So he was going to subpoena their isps? Only the people who used lab computers needed to worry.
How to Catch a Cheater
41–50 of 99 posts
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#42During my Freshman year of college (2002), I was taking Econ 101. It was a class of probably 500 students, and our tests were multiple choice. By the time I got back to my dorm room, the answers to the test were always up on the course website (I'm not sure when they actually were posted). After the first two tests, the professor must have noticed that something wasn't right. I finished the third test quickly, and wa…
For freshman year math courses, we wrote two versions of each test. They'd be nearly identical, but with a few of the numbers and variable names modified. We'd alternate passing them out so that people sitting next to each other had different tests. We'd also go around the room and write down who was sitting where. This made it really easy to catch the "look at your neighbor's paper" sort of cheating. (It's really hard to text answers to a calculus test, and taking a photo of your page would be really conspicuous.)
Other departments had their own anti-cheating methods. Kids coming straight out of high school, who were used to less sophisticated cheat-detection methods, tended to get burned pretty bad their first semester.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many perfectly honest students did worse on the impromptu re-take two weeks later, with entirely new material on their minds.
If the new material built on the old, shouldn't the old material be a solid lock?
Only then, and most courses are not straight progressions.
In high school and particularly AP, those courses are blatant cycles of 1) cram, 2) test, and 3) forget all but the core of what that section was about.
(If you want to say, "You should learn it all for the final" keep in mind nobody does, nor are final exams built around remembering everything from the whole course.)
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#44> 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.
For my MSc exams we were given the papers to take home and it was considered perfectly acceptable to look up the answers as they as they were correctly cited. Someone clearly decided that the easiest way to prevent cheating was to set questions that took more than a few seconds googling to answer.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#45My 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 b…
my university's general chemistry series had a problem with kids loading their TI-83s with "notes" to remember what oxidized and what reduced (and much, much more).
it was crude and pretty obvious but extremely effective and no one in my class was ever caught.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#46My 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 b…
I wonder how many perfectly honest students did worse on the impromptu re-take two weeks later, with entirely new material on their minds.
Agreed it seems that it is always the honest students who gets the short end of the stick.
Thats a good thing though - it prepares the students for the real world.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#47So he was going to subpoena their isps? Only the people who used lab computers needed to worry.
The sad part is you could make quite a case for being slanted against poor students who don't own their own computer. Not saying I would agree with it, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#48> 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…
It is trivial to create a simple recursive problem without saying anything that would be a Google-able search term. The problem may be solved, but the students won't know what to search for.
For example have them write a program that solves the game of Nim, but don't tell them the name of the game they are solving. Instead call it "pick up pennies" or something like that. Now Google won't help.
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#49So he was going to subpoena their isps? Only the people who used lab computers needed to worry.
If you're in CMU's network your computer is registered with them, so unless you live off-campus (which Freshmen aren't allowed to do) you can easily look up which student registered which machine (plus it's usually obvious from the hostname).
Re: How to Catch a Cheater
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many perfectly honest students did worse on the impromptu re-take two weeks later, with entirely new material on their minds.
Agreed it seems that it is always the honest students who gets the short end of the stick. Thats a good thing though - it prepares the students for the real world.
How is doing this preparing the students for the real world (I'm being serious and not condescending or anything)? I don't see the real world being particularly more difficult than normal high school. Example - didn't file or pay taxes on time? No problemo - just take a penalty and finish up your work late.