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My students cheated... a lot

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Re: My students cheated... a lot

#441

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

paulpauper wrote: post #202
jl2718 wrote: 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…

they got into Stanford, which confers above average intelligence and also bestows connections, so that probably helped. Interesting stories.

What do you mean by "confers above average intelligence?"

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#442

Post by derevaunseraun »

kqr wrote: post #412
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.

I think that curves discourage cooperation and encourage zero-sum thinking. Curves are only really necessary when the professor is out of touch with the class and/or prerequisites.

I don't think that people would typically go to the lengths of trying to sabotage someone else, in practice it could just look like a bunch of people working separately and not cooperating at all

In an ideal world, there wouldn't be any curves and the coursework would be tailored sufficiently for every cohort of students for every semester

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#443

Post by dehrmann »

How's the saying go? If you find 10 cheaters, that's their problem. If you find 100 cheaters, that's your problem.

Or the California driver thinking of "if we're all speeding, they can't ticket all of us."

Also some interesting practical game theory lessons in here.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#444

Post by cudgy »

temp3738868585 wrote: post #425
bhargav wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Speaking from experience using similar software on students assignments, it is often blatantly obvious when cheating is occurring. To start with, at an undergrad level, most students had fairly distinct coding styles - usually with quirks of not "proper" coding. Some cheaters had the exact same quirks in multiple students assignments. Also, some cheaters had the exact same mistakes in their code, on top of the same c…

Assuming that the software detects a similarity between two or more student’s submissions, how do you know which students cheated? What if one of the students (the one that actually did the work) had their program stolen/copied somehow (eg left screen open in lab or print out of code)?

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#445

Post by dmje »

What makes me sad isn't any of the mechanics around cheating, it's that such a vast percentage of people aren't honest. What is the point in doing any kind of learning at all - in fact, anything at all - if you're just going to fake it?

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#446

Post by discardable_dan »

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 should read up on Nash equilibriums. In general, the equilibrium only holds with information sharing. In the real world, winning due to a lack of information sharing is called things like "good business." Academia, and cheating in general, is rotted to the core because of ranked grading and curves. They fundamentally incentivize cheating, because of the game theoretical gain therein.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#447

Post by 411111111111111 »

alexashka wrote: post #439
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…

Systems that produce so much cheating, are bad system design. You're at 'cheating = bad', which is the level of a 5 year old naive little boy. Try upgrading that system instead of pointing fingers. You only have one life to live and all that.

Agreeing to follow specific rules and then silently not following them is lying. Do you consider that to be okay too?

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#448

Post by Aldraz1 »

Yes, cheating nowadays is almost inevitable, because of changed society principles to life, easy access to information, easy access to cheating smart devices, etc.

The solution? Let's finally evolve from schooling and let's forget that schools and universities exist. Let's open source degrees and make them much more compelling. Let's do everything online. Let's create collaborative labs in VR.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#449

Post by rocqua »

alexashka wrote: post #439
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…

Systems that produce so much cheating, are bad system design. You're at 'cheating = bad', which is the level of a 5 year old naive little boy. Try upgrading that system instead of pointing fingers. You only have one life to live and all that.

The problem with cheating is not just "it's not fair". In fact, it takes a whole lot of cheating before that becomes a problem (through diploma inflation). The problem with cheating is that students aren't learning. This sets them up for failure on further classes that build on the current one.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#450

Post by selfhifive »

Aeolun wrote: post #409

I dunno, I never cheated, but I would never report other people for doing it either. It’s not my job to detect and report other people cheating, and getting dinged for not reporting people that cheated would make me hate you very quickly. That said, I just don’t see the point in cheating. University isn’t that hard if you have some basic level of skill. You go to the classes, you read the stuff the assign you, do the…

The classes being online is a major factor. Those classes are engagement hell. Also research has shown video conferencing is much more fatiguing than a real meeting. Even if you start engaging one bad week can put you off the course for the semester.
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