[QUOTE=foggybok;8698668]
yeah, I realize that happens too (I’ve actually seen it), but without going into the details of the specific case, in this case it was pretty clear what happened…[/QUOTE]
Oh, I had more than one that I caught using a cellphone during an exam. I always carried through with my promise to drop their exam into the trash, too.
The fact that you can cheat, that you have discovered an easy way to cheat, does not mean that you ought to cheat or that you ought to get a “bye” because it was so easy.
Professionals like MDs, Vets, lawyers, etc. have an extraordinary ability to muck about in other peoples lives and do either great good or great harm. If the cheating was real then the only acceptable answer is to tell them not to let the door hit on on butt on the way out.
G.
Same here. Washington and Lee–our exams were self-scheduled, unproctored, and in a lot of cases we could take them ANYWHERE on campus during the exam period we selected. If you were caught, you got hauled in front of the EC with one chance to withdraw anonymously if you were found guilty. (You could appeal to a public trial by student jury, but if they found you guilty, your transcript was stamped ‘expelled’ instead of ‘withdrawn.’ Most people who got called before the EC withdrew before the hearing even started.) I never sat an exam with a professor in the room until grad school.
You can require students taking online tests to have a video camera monitoring them. There are other methods. But, given that these are students in residence at the college, why not just have them take their exams in a classroom with someone watching them?
When I give exams, or even quizzes, there is a seating chart, the exams are handed out with the students’ names on them already, they aren’t allowed to have anything at their desks except a writing instrument and an eraser (and a calculator if they need one), and whatever I hand out. They aren’t supposed to have cell phones within reach but, short of frisking them (which is probably prohibited), that is hard to enforce. I try to encourage them to put the phones on airplane mode since a vibrating phone is pretty noticeable in a quiet classroom. I don’t even allow scratch paper, having had an incident with that roughly twenty years ago. I do allow graphing calculators if I let them use calculators (I teach organic chemistry so they can pretty much survive without them), with the caveat that, if I ever catch anyone using one inappropriately, no one in any of my classes will use a graphing calculator ever again during a test. I then tell them the story of the scratch paper.
There are multiple forms of the tests, with some questions that look alike but are different and others that look different but are kind of similar.
All of this takes time but it seems kind of lazy, and not fair to the not cheating students, not to do it. I don’t know that an honor code similar to some described upthread would be viable at a community college where the students can pretty easily go someplace else if they have two many black marks.
I also attended school with an honor code that was strictly enforced and taken very seriously. Exams were not proctored, and the only rules IIRC were that you must remain in the building where the exam was being given, and you couldn’t take the test into the bathroom. I remember a couple of honor code violations being tried, and I believe it was generally other students who turned them in. At a competitive academic institution, no one wants to see another student coasting along by cheating. Not to mention, the penalties were pretty severe- not worth the risk, under the vast majority of circumstances.
There is very little chance that OSU will expel the students over a take-home online quiz. 85 students is more than half their class. They would have to prove 85 times that each student cheated. The expense in all of that is unreal.
I know of at least two students in my class who cheated. They were turned in by two other students who caught them. One was headed for a much-sought after internship, which she lost because the cheating episode was highlighted in her school records. The other dropped out anyway because she just couldn’t keep up. I have no doubt that there was a lot of cheating going on at other times. It’s just reality.
[QUOTE=trubandloki;8698264]
The incident raised questions about whether a current academic and business-world emphasis on collaboration and working in teams has blurred students’ understanding of what constitutes cheating.
This line made me giggle.
I highly doubt anyone thought they were not cheating.
I think everyone knows the difference between group projects and a test.[/QUOTE]
All the profs who have weighed in are obviously very by the book types in subjects that matter.
I had one prof who not only gave take home tests, and the “final exam” was a party at his house. This class was the 400 level social science elective that many hard science and engineering types took for an easy A & more importantly to get that annoying social science check in the box for graduation.
Was there collaboration on take home tests? You betcha. Really hard to take a class seriously when the final is a party and the only in class exam was heavily curved.
I actually have a favorite cheating story:
I usually give short answer tests, but sometimes have a section of multiple choice for factual information. I always had two versions but didn’t advertise that. When grading, I noticed that one student had nearly every MC answer wrong. Upon closer inspection, he had put the correct answers to the other version down. I figured he had punished himself so I simply graded the test. When I gave them back, I see his shock at the grade. He grabs another kid’s test and rushes up to me. “We had the same answers but his are marked right and mine are wrong!!!” I looked at him calmly and reply “The questions are different.” He turns pale and walks away.
