
200 students cheat on senior midterm exam, many blame professor - anigbrowl
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/17/cheating
======
scott_s
_Some students have blamed Quinn, accusing him of misleading them and being
lazy. They posted clips from the first class's lecture, in which Quinn can be
seen telling his students that he is responsible for creating the test. The
students have tried to use this statement to justify their acts; since Quinn
told them he would be writing the exam, they did not think the prefab version
they were using to study would be used. "After seeing that, it was safe for us
to assume that having it online, having it e-mailed to you, whatever it was,
wasn't the test,” one student told the Associated Press. “No student knew that
was the test, and that's what we continue to say over and over." The
university has rejected that argument. "Let's be sure to keep the focus where
it belongs," Heston told the Orlando Sentinel. "Not on the instructor who
administered the test but on those students who chose to acquire the test
beforehand and use it inappropriately."_

If that I understand that correctly - the professor used pre-fab questions
from the publisher - then I have difficulty putting any blame on the students.
That material is not a secret. It does not require subterfuge to gain access
to the teacher version of textbooks. If you pull all of your test questions
from such a database, then you are vulnerable to this.

I have taught one course as an instructor. I made my own test from scratch.
The same is true for all of the classes I have TAed. Our department has a
stated policy that using prior exams to study is fair game.

I took a stats class where our final consisted of questions from the book -
and we knew this. I was going through the book while studying, saw a question
and thought "That looks like one he'd ask us." and I figure the problem out.
That exact same question was on the test. Unless there's some fundamental fact
I'm missing, I consider that a similar enough situation to treat them the
same.

~~~
ghshephard
The blame isn't for studying the old test. It's for not letting the instructor
know they had seen the exam already. That's when their behavior crossed an
ethical line.

The instructor isn't blameless here - he both misrepresented his creation of
the tests, as well as was lazy and pulled questions from his test bank. But
the students should have let him know that they had acquired the test ahead of
time.

Nobody came out of this looking good.

~~~
danbmil99
this. Why isn't this 100% clear to anyone with a brain?

~~~
nlawalker
Because it's a slippery slope. What other information sources do students need
to disclose? Is it fair for a student with access to another student that
already took the class to ask him questions? Should that be disclosed to the
professor or taken into account during grading?

~~~
kwantam
"Slippery slope," in a sense, only really applies when the slope is steep
enough that its slipperiness matters. In particular, there is an obvious
difference between "I've discussed problems like this with someone who knows
the material" and "I've studied exactly these questions and their answers for
the last week."

In the former case, having discussed the material, one is still required to
apply one's knowledge in order to produce correct answers on a test. In the
latter, one need only reproduce from memory answers one doesn't (necessarily)
understand.

------
ghshephard
This has happened to me three (3) times in my life.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with using old tests to study. This is an
acceptable practice, and, at SFU, our Computing Science/Math Student Societies
had a Filing Cabinet of old tests that we could photocopy to study from.

The first time this happened to me, it was Physics 12, 100 Mile House - Some
of the students had siblings who had taken physics from the instructor. We got
the test ahead of time. Took the test - which was identical to one from years
gone past. Did well in the test. Teacher Found out, got pissed off with us - I
felt like crap.

I ran into this precise situation in my Second Year Data Structures class in
'88 in Coquitlam College - there were about 120 students, and we were studying
from old test. Only problem is the instructor had used the exact same test at
BCIT (another technical college) a week earlier, and so we had a copy of it
(unbeknownst to us) - We started taking the test - I realized by question
number 2 that I had seen this test, and stood up and approached the instructor
letting him know that I had already seen this (I had learned my lesson from
High School) - Ironically, he asked me to just try my best, and seemed to hope
that I hadn't memorized all the answers. He later asked me to become his
Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor. Honesty pays off. :-)

The final time was at SFU, the instructor had accidentally printed out her new
test for students to study from - I picked them up, saw the date, and
immediately told her _before_ we took the test. That time she just re-wrote
the test and we took it a week later. Once again - zero doubt on how to handle
the situation. (Clearly, my high school "cheating" experience was had been a
formative experience.)

Net-Net - The cheating is NOT in studying from old tests, it's from realizing
you've already seen the test and not letting the instructor know. I didn't
realize this when I was in High School, but had matured enough ethically that
by 2nd year of college to not even consider taking the test without telling
the instructor I had seen the questions.

