Let's see them burn. Many would give their right arm to be given the opportunity they had.
Many would give their right arm for the opportunities you have had. Should we all wish for your demise? That seems quite unreasonable to me.
Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
31–40 of 87 posts
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#32I know this comment will be unpopular to many who feel the injustice of cheating trumps all else.
I can't help but feel like this is push-back against academia. This is illegal file sharing all over again. This is students working together using internet resources to share knowledge to advance and succeed, to disrupt their education in a way their authority figures thoroughly disapprove of. To me, it's very similar to people working together and using internet resources to share music and movies, to disrupt their entertainment experiences.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. Cheating isn't always the correct answer; usually it's not. But to say it doesn't have a place in the toolbox of life is a bold-faced lie.
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#33One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…
I agree that giving take home exams might not be the best idea, but I place 100% of the blame on the students for this. It is completely reasonable to give academic honesty instructions to students and request that they be followed. Maybe it's not realistic to expect that the instructions will be followed, but it is certainly reasonable to punish the students for violations of academic honesty. Honestly, I think Harvard would be well within their rights to expel any student who blatantly plagiarized an exam, take-home or not.
It's a little scary (maybe not surprising) that 2% of Harvard undergrads were involved in this scandal. This incident, combined with the Stuyvesant scandal makes me lose so much faith in the national student body. I wonder what the solution to this apparently endemic problem is. Maybe the best idea is to accept that students are going to copy and collaborate, and give each student personalized assignments.
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#34One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…
Perhaps, but isn't there the risk that a charismatic leader could get team members to essentially do the work for him/her? Sure, you could say that's a lesson in life, but ideally, you want a passing grade in engineering mechanics to mean that that person has competency in engineering, not merely the politics and management of engineering. Of course, this risk is mitigated by having the final weighted much heavier th…
Perhaps, but isn't there the risk that a charismatic leader could get team members to essentially do the work for him/her?
There were charismatic students who tried that, but it would become apparently very quickly what was happening and that point our competitiveness would kick in and we would demand contributions from that person before we would assist any further.
But yes, there is always someone who will abuse the system, and you're not going to get far trying to achieve 100% compliance all the time.
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#35One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…
Now contrast that with Virginia Tech's honor code policy in use in all CS courses where absolutely no collaboration of any kind is permitted. The only thing you can discuss with classmates is the meaning of a particular requirement.
Sigh. Only 2 more years...
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#36One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…
Perhaps, but isn't there the risk that a charismatic leader could get team members to essentially do the work for him/her? Sure, you could say that's a lesson in life, but ideally, you want a passing grade in engineering mechanics to mean that that person has competency in engineering, not merely the politics and management of engineering. Of course, this risk is mitigated by having the final weighted much heavier th…
The mechanism to avoid having a charismatic leader unfairly being granted credentials in courses not based on their knowledge is have a pass/fail (heavily protctored) exam at the end of the sememster drawing on knowledge from all the sections of the course. Fail the exam, fail the course. Pass the exam, you get the grade you earned throughout the semester.
We had a few of those at SFU, and they were awesome - the only ones who ever failed them were the cheaters - The ones who had actually done all the work/exams finished them in about half the time allocated.
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#37I hate to say it, but this isn't that surprising. I recently came from one of these top universities and there's a problematic combination of factors at play: 1. Students are under a ton of stress, have very little time to do work and have very high standards for themselves. 2. Guidelines are not clear defined or communicated as to what is and isn't cheating. There's a ton of grey area. 3. It is incredibly easy to ch…
1. How can they have very high standards if they cheat? Stress is no excuse for cheating, spend less time getting drunk. 2. It's always mentioned that cheating is not acceptable at the beginning of every term in every class. And isn't it obvious anyway? 3. Yes it's unfortunately too easy.
I don't get the downvotes with your post. This is absolutely correct. I went through a very rigorous engineering program and I was never unclear about what constituted cheating. You did problem sets yourself, and you did exams without copying anyone else's answers. It it's not a damned difficult concept for someone at a University where everyone has 98th %-ile SAT scores.
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#38One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…
I agree that giving take home exams might not be the best idea, but I place 100% of the blame on the students for this. It is completely reasonable to give academic honesty instructions to students and request that they be followed. Maybe it's not realistic to expect that the instructions will be followed, but it is certainly reasonable to punish the students for violations of academic honesty. Honestly, I think Harv…
It's a little scary (maybe not surprising) that 2% of Harvard undergrads were involved in this scandal. This incident, combined with the Stuyvesant scandal makes me lose so much faith in the national student body.
You've lost faith "in the national student body" based on the actions of a tiny minority of students? Really?
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#39One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…
Take-home assignments in course VI are ripe for co-work.
But the take-home test in 6.046, in my day, required us to affirm that we had worked on it alone. It was a lot of fun (I'm an algorithm dork), and I felt really bad -- like I had cheated -- when someone looked over my shoulder at what I was working on and shouted out the answer.
Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam
#40I hate to say it, but this isn't that surprising. I recently came from one of these top universities and there's a problematic combination of factors at play: 1. Students are under a ton of stress, have very little time to do work and have very high standards for themselves. 2. Guidelines are not clear defined or communicated as to what is and isn't cheating. There's a ton of grey area. 3. It is incredibly easy to ch…
At a school like Harvard, with their much-touted financial aid where students aren't supposed to have to hold down outside jobs to pay for tuition, how do students end up with very little time to do work? Class itself should take, what, three to five hours on a typical day? That leaves a lot of time for homework and studying. Do people just overwhelm themselves with too many extracurricular activities?