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Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

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Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#11

Post by jordanthoms »

prophetjohn wrote: post #5

I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating…

If it's your work, you own the copyright, and it's totally within your rights to make it publicly available.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#12

Post by indianapolisan »

It's to be expected there will be cheating. Even in normal brick and mortar school s there were always cheaters. Hell, even the tour de france got turned into a dopers ball. So yes, this is a bummer and all the naysayers of these free opensource online classes now just have more ammo. But as someone who's life has not allowed them the path to Stanford/Upenn/University of Toronto, etc, I am putting in the work and bothering to actually learn and extremely grateful for the opportunity. So bummer, sure, but shame on the cheaters.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#13

Post by readme »

cimi_ wrote: post #8

The certificates, IMHO, are meaningless in the context of these online courses. Considering this, I find the measure exaggerated. I use github as a central place to store almost everything I write outside work, so it comes pretty natural for me to version code for problems I've been working on there. Disclaimer: I'm not involved in the Scala course, so I don't know how the actual assigments were structured.

The certificates will have value as long as they remain evidence of honest completion of the course. To say they are worthless is kind of short-sighted. Considering the number of tech resumes in the typical hiring manager's inbox that contain a laundry-list of programming languages in the skills section and not even a single project or course to prove the knowledge of the candidate, I'd say there is a fairly large domain for these certificates.

Given two resumes, one with a big bullet list of unverified skills, and one with a bullet list of some completed coursera courses, which would you choose?

Obviously coursera will not be replacing real college any time soon, but it can definitely serve a role in verifying at least cursory knowledge of basic skills.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#14

Post by eneveu »

jordanthoms wrote: post #11
prophetjohn wrote: post #5

I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating…

If it's your work, you own the copyright, and it's totally within your rights to make it publicly available.

It would be cool if we could upload our private Git repo on Github once the course is finished. But I guess they might want to re-use the assignments next year...

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#15

Post by michaelt »

ericmoritz wrote: post #3

How about they expel those who used the solutions as well?

A lot of solutions end up looking similar, as the automated marking system requires certain method names and the questions often have answers that are only a line or two at this early stage of the class.

Early questions are things like: if membership of a set is a function mapping between an integer and a boolean, how would you define the membership of a singleton set? Modulo the spaces and variable names, every student's answer was probably the same!

So detecting who has copied their solution is probably difficult.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#16

Post by heyitsnick »

jordanthoms wrote: post #11
prophetjohn wrote: post #5

I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating…

If it's your work, you own the copyright, and it's totally within your rights to make it publicly available.

What does the copyright of the code and legality have to do with the issue being discussed?

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#17

Post by andrewcooke »

prophetjohn wrote: post #5

I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating…

i imagine they weren't. the people submitting copies, however...

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#18

Post by alexkus »

jordanthoms wrote: post #11
prophetjohn wrote: post #5

I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating…

If it's your work, you own the copyright, and it's totally within your rights to make it publicly available.

That's true, but doing so is a breach of the code of conduct you agreed to when signing up for the course.

So, whilst you cannot be prevented from posting it somewhere public, you can (theoretically) be thrown off the course for doing so.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#19

Post by mikecaron »

jordanthoms wrote: post #11
prophetjohn wrote: post #5

I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating…

If it's your work, you own the copyright, and it's totally within your rights to make it publicly available.

Sure, but if it's against school policy, the school has the right to expel you. Coursera is not taking the public code down, the owner is, at the coercion of the school. The student is making a value decision: continue the course or take my code down. If you can't play by the rules, you can't be in the game.

I think there's a unique opportunity for GitHub here. They could give an educational license to verified students in college/high-school/on-line schools. For the duration of their class, they can have as many private repos as they like. When the semester ends, you've got a week to grab your code before it goes public, like a free account. First, it would get students used to GitHub and they would clammer for it in the workplace because they love it so much; Second, it would position GH as a great supporter of education.

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