Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
1–10 of 50 posts
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#2This seems to be a matter of confusion over the rules more than anything (though it sounds like there were some clear cut cases as well). After all, it sounds like they were able to use everything but each other for the exams, which seems like an atrocious way to prepare students for the "real world".
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#3This seems to be a matter of confusion over the rules more than anything (though it sounds like there were some clear cut cases as well). After all, it sounds like they were able to use everything but each other for the exams, which seems like an atrocious way to prepare students for the "real world".
The real world isn't a series of read and regurgitate cycles, and allowing students to use resources shifts the test focus from memorizing details to understanding.
In the same vein, I also find interviewing by nitpicking to be poorly reflective of real world work -- when you are actually programming, you have access to tools like linters and google to help you when you are chasing down a bug (and its not entirely clear how asking very subtle issues in a stressful situation like an interview represents the realities of working for the company)
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#4Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at least Harvard was a little more testing than that...
Aside from the standard that sets, it is naive to the extreme to suppose that students allowed to take an important exam home will still write it just off the top of their head.
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#5This seems to be a matter of confusion over the rules more than anything (though it sounds like there were some clear cut cases as well). After all, it sounds like they were able to use everything but each other for the exams, which seems like an atrocious way to prepare students for the "real world".
The real world isn't a series of read and regurgitate cycles, and allowing students to use resources shifts the test focus from memorizing details to understanding. In the same vein, I also find interviewing by nitpicking to be poorly reflective of real world work -- when you are actually programming, you have access to tools like linters and google to help you when you are chasing down a bug (and its not entirely cl…
I think duaneb is saying that not being able to work with the other students is not like the real world, rather saying that than being able to use all the other resources is unrealistic.
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#6Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at least Harvard was a little more testing than that... Aside from the standard that sets, it is naive to the extreme to suppose that students allowed to take an important exam home will still write it just off the top of their head.
I think it's pretty common at "elite" schools in the US to have unsupervised, take home tests. Where I went to college we often had closed book, timed take home tests and I think compliance was actually extremely high.
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#7Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at least Harvard was a little more testing than that... Aside from the standard that sets, it is naive to the extreme to suppose that students allowed to take an important exam home will still write it just off the top of their head.
Take home exams can actually be quite brutal, but are rarely encountered in large (i.e. 100+ student) classes because they usually result in an correspondingly brutal amount of marking. I've had them only in a few senior undergrad courses and grad school.
Why are they brutal when you have your notes, books, the web, etc. available? They're usually not based on spitting back answers you were given or can look up. You actually need to use what you've learned to produce something novel or, at least, very esoteric. e.g. I've had exams where I was asked to look up a paper and reproduce the unpublished proof to get from equation (x) to equation (y). Such proofs are often not published because the authors are freaking geniuses who view the derivation as obvious, and getting to the point where you can do the same proof with intense effort is one point of the course! These exams are often fiendishly difficult and/or open-ended, so you will be working like a crazy fool from the moment you get the exam until it must be turned in. This sometimes means pulling an all-nighter (or more). (I despise all-nighters as the last resort of poor planners, and hate being forced into them.) Time is such a constraint that, if you didn't study and absorb all the course material thoroughly prior to the exam, you will likely not be able to get much done in the time allowed. Frequently nobody in the class will actually finish, and it's really just a matter of how much you can do relative to your peers, and how well.
Collaboration during preparation was never forbidden in my field, although I hear other disciplines (especially humanities) can be quite different. Collaboration during the test is usually discouraged, but obviously students are on the honor system. If any actual copying is detectable from what is handed in you can bet it was egregiously bad. If Harvard was able to make charges stick to 70 students, you can safely bet that twice that number cheated their hineys off, but many were just a bit smarter about it.
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#8Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at least Harvard was a little more testing than that... Aside from the standard that sets, it is naive to the extreme to suppose that students allowed to take an important exam home will still write it just off the top of their head.
A take home exam can be as taxing as any other test you can take and often is more difficult than your generic test. In some ways more so, at least on campus you have access to resources and other students.
If students, act according to an honor code, then professors can get on with the work of teaching.
If people have to spend all their time fighting cheating, which is a non trivial task, it creates a very different environment. I would go so far as saying that it ends up obviating the entire point and purpose of college.
----
This is what colleges were originally built around: Students came because they wanted to learn X subject, and the best place to do that was with the professors who were essentially THE experts in their field.
You want libraries and data sources bar none? Universities had them. Want to deal with and learn from like minded students and teachers? Few other places you could be to get that.
People assumed that you wouldn't cheat on your test because that would be like cheating on a MIT open courseware test.
Now things are different - for a lot of people, colleges have become "The next step" to get a job. People assume that the correlation now goes the other way - college MAKES you better at getting jobs.
As a result your population is also now filled with a lot more students who just don't care. The degree is your only way to get a foot into the door of a stupid system.
To steal a phrase from finance, college must be decoupled from "financial success."
Note: A better insight is avaialble from Panos Ipeirotis' experience dealing with cheating in his class a year or so ago. IT was discussed extensively on HN and the blog post, now pulled, was called "why I will never pursue Cheating again". If you dig around a bit though you should be able to find a copy.
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#9Had to be Government students.
Re: Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal
#10This seems to be a matter of confusion over the rules more than anything (though it sounds like there were some clear cut cases as well). After all, it sounds like they were able to use everything but each other for the exams, which seems like an atrocious way to prepare students for the "real world".
So how do you suggest they test students personally, without assholes taking advantage of the nice students who do all the work?