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My students cheated... a lot

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Re: My students cheated... a lot

#331

Post by dskloet »

bhargav wrote: post #301
carls wrote: post #230

I recently took a CS class at Stanford with an interesting policy on cheating. While cheating almost certainly happened during the course, at the end of the quarter the course staff made a public post allowing any student who cheated to make a private message to the staff admitting they've done so. If a student admitted to cheating, while they would face academic disciplinary action (i.e. receiving a failing or low g…

That sounds great and all but I honestly have doubts about this software that detects similarities… there’s only so many ways to solve the bland questions that professors lift from books; kind of ironic. I’m assuming it’s basicallly doing AST analysis and it’s no smarter than eliminating things like variables being renamed. They are basically stating that this “software” is 100% accurate. Furthermore it’s then left t…

I used something similar when I was a TA 20 years ago and while your assumption seems reasonable, there are actually a lot of different ways to solve even quite simple tasks and most cheating is very obvious on manual inspection.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#332

Post by phamilton »

In my degree (Comp Eng) we overlapped with the Comp Sci program a fair amount. Comp Sci was part of the college of mathematics and Comp Eng was part of the college of engineering, which were on opposite sides of campus and organizationally were very separate.

The cultures could not have been any more different. The engineering labs were loud, full of collaboration and discussion. The professors would sometimes find out a student copied some code and would simply ask "Well, do you understand it?".

The computer science labs were dead quiet. Strict policies around code plagiarism were posted at every door (instant fail and a 1 year ban from any CS class). People were terrified of helping each other and so everyone just worked in isolation.

I learned more in the engineering labs and made deeper connections with people. The coursework was frankly harder, we built more complex things completely from scratch, but because of the collaborative culture I was able to learn from my peers, tackle hard problems, and retain the information.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#333

Post by frob »

I've had to deal with cheating in multiple classes I've taught. The second worst was when someone took their friend's code and just change the name in the header comment. They tried to claim they didn't copy but I had timestamps.

The worst was when a student turned my own solutions back into me with a few variable names changed.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#334

Post by the__alchemist »

mywaifuismeta wrote: post #316
alexb_ wrote: post #287

I think a lot of people here are missing the root cause of why students cheat. College for the longest time has not had anything to do with learning for the VAST majority of students. You go to college because you have to have a degree to get a job. And you have to have a good GPA on that degree to get a job. College is not about actually learning anything - it's a purely monetary investment, where you go into debt t…

We're going to college at the worst time in our lives. When I was in college I did exactly what you described. I didn't really cheat much (I remember just one time), but all I cared about was grades and getting a job. I couldn't have cared less about learning or retaining anything. And I didn't learn much. This strategy worked out well for me, but it was a huge waste of time. I'm in my 30s now and I would absolutely…

https://openlearning.mit.edu/courses-programs/mitx-courses

There's good stuff there!

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#335

Post by acwan93 »

realitysballs wrote: post #4

I hate to be a cynic here but I feel like education should be engineered in a manner that either : (A) assumes cheating will take place whenever possible and create curriculum , assignments, quizzes and exams with this in mind. (B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest.

I like A) simply because sometime during college I became a terrible test taker. I realized that I'm very good at projects and actually understanding the concepts, but I couldn't articulate that in the traditional exam or problem sets.

When it came time to anything that involved presentations or demonstration of a project, I was exceptionally better at the topic. Maybe it was a better way of learning since I was more engaged, or the types of professors that heavily believe cheating is going to happen any way and try to mitigate it actually give a damn.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#336

Post by mywaifuismeta »

the__alchemist wrote: post #334
mywaifuismeta wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to college at the worst time in our lives. When I was in college I did exactly what you described. I didn't really cheat much (I remember just one time), but all I cared about was grades and getting a job. I couldn't have cared less about learning or retaining anything. And I didn't learn much. This strategy worked out well for me, but it was a huge waste of time. I'm in my 30s now and I would absolutely…

https://openlearning.mit.edu/courses-programs/mitx-courses There's good stuff there!

Thanks. I know that all the raw material is available to me, but it's just not the same. It's different when you can completely focus on studying, be part of a community with a bit of peer pressure, and have a social circle that goes through the same experience. You don't get the this from online courses, reading books, or MOOCs.

I think a big part of this is split attention, but I also don't feel comfortable taking 1-2 years off my job in the middle of my career just to study.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#337

Post by proc0 »

kstenerud wrote: post #242

Cheating is the natural result of an exclusive funnel for entry into the middle class. This has been going on for decades in Asia (which is why Chinese students cheat so much), and now America is finally here as well. Academics like to wax poetic about how students are "only cheating themselves" and "losing out on the educational opportunities", but the reality is much more mercenary and down-to-earth: Either you pas…

> Either you pass this hurdle by hook or by crook, or you spend the rest of your life flipping burgers. It's not a hard choice.

Yes, but the assumption is you're passing with the knowledge in your head. Having the career knowledge is what in theory allows you to get the job, and then not flip burgers. I'm not sure how students end up thinking it's literally the number of your grade that makes the difference.

Maybe it differs from career to career, because I guess some careers it's a matter of getting your foot in the door and that's it. With more technical careers it's already the case your grade is not as important as demonstrating expertise in the first few months on the job.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#338

Post by alexb_ »

yardstick wrote: post #311

I’m surprised at the number of people here justifying or supporting cheating. It’s not a victimless crime. Many university courses have minimum requirements to get into. Eg Engineering, Medicine, etc. Cheating to inflate your grades will result in people who didn’t cheat missing out on, or having less chance of, being accepted into their desired degree. Which they worked honestly for, without cheating.

Look at it this way. Cheating and not cheating has its own risks associated. And when the risk/reward of cheating vastly outperforms on average compared to the risk/reward of not cheating, every single rational actor will cheat. In fact, not cheating is a purely irrational thing to do given that you know these odds - it's based on a belief that your individual action will make any sort of meaningful difference.

And why should any young person think that? Just observing the world around them definitely says the opposite.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#339

Post by teeray »

the__alchemist wrote: post #334
mywaifuismeta wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to college at the worst time in our lives. When I was in college I did exactly what you described. I didn't really cheat much (I remember just one time), but all I cared about was grades and getting a job. I couldn't have cared less about learning or retaining anything. And I didn't learn much. This strategy worked out well for me, but it was a huge waste of time. I'm in my 30s now and I would absolutely…

https://openlearning.mit.edu/courses-programs/mitx-courses There's good stuff there!

Yeah, I had a blast attending “lockdown university” during the deepest part of covid in 2020. Grades only for fun points and just taking classes and doing assignments that I thought would be beneficial.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#340

Post by kurthr »

carls wrote: post #230

I recently took a CS class at Stanford with an interesting policy on cheating. While cheating almost certainly happened during the course, at the end of the quarter the course staff made a public post allowing any student who cheated to make a private message to the staff admitting they've done so. If a student admitted to cheating, while they would face academic disciplinary action (i.e. receiving a failing or low g…

I noticed a swap in your prose (still comprehensible), but just realized that cheating and teaching are semi-spoonerisms (swapping the sound order of a single word)... how appropos!
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