I think it says very, very sad things about students these days that not ONE
of the the 200 had the moral fiber to stand up and say "Hey - I've seen this
exam already."

~~~
mccon104
These students (or their parents) are paying UCF to provide them with this
education and then to certify their education with a diploma.

The responsibility does not fall to the students to inform a professor that
due to his own laziness they, through entirely moral and acceptable means, had
already studied these exact questions.It's not a student's responsibility to
tell the professor how to do his job.

He failed his students. Period. Calling it anything else is putting frosting
on dogshit.

Moral fiber plays no role here. They didn't stay silent as some unspeakable
wrong occurred. They studied a publicly available guide. It comes down to
this. Is it the students' responsibility to inform a professor every single
time they see a test question that they recognize or is it the professors
responsibility to prepare a proper test of their knowledge?

~~~
falcolas
If you review the footage of the professor confronting the students, you will
realize that this was not a publicly available test guide. This was a pool of
test questions based on the material in their books intended only for the
teachers of the courses to create the tests, not the students to study from.

They obtained the test blank using, at best, morally questionable methods
(social engineering, purchasing them under false pretenses, etc). At worst,
they stole the materials outright.

If they had used information that was legitimately publicly available, I would
agree with you. However, they did not, so it was morally reprehensible.

~~~
mccon104
hmm, now this is new information that in my quick reading i missed.

though even with this i would side with what sph said below. The fact that 200
students (and not something like 10) got the guide tells me the original act
wasn't one intending to "cheat" so much as study extra material.

the professor told the students he made their tests, so there was nothing that
should have lead them to believe these extra questions would be on the test.

does it make their act a little more morally gray? yes. does it constitute as
cheating? no.

~~~
falcolas
My sister-in-law teaches English in South Korea, where grades are even more
important than they are here to a child's future, and cheating has even graver
consequences (entire college career, and thus their future in knowledge jobs
are gone).

Yet, they still cheat.

Perhaps I'm just being pessimistic, but I don't believe that 200+ students
believed they just had study material. I believe they knew they were cheating;
else you would have had at least 1 of the 200 step forth and say "You know,
this is identical to the study material I received from my friends...". Even
the person who did eventually clue in the professor did so anonymously by
dropping the complete test script in his office.

Of course, blaming this on the professor seems overly optimistic about the
state of mind of those 200 students.

Either way, I would not want one of those 200 students working for me. If they
don't have the moral fortitude to admit that something is wrong on a test in
college... I can't imagine what they could do to a company where moral
standards are core to a companies very survival; such as a company which
handles customer credit data where a single leak of customer data can sink the
company.

~~~
mccon104
Wait, so are you claiming that upon receiving the study material these kids
had to have known they were cheating? Or they knew they were cheating upon
receiving the test?

Because the former is preposterous. It was a pre-fab "teachers" test from
their textbook publisher. It sounds like the perfect thing to take the night
before the real test to see what you may need to look over one more time.

The latter is less preposterous, but still in the wrong mind. Is it the
student's job to disclose what they studied? Frankly as long as they didn't
actively steal their professors test I don't see how they can be put at fault.
They studied hard, studying extra material, and got lucky when their professor
decided to forgo doing his job and mailed-in the creation of his test. So now
it's their fault for not telling the professor "hey it seems you copied
someone else's work"?

These sound like regular college students in a 600 person business class just
trying to graduate. They're not the morally bankrupt scourge of the earth, and
your damning evidence against their employability (or apparent lack thereof)
is based on them not coming forth because of a study guide?

~~~
ghshephard
mccon104 - your thinking regarding what my response should have been when I
"Got Lucky" and discovered I had seen the test ahead of time, is pretty much
what mine was when I was in Grade 12. I was wrong. The ethically correct
response is to let an instructor know if you've already seen an exam that has
been just handed to you. At that point, the only person in the wrong is the
instructor who was too lazy to create a test that would have been new for
their students.

