Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My students cheated... a lot

crumplab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#411

Post by handoflixue »

emodendroket wrote: post #385
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…

Going to the grocer has for a long time been about the food, not the pleasure of the shopping experience. Given this, why wouldn't you steal?

A better example would be: If your goal is to get food, are you really going to complain when one person offers to do everyone's shopping for them? Keep in mind, you'll lose out on the valuable lessons that grocery shopping has to teach!

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#412

Post by kqr »

derevaunseraun wrote: post #355

This happened to me in undergrad with an autograded class. I remember soloing the class and thinking that the assignments were super hard. They would post grade averages for assignments and I was doing worse than usual. I remember a TA posting about cheating being an issue. They even released a graph of anonymized student repositories with edges indicating a detected instance of cheating Turned out that a HUGE cohort…

> it screws up the class curve

This is your problem right here. There is no rational argument for grading people on a class curve. That just makes the class a lottery and incentivises sabotaging for others to get an upper hand yourself.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#413

Post by shp0ngle »

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…

Given your cynical take, it’s in the school interest to prevent cheating; if everyone cheats and the word gets around, nobody will take that school seriously anymore.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#414

Post by lock-the-spock »

derevaunseraun wrote: post #355

This happened to me in undergrad with an autograded class. I remember soloing the class and thinking that the assignments were super hard. They would post grade averages for assignments and I was doing worse than usual. I remember a TA posting about cheating being an issue. They even released a graph of anonymized student repositories with edges indicating a detected instance of cheating Turned out that a HUGE cohort…

You somewhat seem to miss the wood for all the trees. The problem is the curve - grading on a curve is inherently unfair and irrelevant. Why should it affect your grade if others in the class cheat/struggle/..?

Any teacher (and school system) worth their salt has by now dropped grading on a curve.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#415

Post by kushan2020 »

gmd63 wrote: post #401

It makes me sad that so many engineers seem to think cheating is a just and or good solution. Cheating is objectively bad system design (for society, we're designing our society with daily actions every day), as it rewards people without integrity who want the easy way out. Sure, you can blame the system for encouraging incentives that reward cheating, and there are benefits to thinking like a cheater to identify gap…

If you get away with cheating it’s not cheating. The real problem is whether it’s worth the risk of getting caught and/or losing an opportunity to learn something which will help you later.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#416

Post by kadoban »

ilaksh wrote: post #389
c3534l wrote: post #325

I've never understood people's attitudes towards cheating, which is perhaps why its so prevalent. People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it. When people cheat in school, we just kind of go "well, yeah, kids do that, I guess we'll give you a few warnings first." If someone is caught cheating how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes, but got away with it? Do you really want to go…

Most humans have have little to no real integrity. This is why I am hopeful about AGI taking over eventually. (Not murdering people, I hope, just taking over).

AGI will have its own lacks of integrity, or it's not AGI.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#417

Post by failTide »

derevaunseraun wrote: post #355

This happened to me in undergrad with an autograded class. I remember soloing the class and thinking that the assignments were super hard. They would post grade averages for assignments and I was doing worse than usual. I remember a TA posting about cheating being an issue. They even released a graph of anonymized student repositories with edges indicating a detected instance of cheating Turned out that a HUGE cohort…

I was taking an upper level marine biology course - the tests were VERY difficult, but they were take-home, do them at your leisure. I was cool with it. But walked into a coffee shop one day and found 75% of the class sharing answers and cheating anyway.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#418

Post by n8ta »

ilaksh wrote: post #389
c3534l wrote: post #325

I've never understood people's attitudes towards cheating, which is perhaps why its so prevalent. People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it. When people cheat in school, we just kind of go "well, yeah, kids do that, I guess we'll give you a few warnings first." If someone is caught cheating how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes, but got away with it? Do you really want to go…

Most humans have have little to no real integrity. This is why I am hopeful about AGI taking over eventually. (Not murdering people, I hope, just taking over).

So you're hoping we'll be able to effectively align an AGI with ethics we ourselves don't even possess?

I recommend Robert Miles on YouTube for a few lessons on the challenges of creating friendly/aligned AIs. (And why your hope here is somewhat ludicrous).

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#419

Post by mikebenfield »

c3534l wrote: post #325

I've never understood people's attitudes towards cheating, which is perhaps why its so prevalent. People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it. When people cheat in school, we just kind of go "well, yeah, kids do that, I guess we'll give you a few warnings first." If someone is caught cheating how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes, but got away with it? Do you really want to go…

> People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it.

In pro bodybuilding, steroids are nominally illegal, but essentially every pro bodybuilder uses them, the physique necessary to be competitive in pro contests is not achievable without them, and the people running bodybuilding shows deliberately make no effort to enforce this rule.

In that kind of context it's hard for me to say the "cheaters" are doing anything wrong in any practical sense. Nobody involved actually believes in the rule they're breaking.

I think cheaters in other arenas can rationalize away to themselves that their context is equivalent to the bodybuilding context I described above.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#420

Post by metamet »

kushan2020 wrote: post #415
gmd63 wrote: post #401

It makes me sad that so many engineers seem to think cheating is a just and or good solution. Cheating is objectively bad system design (for society, we're designing our society with daily actions every day), as it rewards people without integrity who want the easy way out. Sure, you can blame the system for encouraging incentives that reward cheating, and there are benefits to thinking like a cheater to identify gap…

If you get away with cheating it’s not cheating. The real problem is whether it’s worth the risk of getting caught and/or losing an opportunity to learn something which will help you later.

> If you get away with cheating it’s not cheating.

Yes it is? Cheating is cheating. You can get caught cheating, but you're still cheating if you're aren't.

Post reply on HN