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My students cheated... a lot

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Re: My students cheated... a lot

#661

Post by nonrandomstring »

This thread, more than any I have read on Hacker News shows the greatest variation of opinion, and the least ability for us to have common agreement upon terms, normative behaviours, standards of judgement or goals. Sadly, education really is a mess. I think it reflects the schisms within wider society.

After 30 years in and out of "academia" I am exasperated and despondent at the state of affairs and what I consider the total bastardisation of the function of education.

The OP story of rampant, shameless cheating is all too familiar and is simply grist for the mill. It's something to which most professors have grown thick skins. This is the ordinary background against which we have to teach, day in, day out.

Despite being a optimist in so many areas of life I see little prospect of fixing this without extraordinary and radical changes in the governance, funding and mission of universities.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#662

Post by PoignardAzur »

Fiahil wrote: post #472

Ah cheating ! I did a year abroad in California when I was studying computer science and I remember there was a huge difference between cheating there and cheating in my French school. In the later, we were given harder exercises and asked to deliver a working program with some constraints. This program is then tested and graded by a CI and examined by TAs. Usually TAs would get a cheating report for reused bits of c…

Always a pleasure to see a fellow Epitech alumni on HN!

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#663

Post by oldgradstudent »

This is a bizarre post. The author is disconnected from reality.

When cheating is easy, and especially if the grades are curved, non-cheaters are harshly punished.

The author intentionally created such an environment and is surprised cheating is going on.

The only possible solution I can see is that the majority of the grade is derived from non-online exams held under strict conditions:

* IDs are checked

* Randomized seating that is announced just before entering the class.

* Enforced distance between test takers.

* Outside proctors that have no sentiments towards the students.

* Even going to the bathrooms should be regulated.

* Smart devices are deposited during the exams.

* Swift harsh punishment to cheaters, and policy violaters (e.g. use of smartphone during exam)

* Constant vigilance in adapting to new methods of cheating.

Without all the above, non-cheaters are effectively punished.

Nothing is perfect, but such steps limit cheating and reduce the incentive for cheating.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#664

Post by burntoutfire »

hackernewds wrote: post #388
derevaunseraun wrote: post #355

This happened to me in undergrad with an autograded class. I remember soloing the class and thinking that the assignments were super hard. They would post grade averages for assignments and I was doing worse than usual. I remember a TA posting about cheating being an issue. They even released a graph of anonymized student repositories with edges indicating a detected instance of cheating Turned out that a HUGE cohort…

Students will cheat. the solve is to get rid of curving classes in this manner

The Polish university I went to never even heard of grading on a curve, and yet cheating was rampant. I think it's just human nature - as long as cheating is not heavily penalised, many people will choose to do it.

During my studies, there was one professor who openly said that, if he caught you cheating, he will fail you in his class (which, in Polish universities, means going through a lot of bureucracy to not have to repeat the entire year) - as opposed to other professors, who will usually just allow you another attempt at later time. Also, during the written exams, he wasn't staring longlingly at the sky throught the window (like some other professor did - I assume they wanted to help us cheat, so that we can pass their class and be out of their lives), but was watching us like a hawk 100% of the time. In result, AFAIK there was no cheating in his class at all - it just didn't pay off.

Personally, this hypocrisy and game of cat and mouse was one of the main lessons I learned in high school and later in university ("it's ok to cheat as long as you don't get caught", "nobody cares about their work anyway" etc.). It's a shame that the education system is corrupting the morals of young people in such a way, but on the other hand, the grown up world they're about to join is pretty corrupt anyway, so maybe it's actually teaching valuable survival skills.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#665

Post by Claude_Shannon »

carls wrote: post #230

I recently took a CS class at Stanford with an interesting policy on cheating. While cheating almost certainly happened during the course, at the end of the quarter the course staff made a public post allowing any student who cheated to make a private message to the staff admitting they've done so. If a student admitted to cheating, while they would face academic disciplinary action (i.e. receiving a failing or low g…

I have the same policy at my uni in Poland. Admit to cheating without being called out? Depending on the professor mood, they either allowed you to retake exam (though the best grade you'd get was the lowest passing one), or you just fail the course and try again next year.

Both they had less paperwork, and well, they wouldn't report that person.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#666

Post by bambax »

hnarn wrote: post #525

Threads like these are always frustrating, because as usual people (programmers in this case) freely air their opinions on how schools are broken with phrases like “we need to fix the system”. As someone who studied pedagogy for years and quit due to an immense frustration with exactly this — how broken the system is — I would encourage you to entertain the thought that maybe, you as a person who is almost in all cas…

> HOW do you measure knowledge? And when you decide how, how do you scale it?