It was a refreshing change from the non-consequence administrators handed out if I caught a student in the act.
[QUOTE=DrBeckett;8699495]
There is very little chance that OSU will expel the students over a take-home online quiz. 85 students is more than half their class. They would have to prove 85 times that each student cheated. The expense in all of that is unreal.
I know of at least two students in my class who cheated. They were turned in by two other students who caught them. One was headed for a much-sought after internship, which she lost because the cheating episode was highlighted in her school records. The other dropped out anyway because she just couldn’t keep up. I have no doubt that there was a lot of cheating going on at other times. It’s just reality.[/QUOTE]
While the news reports don’t have a lot of details, it’s clear that each of the 85 had a disciplinary hearing that resulted in some sort of sanction. Whether or not anyone got expelled, I imagine the results of the hearing are on your academic record, so a real handicap when applying for residencies or other opportunities. Unfortunate, but I’m glad OSU took it seriously.
I always make several versions of tests and quizzes in order to prevent cheating. I have one student who was absent every time we had a test or quiz. In one instance she gave me perfect answers to a different version of the test!
We are not allowed to accuse students of cheating, so I called her up and asked her if she read the questions. She seemed confused. I then asked her to carefully read the questions and then read her answers. She started to laugh, saying, “they don’t match!” I pointed out to her that her answers matched the the test I had given the previous day. She thought that was hilarious.
I explained this when I called her parents to tell them she had failed her test.
Later in the semester the same girl handed in an essay that was word for word the same as a student’s from one of my other classes. They both had to re-write it.
Maybe she will learn, but she hasn’t yet. There are no real consequences any more.
We had a group of about 50 engineering students from another country (feel free to guess!) that were taking pictures of the test, sending them off to a test answer group, and getting the answers sent to them all while in the classroom taking the test. They are all gone. One that was not caught right away had a calculator that he had very carefully carved out the body of it, placed a camera inside - it looked like a calculator-, and continued to use the test answer company for another week. The university misses the money as they paid full, out of state tuition but there was no way they could keep them around to make a joke out of the school.
Alberta’s story remided me of this one - we had a student interview for a job. He gave a fairly decent interview but a bit pushy - “I’m the greatest, you’d be lucky to have me type”. I asked for a writing sample. He gave me a paper that had obviously been used for a class which was fine. As I read it, the language suddenly seemed to change in the middle so I put in a string of phrases from each part of the paper and what do you know they were both copied from 2 editorials. I imagine the professor didn’t realize it and as the class was over I didn’t report it but he sure didn’t get hired.
[QUOTE=red mares;8699499]
All the profs who have weighed in are obviously very by the book types in subjects that matter.
I had one prof who not only gave take home tests, and the “final exam” was a party at his house. This class was the 400 level social science elective that many hard science and engineering types took for an easy A & more importantly to get that annoying social science check in the box for graduation.
Was there collaboration on take home tests? You betcha. Really hard to take a class seriously when the final is a party and the only in class exam was heavily curved.[/QUOTE]
I gave a take home final exam for my equine nutrition class–there were 2 problems–
in one, I provided a theoretical horse, a hay analysis, and a spreadsheet from one feed company, listing detailed analysis of all their products.
The student was to come up with a reasonable feeding plan for the horse, at least for DE, protein, Ca, P, and Se, ad taking into consideration any “special needs” for that individual, using either the feed company’s products or straight oats. Any supplements that the student wanted to add needed an explanation as to why it was being added.
In the second, I provided a different horse, with a currently existing feeding plan, in some cases including supplements, and the explanation that this was a new boarder. They were to evaluate the feeding plan, comment on whether it was adequate, and explain any recommended changes.
Every student in the class got a different set of data wrt horse and hay analysis, and I had 4 different feed company spreadsheets, assigned randomly.
Students had to show all work.
Yes, it would have been possible for them to get someone to help, but I never saw evidence of it.
And yes, it was hell grading them, as I had to run through every problem. But it was what I wanted them to take away from the class, and, over the 10 years or so I taught it, I was pretty pleased overall.
[QUOTE=Albertabound;8699676]
Later in the semester the same girl handed in an essay that was word for word the same as a student’s from one of my other classes. They both had to re-write it.
