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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

#141

Post by homonculus »

paulgb wrote: post #110
thisisnotmyname wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My thoughts exactly. If I were a non-cheating student in that class, I would be very tempted to confess anyway, out of fear that I would be a victim of the prof's over-confidence in his statistical analysis. He mentioned being able to supply the dean with a list of people with 95% confidence that everyone who cheated was on the list, with no apparent concern for any false positives. The confession offer is pretty goo…

"He mentioned being able to supply the dean with a list of people with 95% confidence that everyone who cheated was on the list, with no apparent concern for any false positives."

Right after that, he said that he couldn't be sure everyone on the list had cheated. He is saying that he thinks every cheater is on the list, but not everyone on the list is a cheater.

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

#142

Post by jules »

jimbokun wrote: post #116
jules wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand the prof shouldn't say that he makes the tests himself if he does not. If the professor told you that he'd make his own test then studying from existing tests isn't cheating, right? It's the professor passing others' work off as his own. This video looks like a professor trying to save his own ass by blaming it on the students. You could say the students that used this test to practice should have i…

"However, if you look at how defensive this prof is, that would have been quite risky for that student." Defensive suggests he acts like he thinks he did something wrong. He clearly thinks his students did something wrong. What is it with this thread and using words to mean things other than their plain meaning in normal conversation? It's getting very Clintonian in here.

I was talking about his response when a student asks why all students have to retake the test even the ones that did not cheat (or I presume the student asked this I can't hear it clearly).

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

#143

Post by meeee »

At my university usually all tests are published by the institutes themself on the iternet. They even advice you to train with the old exams. Some of them are also open book. But every exam is individual and so different (not only numbers changed) that you really have to train all the stuff to get a positive mark. Relying on "secret" question caches or buying questions from a third party is not very smart, lazy and really makes no sense to me. They did´nt cracked the system, they only used it for their belongings.

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

#145

Post by moshezadka »

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…

Wow, just wow.

I never studied in college in the US, and I'm horrified that this is the standard. In Israel, we had the previous tests in the library, and the student union created a (for-sale) curated versions, all above board and perfectly condoned. The assumption was that memorizing the entire test-bank, containing hundreds of questions, was harder than actually understanding the material -- but that if you thought that was your best way to pass the test, go ahead and do that.

In fact, some professors explicitly encouraged memorizing proofs for all important theorems by promising that the test will contain at least one or two of them. Of course, usually they followed this by explaining that you're free to come up with your own proof, or memorize key points and manage to interpolate. I would recite proofs in the shower, to myself, every morning.

It would only be cheating if you got the actual test being used ahead of time (or, of course, consulted a confederate or disallowed materials during the test). It would not be cheating, and in fact, tolerated explicitly, to harass the professor by asking questions from test banks that you failed to solve, and getting valuable information that way ("it's not going to be on the exam, don't worry about it").

The professors assumed that anyone who puts that much energy into studying for the test deserved the grades they got.

tl;dr: In Israel, only stealing the tests or breaking rules during test periods was frowned upon: anything else was viewed as "studying really hard."

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

#146

Post by moshezadka »

vitaminj wrote: post #46
Estragon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you've ever been to business school, then you'll know that most of the students clearly don't give a shit about the course material. I mean what kind of 18 year old kid would care about the pricing of a zero-coupon bond?

For the record, 18yo me would be interested in it. :)

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

#147

Post by paulgb »

homonculus wrote: post #141
paulgb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. If I were a non-cheating student in that class, I would be very tempted to confess anyway, out of fear that I would be a victim of the prof's over-confidence in his statistical analysis. He mentioned being able to supply the dean with a list of people with 95% confidence that everyone who cheated was on the list, with no apparent concern for any false positives. The confession offer is pretty goo…

"He mentioned being able to supply the dean with a list of people with 95% confidence that everyone who cheated was on the list, with no apparent concern for any false positives." Right after that, he said that he couldn't be sure everyone on the list had cheated. He is saying that he thinks every cheater is on the list, but not everyone on the list is a cheater.

Right, that's not too impressive though, the class register would have everyone who cheated on it with 100% confidence.
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