When I was in school, many moons ago (in France) there were no quizzes. Zero. "Tests" were either dissertations (for topics such as literature, history, etc.) or problems. Everything was done in class, in longhand.

There were no good or bad answers, even in math class, because what was evaluated was the ability to describe the problem, the approach, and the solution, and you got points for that even if the ultimate result was wrong.

"Cheating" was very difficult; copying what another student was writing was hard and not very effective, because unless you could reproduce their whole argument, just taking a sentence or two would not make sense.

This system didn't "scale" very well; in fact it didn't scale at all.

If you build a system that let one person "teach" classes of hundred of students and generate quizzes that can be instantly rated by a machine, then some (most?) students are going to try to game that system.

This is inevitable, and I'm not even sure it's a bad thing.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#667

Post by peoplefromibiza »

hnarn wrote: post #577
learner1234 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do we need to "measure knowledge"? school should be to teach knowlege. Measuring is not our problem. It is the problem of the employers. Test the teachers not the students. We only need to make sure the teachers are of good quality, not the students.

> why do we need to "measure knowledge"? Because knowledge is currency. It opens doors to privilege and status in society. It also ensures incompetent people are not put into positions where they can do harm.

> Because knowledge is currency

can I sell it?

Can I buy grocery with knowledge?

Knowledge is a tool!

And it's not even universally true, if you know American English it is perfectly useless in rural China or Japan or Central Africa.

EDIT: I'll add another example that won't upset the American audience.

Numbers in French.

We are used to the decimal system, it won't work in France, they count numbers using the vigesimal system.

So 84, 80 + 4 is quatre-vingt-quatre, 4 x 20 + 4.

My way of counting numbers, which is a basic requirements for kids aged 5, is completely useless in France, even though France is a close Neighbour of my country and we dealt with each other since the dawn of history.

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#668

Post by barefeg »

DeathArrow wrote: post #620
hnarn wrote: post #525

Threads like these are always frustrating, because as usual people (programmers in this case) freely air their opinions on how schools are broken with phrases like “we need to fix the system”. As someone who studied pedagogy for years and quit due to an immense frustration with exactly this — how broken the system is — I would encourage you to entertain the thought that maybe, you as a person who is almost in all cas…

I never gave a fuck about grades. For some courses I had below average marks, for others I was the best. I studied because I wanted to genuinely understand how things work and how I can solve problems and how, beginning with one ideea I can extend it or come up with an entirely different idea. And I know I will get downvoted for saying this, but for me, programming without having a solid understanding of CS backgroun…

But you don’t need a degree to understand the fundamentals. Jus because you don’t have a degree from an institution it doesn’t mean you don’t count as a programmer. You can learn all of this things on your own pace even if you started by learning how to modify Wordpress themes or got into the field after taking a boot camp. My point is (from the original comment) that grading knowledge and ability to produce quality work is a very hard thing to achieve. I would even go further and question whether it’s even necessary. For example you’re likely not getting a job straight after college without facing the company’s interview process. And every company has its own way. So even if you were to solve the issue in academics, it’s likely to not reflect on the student’s ability to get a job and perform properly

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#669

Post by Quindecillion »

hnarn wrote: post #525

Threads like these are always frustrating, because as usual people (programmers in this case) freely air their opinions on how schools are broken with phrases like “we need to fix the system”. As someone who studied pedagogy for years and quit due to an immense frustration with exactly this — how broken the system is — I would encourage you to entertain the thought that maybe, you as a person who is almost in all cas…

> Cynically, this will never happen because reforms to battle educational issues in any democratic society usually takes more than 5 election cycles to show obvious results (and when the bad results start stacking up current leaders will take the flak regardless).

Well obviously we need to fix the system of the system!

Re: My students cheated... a lot

#670

Post by bambax »

moffkalast wrote: post #634
DeathArrow wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never gave a fuck about grades. For some courses I had below average marks, for others I was the best. I studied because I wanted to genuinely understand how things work and how I can solve problems and how, beginning with one ideea I can extend it or come up with an entirely different idea. And I know I will get downvoted for saying this, but for me, programming without having a solid understanding of CS backgroun…

Well it's probably down to the harm done if the standards are lowered vs. the gain. Incompetent doctor? People die. Incompetent chemist? People die, or at least there's substantial material damage. When it comes to mathematicians and physicists they only ever have any real impact when they roll up their sleeves, open matlab or R and turn their theoretical work into something practical. Does that make them programmers…

> Incompetent doctor? People die.

Many, many doctors are completely incompetent, as in, they don't know anything. Yet not all of their patients die.

I have been a "standardized patient" at medical schools; students at the end of their education (after 6-8 years of learning) still don't know shit. And most pass. Maybe they learn on the job... but I doubt it.

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