Maybe she will learn, but she hasn’t yet. There are no real consequences any more.[/QUOTE]
When I was a department chair, I had to deal with a student who first failed to turn in a paper that was the final assignment for a course, then told the instructor that she had dropped it off with the financial aid office, and was puzzled they hadn’t delivered it to her, then submitted an empty file via email, then submitted a paper that was entirely cut and paste from the web, without even standardizing the fonts or formatting.
The instructor came to me and I told her to give the student an F on the paper, and that put her course grade into the same category. Student then “explained” that she had mistakenly sent her “rough draft”, and emailed another version, a very lightly edited version of the cut and paste, without any quotation marks around directly lifted phrases (hell, paragraphs), and the only citation a list of websites at the end.
I said the grade stood.
Same student did not appear for my final exam in anatomy and physiology. She showed up the next day in my office to announce the fact that she hadn’t been there.
I told her I had noticed.
She then said I had told the students they didn’t need to take the final.
I replied that what I had said was that, if they had a passing grade going into the final, I would not let the final bring them below passing, but that they could quite possibly raise their grade considerably by doing well on the final.
She was not passing at that point.
I asked her if she wanted to sit down and take the final then, and she declined.
A couple days later, I got a call from the dean.
Student had told her that she had been failed in the first class for mistakenly submitting a rough draft, and that in the second class, I had told her that, since she had the highest grade in the class (not), she was exempt from the final, and then I changed my mind…
[QUOTE=Chief2;8698357]
As for the computer test pattern issue and cheating, I personally know of someone who is visually brilliant and stumbled upon a pattern while taking the SAT’s years ago, so said individual filled in the pattern and turned it in. The score was off the charts, accusations of cheating went through the building like a bush fire, and no matter how hard the individual explained the truth of what they did, the student was labeled a cheater by both the faculty and the administration and offered two paths: retake the exam, or exit the program. The student retook the exam, deliberately changed some right answers to ones that were wrong, sailed through it with an almost as high score, and graduated.[/QUOTE]
I’m not understanding your story. I’ve gone through the SATs myself, and with 3 of my own children and 3 of my husband’s children. Doesn’t the College Board administer and oversee the SATs, not the school? And scores go up to 2400/1600, so it can’t be “off the charts,” and there are hundreds of kids who get perfect scores every year. Plus, the SATs have nothing to do with graduating, unless you are referring to graduating from college.
I think it’s kind of silly to give take-home tests and NOT expect collaboration. In fact, it’s just a dumb idea because the students could be using who knows what reference material. Don’t give take-home tests and this problem disappears.
I lived with vet students in college and they would have sold their grandparents for grades. Not quite as bad as the med students but almost. Any vet student who took part in a cheating ring and thought their peers wouldn’t turn them in is a moron and doesn’t deserve to graduate.
[QUOTE=Guilherme;8698976]
The fact that you can cheat, that you have discovered an easy way to cheat, does not mean that you ought to cheat or that you ought to get a “bye” because it was so easy.
Professionals like MDs, Vets, lawyers, etc. have an extraordinary ability to muck about in other peoples lives and do either great good or great harm. If the cheating was real then the only acceptable answer is to tell them not to let the door hit on on butt on the way out.
G.[/QUOTE]
Great post, Guilherme! I totally agree.
Interesting theory. Because you can cheat you should and will and how dare people expect you not to?
[QUOTE=trubandloki;8701753]
Interesting theory. Because you can cheat you should and will and how dare people expect you not to?[/QUOTE]
No, not at all - you are deliberately blowing my comment out of proportion and misinterpreting it in an inflammatory manner.
Cheating is obviously a problem. But is it the university’s JOB to police the cheaters and weed out the cheaters? How much time and how many resources are devoted to policing and disciplining cheaters? It’s the schools job to EDUCATE. If uncovering cheaters is THAT important, and it’s the job of the educators, it should be done at the lower levels of education, not at the post graduate level. I think a lot of cheating slips under the radar. If you remove the opportunity for the cheaters to cheat, they are then forced to actually learn the material and take the tests and pass the tests.
It’s stupid to think that students will not try to get take-home work done as quickly and correctly as possible. So don’t give it much weight to take-home work wrt the final grade. It should be a way for diligent students to learn the material and prepare for exams. And the students who can skip through the take home material and are still smart enough to pass exams - heck, you WANT them as professionals.
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