This seems like something accreditation orgs like ABET should be more worried about. If students are cheating their way to degrees, that hurts everyone with a CS degree. Professors cant really do much if their uni doesnt care.
Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
31–40 of 124 posts
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#32Here's the easiest solution: stop grading homework Why judge student performance on something that they are using _to learn_? It doesn't make any sense. Every student is basically competing with one another to get the highest GPA possible - if you're going to give them cookie cutter homework with solutions can be easily searched for on the internet _and_ can only bring their GPA down, then they're going to cheat. Pla…
Optional homework almost definitely won't get done. Making it count ensures that students would actually do it, which is useful to instructors (what do they need to focus on in class? Is the class understanding the lectures?).
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#33Maybe I'm being small-minded, but I strongly dislike using the word 'plagiarism' to refer to cheating on your homework by copying someone else. To me, plagiarism is taking credit for someone else's ideas at their expense; it's a "sin" against the person being copied. Copying someone else with their connivance, or paying some essay-mill writer to do your work for you, should be in the same category as taking a calcula…
> plagiarism is taking credit for someone else's ideas at their expense;
that seems like an unworkable definition. If I submit John Milton's Paradise Lost as my own work on an application to grad school, it certainly wouldn't be an "expense" to the long dead author.
Plagiarism is a fraud where you misrepresent the work of others as your own. In the academic world, what else is there but your own work?
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#34Here's the easiest solution: stop grading homework Why judge student performance on something that they are using _to learn_? It doesn't make any sense. Every student is basically competing with one another to get the highest GPA possible - if you're going to give them cookie cutter homework with solutions can be easily searched for on the internet _and_ can only bring their GPA down, then they're going to cheat. Pla…
But then where does your grade come from? More testing doesn’t seem like a good solution.
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#35Almost every aspect of our discipline encourages open source code sharing and code reuse. This is a discipline wide mind set.
In fact, "build it yourself from scratch" is an anti-pattern in my opinion.
I'm not condoning cheating, but why would one not expect this to be be the default behavior?
As others have suggested, there are much easier "solutions" related to logging keystrokes and commits should you really want to catch and punish this behavior.
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#36Here's the easiest solution: stop grading homework Why judge student performance on something that they are using _to learn_? It doesn't make any sense. Every student is basically competing with one another to get the highest GPA possible - if you're going to give them cookie cutter homework with solutions can be easily searched for on the internet _and_ can only bring their GPA down, then they're going to cheat. Pla…
Optional homework almost definitely won't get done. Making it count ensures that students would actually do it, which is useful to instructors (what do they need to focus on in class? Is the class understanding the lectures?).
You can still grade the homework (to give both lecturers and students feedback), but just have it not count towards the kids letter grade in the course. If no one is doing it, then you could make the grade for homework pass / fail: did you hand something gradeable in or not?
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#37Here's an idea: why not make the assignments personal enough that you cannot cheat on them? "But wait, that would require huge amounts of time investment from the professors/TAs" Yes, it's almost as if paying $65k a year for someone to teach you something should result in that person teaching you that thing instead of just checking in to see if you've learned it on your own.
Here's an idea: you try to do that teaching three or four sections and report back how that goes. I am not sure if you have ever taught post secondary classes before, but what you're describing is untenable for someone who wants to not work 12 hour days. It's a nice idea, and I know that I would have loved to do that when I was teaching, but the fact of the matter is it isn't feasible unless you have a squadron of TA's to help you carry it out, and that's not gonna happen.
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
For intro-level CS courses, neither one works all that well. You can do that in more advanced (but still undergraduate) courses, but for beginner-level you IMHO need the feedback loop of regular homework. It doesn't have to be strictly graded, but it basically has to be there and at least some enforcement for it actually being done (e.g. handing in homework is required, but it's not a problem if it is doesn't actuall…
Assess the homework, give them a grade on it but don't have it factor into their final grade at all. Just let the exams / big projects take care of that. If you're regularly failing your homework, it probably means you won't be ready for the exam that actually counts. Which should be enough feedback
having been both a TA and a student, i think this idea is entirely too optimistic. "optional" problem sets can work well in graduate and advance undergraduate courses, but for the bulk of students in the intro/intermediate courses, homework that doesn't get graded for accuracy may as well not exist. i certainly didn't do it, and when the CS department decided to grade homework on completion only, i saw student attendance of my office hours immediately drop to zero.
ultimately, you cannot just expect college students to make reasoned decisions based on the way you set up the course. you need to arrange the course in a way that incentivizes them to keep up at every step.
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#39Requiring students to submit their VCS history along with the finished project would at least up the cost to the students for copy and pasting. They even hint at that sort of solution in the piece by mentioning cosmetic changes to the files at the last minute.
Wish I was taught or even knew what VCS was in University.
Re: Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science
#40One thing that I think people don't talk about enough on this topic is the wildly different plagerism guidelines between different classes.
I did both CS and economics in college. And in my CS classes, even discussing the homework with classmates was often "against the rules".
But in my business and economics classes, me and my classmates would regularly work together on the homework my straight up assigning certain problems to certain people and then copying from each other.
This was not only allowed by the professor, it was explicitly ENCOURAGED!
They understood that if you talked to classmates, you will be able to understand things better, instead of struggling and failing to do stuff on your own.
And with such wildly differing guidelines for different classes, things were often confusing to students.
One potential solution to "cheating" is to explicitly allow it, such that everyone is on the same playing field.
What matters, at the end of the day, is that the students learn the material.