Live data from Hacker News

My students cheated... a lot

crumplab.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#211
post #64

I honestly don’t get widespread cheating like this… You’re paying so much money for these courses — probably a ridiculous amount, so much you may never recoup — … so at least get everything out of it you can. Otherwise, why sign up in the first place? Let me tell you: essentially no one cares what grade you got in your courses. (Sure, there are cases, but over time they quickly attenuate from “sometimes” to “never” a…

If I go to school for computer science, but have to take chemistry, statistics, etc. And get stuck with a bad professor who spends half the class time ranting about irrelevant topics, cheating makes sense so I can spend my time focused on the classes that matter to me.

No post body was provided.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#212
post #64

I honestly don’t get widespread cheating like this… You’re paying so much money for these courses — probably a ridiculous amount, so much you may never recoup — … so at least get everything out of it you can. Otherwise, why sign up in the first place? Let me tell you: essentially no one cares what grade you got in your courses. (Sure, there are cases, but over time they quickly attenuate from “sometimes” to “never” a…

[deleted]

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#213

As someone who also teaches programming to college students, this is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever read. Though, anyone know what “hes so Canadian” means? I assume it means he is Canadian, hence why he seems to be taking this so calmly and not flipping out, but I’m not sure. Edit: I’m now reading the comments. The amount of people trying to justify lying and cheating is truly disheartening.

I think "Canadian" here stands for the stereotype of Canadians as overly nice, apologetic, etc. (and that the author is in fact Canadian though he teaches in America)

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#215
post #206
post #184

I've read the entire article. The cheating was rampant. This part, however, jumped out at me: > At my most mystified, I proceeded to release a class announcement warning students not to plagiarize the academic integrity assignment. To cheat on the very assignment that is giving you a second chance is ... stupid and/or brazen and/or pitiful. So, why warn the students again? This was their second chance, right? I'm ope…

You're right. I am curious though what the frame of reference is for someone who cheats on the assignment where they promise not to cheat . Perhaps there are people who make it through life with a sense of learned helplessness or even possibly a cultural mandate - basically, something that represents a higher authority to that person than the Western standard of justice, ethics and fairness. I'm fully in favor of tru…

> I am curious though what the frame of reference is for someone who cheats on the assignment where they promise not to cheat.

It seems likely their notion of a promise is non-binding.

P.S. W.R.T. promises and ethics, Kant has an interesting point of view. For example: https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/the...

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#216
I’m honestly surprised to see so many responses in this thread that diverge so wildly from my own.

It was inappropriate for this instructor to join the chat and silently surveil their students. When they saw the students exchanging information like that the first time after forgetting about it, they should have posted a warning on the thread and left.

Some of the energy of analyzing their students cheating would have been better spent looking at how to make the assessment of learning more resistant to a student sharing a screenshot of a question.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#217
At my college there was a class where one of the teacher assistants got ahold of the answer key and handed it out to class mates. The memorized the key, not the answers, but the actual “A,B,A,C,C…” of the key. We told the professor, so he just rearranged the answers. So every student that cheated got a perfect 0. This had the effect of them failing the assignment on their own, and also telling you who the cheaters were.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#218
post #170

I taught two courses to undergrad CS students at Stanford. I think about half of students cheated on problem sets and tests. The answers were all way too uniform and done without correction. In the first course, there was a student who definitely didn’t cheat and was objectively horrible at all tasks assigned, consuming a frustratingly large portion of my grading time. This student ended up with a massively impressiv…

Perhaps that shows that these students figured out they're not so great at computer science, but ended up knowing a lot of people who were - and how to use their skills to make a small fortune.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#219
What bothers me in this story is that it makes it sound as if it's easy to spot from the whatsapp chat who cheated. That doesn't make sense to me. Surely the students who cheated the worst were the ones who used the shared answers from the chat. But how do you monitor that? Those who shared the answers obviously got them by other means, so did they really cheat or just be too helpful by academic standards?

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#220
post #121
post #64

I honestly don’t get widespread cheating like this… You’re paying so much money for these courses — probably a ridiculous amount, so much you may never recoup — … so at least get everything out of it you can. Otherwise, why sign up in the first place? Let me tell you: essentially no one cares what grade you got in your courses. (Sure, there are cases, but over time they quickly attenuate from “sometimes” to “never” a…

I feel like people who say that "it's so much money, so try and get something out of it" are people who have never had the experience of being a "bad student" and have an immense passion for learning. I really can't say the same. I'm currently in undergrad for electrical engineering, and I do not give a single fuck about the classes I'm in. I have no passion for electrical engineering - I don't wake up excited to mak…

From everything I've seen in having spent about as many years out of school as in it, it's way more likely that you make it a few years in and then burn out without fully paying off the debts. Is your plan really to spend the next 30+ years hating your workday, then bringing the bad mood to the dinner table?

I say that having also been the cheater who hated the material and got the grade. Why did I do that? Parents wanted me in a "good career," same as everyone else. They saw a script and they kept pushing in that direction. So I convinced myself into it, at least for a while. It was phony baloney given that in my actual career the majority of my money has been made by crypto speculation and miscellaneous random opportunities, not anything that ever needed a credential. Fortunately I pushed myself onto a path that actually worked for me along the way and graduated right when I was actually starting to appreciate the coursework. Some people make it all the way through medical or law school and then immediately quit the field.

My advice is this, basically - don't try to win at your career, just try to survive; winning is a temporary thing that you can get by pushing harder for a short period, but surviving is a matter of doing everything at a viable level, forever. If you really think this is the best shot you have under the circumstances to achieve a decent life for everyone concerned, then sure, by all means. But aim to exit towards something that actually fits you as soon as possible, even if it's a "simple" move like going from IC into management.

Post reply on HN