Why I will never pursue cheating again • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#211

Post by nknight » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 3:59 AM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #62

I can't speak for college, but I cheated quite a lot in high school. I cheated "better" than the students in this post though, by copying sentence by sentence from various sources, rewriting it to make the cheating non-detectable, and reading over it to make sure the flow was good. It saved me at least 50% of the time compared to writing something from scratch, and the quality was good too. Do I feel bad about it? Ab…

What you describe as "cheating" sounds more like "researching" or "studying". Cite sources for your facts and what you have there is probably a perfectly good paper.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#212

Post by nknight » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:04 AM UTC

nyustern wrote: post #189

Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as “Info Tech,” and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC. Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is som…

By your own admission, you are "not technologically inclined", so what is it that makes you think you achieved anything remotely like "the highest level of achievement"? You might think you did a good job, but not only are you obviously going to be biased, but you're probably totally unqualified to make that assessment in the first place.

Your post just sounds like someone who was bad at the class and wants to blame someone else.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#213

Post by tetrarchy » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:05 AM UTC

At the school i'm going to right now (actually the other big school in nyc...), cheating in the CS department is a huge issue. Big enough that the main focus of orientation seemed to be about how if you got caught even on just weekly assignments, you'd get kicked out pretty fast. Was a bit more than I was expecting.

I later found out the reason for this, the high population of foreign students. I'm generally not one to stereotype, but to have thought otherwise was to simply be living under a rock. It was pretty obvious that they tended to work together in fairly large groups or between several groups on their assignments and projects, and that the rest of us who were not were at a significant disadvantage. And while generally, I didn't /really/ care, as my grades tended to be good enough, and I am not the type to shoot for the A+, it really did make doing the assignments on my own very frustrating when I would get stuck. Spending all that extra time to figure it out on my own just wasn't as satisfying when I knew the class average for the assignments would just be artificially high anyways.

But in the end, i'm really going to grad school to learn, and not so much for amazing grades. It just would be nice to not be penalized for doing my own work.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#214

Post by reason » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:12 AM UTC

nknight wrote: post #212

nyustern wrote: post #189

Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as “Info Tech,” and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC. Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is som…

By your own admission, you are "not technologically inclined", so what is it that makes you think you achieved anything remotely like "the highest level of achievement"? You might think you did a good job, but not only are you obviously going to be biased, but you're probably totally unqualified to make that assessment in the first place. Your post just sounds like someone who was bad at the class and wants to blame…

What I got from his post wasn't that he deserved a better grade, but more willingness by the professor to field his questions. If other students felt this way, I really can't trust the author's claim that his low evaluation score was solely due to the fault of his students. Seems pretty unfair...

The cheating, although not excusable, could very well be partially blamed on the professor.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#215

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:12 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#216

Post by chernevik » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:13 AM UTC

I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I congratulate the effort you spent tackling the problem.

On the other, I'm really disappointed you aren't sticking with it. Never mind anything else, isn't it your obligation to protect your honest students? I appreciate that your colleagues aren't supportive, but that doesn't change your obligations.

And I suspect it's a short-sighted view. Word gets around, in a couple of semesters you'll drive the cheaters out, and probably attract more honest students who are tired of them.

Finally, I question the value of a course that doesn't generate core skills susceptible of demonstration. I've got an MBA, and I learned a lot getting it. But most of my courses were finance and accounting. I took only a couple of strategy and accounting courses, when I was sure that the qualitative material would be handled with rigor, and in some framework that prevented the vague concepts and buzzwords from dominating the conversation. Every time I probed the "soft" courses by less rigorous teachers, I came away convinced they really weren't teaching much that would last. And I'm afraid it's my opinion that most MBA coursework is of this limited value. It is _possible_ to rigorously study qualitative subjects, but it requires considerable discipline.

If your students aren't distinguishably improved by the end of the course, just what was the point of the course? If you aren't enforcing the discipline of the honor code, why would you be expected to enforce the discipline of field? By all means, go after the cheaters -- and go after the fundamental questions of why it's even possible to cheat in your course.

For all those misgivings, I have to credit you for bringing up the issue. There is a lot of rot in our academies, and they urgently need people to demand more of the students. You've already tolerated a lot of controversy to come to this point. But don't stop now, and don't stop with students. Demand more of yourself until your course is something that changes your students in ways that can't be faked.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#217

Post by nknight » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:14 AM UTC

kahawe wrote: post #125

pnathan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is totally a question of honor. It is utterly dishonorable to cheat, and egregiously so at the levels described in the aforementioned blog. The goal of the scholastic experience is so that you, the student, learns something. If the school turns out people who didn't learn, they are producing worthlessness. It is a lie to say that you have a degree, when you really have a collection of credits that you cheated thro…

You are exaggerating by 200% and leading it ad absurdum. "Cheating" for me means getting one or two hints at an exam and with the exam situation being what it is, those hints typically only really help to jog your memory if you did study. It does not mean downright plagiarizing your thesis and 90% of your studies. But US Americans seem to be offended even at the idea of getting or sharing a single hint during an exam…

"Cheating" may mean that for you, but it's not what it means for most people, and certainly not for "Americans" in general. Panos is pretty clear in his post about what was going on. This wasn't "hints" or anything close.

20-95% of the content in some of these papers was being copied straight off the web without even a citation. It's plagiarism, just like the high-profile cases you recently had. How is that not cheating?

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#218

Post by mnutt » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:16 AM UTC

carbonica wrote: post #76

reso wrote: post #25

Holy crap. They let so many people get away with copy-paste assignments, and they call themselves a postsecondary institution? That's fucking horrific. Where I'm from, a single sentence similar to one of your sources is marks deducted. A paragraph puts you on academic probation. Anything bigger is a bus-ticket home.

Where I attended college, you get a year's suspension for getting caught copying a sentence without citation. Anything as egregious as this presented would've meant a class full of suspended students.

That's also the equivalent of saying "a single line of source code identical to other source code is copyright infringement". Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes there are limited ways to express obvious ideas, so I don't get how such a hard-line stance helps anything.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#219

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:16 AM UTC

Panos wrote: post #197

runningdogx wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about shifting to a teaching model where students review material and watch lectures (MIT OCW, Kahn, or even the professor's own recorded lectures) out of class, and do actual assignments (problem sets, essays) in class -- in an atmosphere that encourages working together so nobody feels "stuck" or gets stressed to the point where they feel like they have to cheat, while still preparing solutions separately? Tha…

I thought of that as well. With this approach you hit another structural problem: activities such as solving problems etc are considered appropriate only for "recitations" (i.e., done by TA's) and not for "lectures" (the part where the professor teaches). Kind of stupid, I know. But it is really impossible to violate the mandate that my teaching should not be "wasted" on doing assignments in class etc. And yes, when…

By whom?

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#220

Post by techiferous » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 4:21 AM UTC

WorkInKarlsruhe wrote: post #196

It is interesting that so many people think that Panos should have taken a hard line. Panos seems to have had few options (and I applaud the approach he ultimately chose for the reasons he gave), but that is only if you constrain yourself to the current system, which is grade based. Removing the grades from the system is an option, but few consider it, and there is much evidence from the people that have stopped usin…

I taught middle school science for a few years and totally revamped the grading system, an experiment that worked well. I made sure that the grades were a simple and objective measurement of the mastery of the learning objectives instead of what they often are: a paycheck-like incentive or a means of manipulating student behavior.

(By the way, I used to work in Karlsruhe.)