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Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

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Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#131

Post by smathieu »

I personally did not enjoy the threat of expulsion in my inbox this morning. As, like probably many other, but the code up on Github because, well this is just what I do with code.

I've signed up for this class because I was interested in learning something. Cheating would obviously not teach me anything, so why even take the class in the first place?

The Coursera certification currently holds no or little value. Maybe if they gain enough traction, someday, having many coursera certificates could have some value when applying for a job. This is not currently the case. I understand that they want to be in the position at some point in the future and that if they don't enforce these rules now, doing so later will be hard. Nevertheless, threatening to ban users in not a winning move for any startup.

A better solution would be to offer an alternative to Github, maybe even a partnership with Github. If they hosted their own git repository and used that as the submission system, they users could get source control, as well as a simple mean of distributing assignments.

This felt like a poor PR move from coursera.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#132

Post by sampo »

eranation wrote: post #125
ecyrb wrote: post #102

One of the hints for assignment 2 is: "Most of the solutions for this assignment can be written as one-liners. If you have more, you probably need to rethink your solution. In other words, this assignment needs more thinking (whiteboard, pen and paper) than coding ;-)." Is it not entirely possible that they're getting some false positives?

Very unlikely, similar code? yes, exact duplicate? there are so many ways to solve it, that statistically it's not that likely, and if so, it will be on 1 answer, not all of them.

If you have, for example

    class Rational(x: Int, y: Int) {
      def numer = x
      def denom = Y
    }
and then homework is to implement

    def less(that: Rational) = ???
then you're gonna get 15 000 people answering with

    def less(that: Rational) = numer * that.denom
and another 15 000 with

    def less(that: Rational) =
      numer * that.denom
and maybe a couple thousand with something like

    def less(that: Rational) = numer*that.denom
(This example was taken from Scala course lectures, but some of the homework problems are as short as this.)

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#133

Post by Espressosaurus »

think-large wrote: post #61
jmduke wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, which is why I find the cheating so interesting. I strongly doubt that any employers are going to lend much value to the certification so early in Coursera's lifespan, but I don't doubt that cheating is going to continue even though the only thing you 'truly' gain from a Coursera course is knowledge.

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…

The algorithm for checking answers in journals is to send it to a panel of other people in the field, ask them if it checks out (obvious errors, overlooked things, etc.), and publish if it does. This model has already broken down when people outright fabricate results, it has missed blatant plagarism, and overall is largely dependent on all the parties being honest.

It wouldn't work at Coursera's scale and for a price point they can afford.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#134

Post by lostnet »

robotresearcher wrote: post #111

Universities put a lot of time and effort into managing cheating, and we surely only scratch the surface. This is soul-crushing, no-fun, give-up-and-work-at-Google kind of work for professors. Everyone hates it. The decision we have to make is the level of resources to put in. We've tried emphasizing the honor code and putting resources into teaching quality. This leads to endemic cheating. We've tried cracking down…

I don't really understand the cheating itself either. But I do think the cheating and never being caught as an ignoramus reveals the larger problem (with all education, in fact more offline.)

I think the bottom line is that a year after you "ace" a A hierarchy of classes that truly builds works, but they are rare. Really, we need spaced repetition for as long as necessary to master the material, not a virtual version of a broken semester design. Then there is no point in cheating.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#135

Post by rayiner »

edw519 wrote: 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.

If the cheating detection algorithm has any false positives, this is a terrible idea.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#136

Post by PeterBB »

think-large wrote: post #61
jmduke wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, which is why I find the cheating so interesting. I strongly doubt that any employers are going to lend much value to the certification so early in Coursera's lifespan, but I don't doubt that cheating is going to continue even though the only thing you 'truly' gain from a Coursera course is knowledge.

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…

> Cheating degrades the quality of education at any level.

Not in the least! You can argue that it degrades the prestige or something like that, but the education remains the same.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#137

Post by slig »

smathieu wrote: post #131

I personally did not enjoy the threat of expulsion in my inbox this morning. As, like probably many other, but the code up on Github because, well this is just what I do with code. I've signed up for this class because I was interested in learning something. Cheating would obviously not teach me anything, so why even take the class in the first place? The Coursera certification currently holds no or little value. May…

> I personally did not enjoy the threat of expulsion in my inbox this morning. As, like probably many other, but the code up on Github because, well this is just what I do with code.

Then you're violating the conduct. They ask tons of times to not share your code, including on GH. So you should either use a private GH repo or host it elsewhere, privately.

Don't whine about not liking the "threat of expulsion" when it's perfectly clear that you shouldn't be doing that.

They shouldn't have to offer that, anyone who wants a private repo for free can use bitbucket, for instance.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#138

Post by readme »

papsosouid wrote: post #53
readme wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

>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? The big problem with your logic is assuming that one of these two options must be meaningful. Those two resumes are either both good enough to bring in for an interview, or both not good enough to bring in for an interview. "I have a worthless piece of paper" chan…

It does to me. It shows that someone at least took the time to work through a course. It also shows they are cool enough to know what coursera is and open minded enough to use it.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#139

Post by benmanns »

ramblerman wrote: post #104
benmanns wrote: post #65

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…

" For those students for whom it's been discovered have uploaded similar or duplicate solutions, cases will be handled on an individual basis. Though beware, that cheating in any capacity not be tolerated. " This seems like pretty clear language. I doubt people who accidently used a public repo will be punished for it.

I was referring to the section that stated, "We have identified several individual students with solutions publicly posted (github included) who will be expelled from the course in the coming days if these solutions remain public." People who use a public repo to share their work will be expelled.

Re: Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered

#140

Post by naturalethic »

weego wrote: post #6

You have to expect that they kinds of programmers this course would attract will want stick the code they've put hours outside of work into in some kind of source repository. With the ubiquity of free (public only) github accounts, I'm not entirely sure what else they expected might happen.

The most recent assignment was only like 10 lines of code to write. Although fairly challenging, it wasn't something worth putting on github.
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