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Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

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Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#91
Cheating without consequences hurts everyone taking the class. I'm disappointed to see so many comments implying it's fine to just let that go.

My thought on this comes from a good chunk of direct experience: I've taught a number of courses to undergrads at NYU, as well as having about 5 summers of teaching experience in programming and cryptography at summer camps including CTY.

Imagine all students are given a button that says "give me an A," and they can press it if they choose, or do all the course work and possibly get a worse grade. Even if you chose to do the work because you were self-motived, you'd still be tempted to press the A button to guarantee a good grade.

That's an exaggeration, but the point is the same. The easier it is to get _any_ kind of validation without real work, the harder it is to learn.

It is harder to stay motivated, and the feedback received becomes less meaningful. It is even disappointing to simply know many of your fellow students probably cheated without consequences.

I do believe in seeing answers after doing the work, but it is just common sense to avoid posting them before things are due, and to support clear communications between the instructors and students about the details of posting answers.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#92
Coursera could offer an on site test ($) for the employer.

The perspective employee would login and take a test based on the courses that they have completed. The score would then be sent to employee and employeer and ranked along side others who have completed the course.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#93
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cheating" is not "making a mistake".

It's "cheating" though in the sense that it's against a TOS on a website, but tons of things are against a TOS and almost no one reads them. They're pretending to be one, but Coursera is not a college, is not accredited and does not hand out degrees. This is a free online self-study course being taken by hundreds of thousands of people with varying degrees of seriousness. Some people may treat it like a college cours…

"in the sense that it's against a TOS on a website"

A website that is providing you with completely free content from some of the top universities. I think it's fair for them to dictate the terms.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#94
I think that something a lot of people who read this are forgetting (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that most of us have 4 year degrees and/or jobs in Software Engineering (or at least Engineering).

These courses are meant to be a segue into free courses offered online that people can use in lue of a 200k four year degree. While this form of education isn't there yet, it's use builds the reputation of these online courses.

If cheating runs rampant in the courses (more so than in person classes) it has a chance to negate the reputation of these sites. This could set back "free" education for years.

While I don't think that Cheaters should have an affect on what we can learn and take away from these classes, but it will have an affect on how much employers (like edw519) trust the courses. If they don't trust the online classes, then people who don't have a formal education won't be able to use these freely offered classes to raise their earning power.

It's sad how much a few bad apples can spoil.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stude…

When the semester ends, you've got a week to grab your code before it goes public, like a free account. I suspect this would catch on better if the repos were destroyed or stayed private. Professors reuse assignments year after year and wouldn't be too happy about public solutions to all their past assignments.

At least in my university solutions to all past problems are posted anyway, we even have our own wiki for it. I imagine it's similar in other universities.

(fwiw, I use Github exactly in this way, only with public repos)

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#96
I'm taking a different Coursera course right now. I completed the first homework assignment on my own, but I would have loved to see how other people solved the problem. I definitely felt like I had some ugly hacks in my solution. Posting solutions online would be a great way for me to learn.

I'd recommend that they get rid of the certificate. There is no way to prove that 1) the person who took the course is who they say they are, and 2) they didn't cheat. Copying and pasting from a solution online is only one way to cheat. You could also have a friend finish the assignment. Maybe some day we can get past the point where education is simply a list of achievements, and more about who you have become as a person.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#97
post #76
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "cheating" though in the sense that it's against a TOS on a website, but tons of things are against a TOS and almost no one reads them. They're pretending to be one, but Coursera is not a college, is not accredited and does not hand out degrees. This is a free online self-study course being taken by hundreds of thousands of people with varying degrees of seriousness. Some people may treat it like a college cours…

If people sign up for a course like this and then turn in work they copied from the Internet, I definitely don't want to hire them. Even if they weren't after the certificate. That's like cheating at solitaire. It's just sad. Also, do you have any evidence that the no-cheating, no-publishing-homework policy is buried in a TOS? If Coursera hasn't made it obvious enough, then sure, people could have made a mistake. But…

Much like I wouldn't hire a Stanford CS grad based on her certificate, I would recommend not hiring a Coursera "grad" based on a certificate either.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#98

The fact that people publicly posting their work would get expelled disappoints me. During the Machine Learning class on Coursera, I did all of the programming exercises myself. After submitting the assignments and getting 100% scores, I would browse other people's GitHub repositories to see how they completed the assignment, which taught me more about both Octave syntax and machine learning and helped me to vectoriz…

Ditto and 100% agreed!

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#99
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but that is mostly because I already have a 4 year degree in Engineering and I'm assuming you do too. There is a problem in the fact that many people cannot afford that degree because their parents can't afford it (or the loans that they'd need). Cheating degrades the quality of education at any level. Cheaters are trying to get accreditation when they shouldn't. While Cheating is all over in educat…

People shouldn't let cheating degrade the quality of education. You either possess the skills or you don't, and if you don't you shouldn't act like you do. It'll probably be obvious. Here's the scenario in my mind... A: "Oh hey I know how to program Scala" B: "Ok program Scala..." A: "Well I only got the cert, I don't actually know." B: "Sorry I guess you're not qualified then. Why don't you learn?"

"Ok program scala"

Yeah that sounds like a great interview. How long do you let them go, half an hour, a day? Do you think you can adequately judge someones abilities like this?

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#100
post #86
post #42

Actually, this is valuable data. As a potential employer, I care more about the candidate's ethics (or lack thereof) than their ability. I could always teach them, but I could never trust them. Coursera should just publicly identify cheaters so I can cross check against resumes or certifications. Problem solved.

>Coursera should just publicly identify cheaters so I can cross check against resumes or certifications. Problem solved. This introduces a lot of problems, all of which are difficult to solve and not directly related to the fundamental vision of Coursera. If I cheat under the full name of my sworn enemy, I can have them publicly blacklisted from any employer who uses this list. Identification seems like the logical n…

Only require ID for the recognition. If you detect cheating, don't do anything about it until they confirm their ID to get their certification.
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