of the most fun courses I've taken.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#7> We were explicitly told that searching online for answers to homeworks was forbidden. I might be in the minority but I am of the opinion that if you are grading students on something that can be easily obtained through a google search you probably shouldn't be grading them on that.
What is your justification? Anything that can be found on Google isn't worth learning?
Just to take a trivial example: take a look at Project Euler. There's no question in my mind that working through those exercises is a valuable learning experience, and (in the context of a programming course) would be worth grading someone on-- even though the answers are readily available to anyone who searches for them.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#8That sounds terrible. If I saw something like that, I'd probably do the problem, then look up more information on it. I'd probably start with wikipedia but move onto google (well, ddg these days) if I didn't find anything. The sort of policy that does not allow one to do basic research is pretty anti-academic if you ask me.
The early homeworks in this class (Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science) were basically puzzles, where if you've seen the style of problem before you more or less knew the answer. The goal was to expose us to these types of problems and teach us how to think them through properly. It was definitely one of the most fun courses I've taken.
15-251 isn't a freshman-year course, is it?
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#9> We were explicitly told that searching online for answers to homeworks was forbidden. I might be in the minority but I am of the opinion that if you are grading students on something that can be easily obtained through a google search you probably shouldn't be grading them on that.
I agree with you for the most part, but nearly all introductory courses must have content that is easily available online. Consider teaching students how to write a recursive method. What would their first assignment be?
List length? "find length of list"
Factorial? "factorial recursive"
Fibonacci? "fibonacci recursive"
GCD? "program gcd"
There are only so many simple recursive procedures, and I guarantee nearly all of them are online.
That said, I do think that once students have a basic understanding of computer science all assignments should be given so that the answer are not online. And this wouldn't bee to hard, even. It would just take some effort by the professor.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#10My AP (Advanced Placement) Chemistry teacher noticed some cheating on a major chemistry test we took. The cheating was pretty obvious; some kids just decided they were going to fail the test so they might as well have some fun. A week later, after a week of lecturing on a new section of the chemistry book and no mention of our scores, a student asked. No, he hadn't graded the tests. He was sorry, he had been really busy. After that, students started asking him every day if he had graded the tests.
Two weeks after we had taken the test, he said, "I have to come clean. The reason I have not graded your tests is that I lost them and have been trying to find them for the last two weeks. I'm very, very sorry, it was entirely my fault, and as a result" (he produced stack of paper from behind his back) "you all have to retake the test right now. Put your books away, take a test and two sheets of scratch paper, and start working."
We didn't have as many students sign up for the second semester of AP Chemistry. Not many people failed the first semester, and scores in AP classes were given a full letter grade boost compared to regular classes, but students knew he wasn't messing around. As a result, it was one of the best AP classes we had, and lots of kids got good scores on the AP test.