Note - it's one thing for a high-school student to screw up (as I did) - we
can only hope that the teacher calls them on it, and they learn from their
experience (as I like to believe I did). What's a little disconcerting here is
that these were Senior Level college students, who one would hope would have
at least a _few_ people who would have stood up and said "Hey - I've seen this
before."

~~~
anthuswilliams
I wouldn't have stood up and said that, unless the tests were identical (i.e.,
questions were in the same order, with the same pagination, same ordering of
the multiple choice answers, etc.). Even if some questions were identical, if
I had not endured an experience like yours, there is nothing about the
situation that would suggest to me that what was happening was ethically
murky.

------
gte910h
If the professor indeed claimed authorship of the test before giving it to the
students, why shouldn't they use that test bank to study? If the professor
didn't write it, the test bank is just _similar_ questions which should be
excellent practice for the test.

If he didn't this is just further lying from cheaters, but that sounds exactly
like something many a professor would claim casually in a class.

If he did say he wrote the test, then all of this is a professor playing cover
his ass after telling students he's writing a test when really he was just
test bank spelunking.

~~~
spinlock
It would also be plagiarism if the professor claimed authorship of a test
which he did not write.

~~~
gte910h
That's not really as clear cut. The testbank is designed to be used by
instructors to create tests and quizes, without attribution.

Plagiarism is a hefty charge in academia, and likely doesn't fit this
situation.

------
mquander
I suggest a replacement headline:

400 students cheated by school, pay tuition in order to sit in on 600-person
classes and memorize hundreds of individual facts by rote, obtain increasingly
worthless degrees.

(In all seriousness, this is cheating, but half of all students "study" like
this all the way throughout high school and college, and most teachers
couldn't give a shit, so I don't see why anyone is freaking out now.)

~~~
dhume
_but half of all students "study" like this all the way throughout high school
and college_

If the students decided to study like this, they weren't cheated by the
school, just by themselves.

~~~
reledi
Sometimes the students have no choice when studying for tests. Most tests in
school aren't testing your knowledge, but rather your ability to regurgitate
the lecturer's notes.

------
nkurz
The sadness to me is the implication that students should restrict themselves
to learning solely from official class materials. The idea that students might
actually be trying to master the material doesn't even come up in the article
as an afterthought. Instead it seems to assume that their only possible goal
is to pass the test, and focuses on whether the approach was legitimate.

Throughout college, I would always find at least one alternate text book for
the courses I was taking. I'd frequently seek out Teacher's Editions, not
hoping to cheat on the exams, but hoping to better understand the material.
When assigned an abridged edition, I'd go out of my way to find the unabridged
(usually from a library) to see what was omitted and why.

I continue to hope that at least a few of those students had the same impulse:
here's another source from which to learn. But perhaps I'm being unrealistic.
I left without a degree after 3 years at a really good school, in part because
of comments from professors such as "Please read the edition I assigned --- I
chose the abridged text for a reason". The reason itself was never stated.

~~~
DanielStraight
Right. Students, teachers, parents, and bystanders all seem to have the
problem of forgetting that the purpose of education is to become educated.
Getting a degree is not the point. Getting grades is not the point. Learning
is the point.

The only reason to give tests is to gauge how much students have learned so
this information can be passed on (to the students so they can tell if they're
doing well, to employers so they know if the student knows the material).
Tests have no inherent value. If there is a better way to tell if students are
learning (and I'd wager that there usually is), no test should be given at
all.

I almost never studied in college (because I figured that if I hadn't learned
the material by test time, cramming wouldn't help), and I didn't care about my
grades (a professor once forgot to bring the graded tests to class and said we
could come by his office to get our grades; I told him I didn't care what my
grade was, and he was shocked). I cared whether I was doing well or not, and
generally I could judge that for myself. When I did get bad grades (which was
rare because I took my education very seriously), I either knew why already or
was quickly made aware of something I didn't know but needed to know. The most
helpful grade I ever got was a D on my first English paper. It's the lowest
grade I've ever gotten in my life, but by showing me what I did wrong, the
professor helped me improve my writing so that I never got a bad grade on an
essay again.

All that said, the test needs to be given again. Some students who got the
test could have been using it to study, some could have been using it to
memorize answers. Students memorizing answers don't deserve good grades, so
the test should be designed to fail them. Students using the test to study
weren't cheating, but there's no way to tell that they weren't cheating
without testing them again to see if they still do well. In order to keep
_their_ grades meaningful, they should be tested again. For an A to mean
anything, there has to be the possibility of an F. If students who weren't
learning anything were able to get A's, then there's a problem.

~~~
billswift
Since few, if any, of the students actually knew this was a copy of the test,
how could they be "using it to memorize answers"? They had no reason to expect
the problems/answers to be the same on the real exam.

------
gommm
I always thought that teachers who reused tests year over year or used pre-
made tests from the textbook publisher are just not doing their job...

I strongly believe that tests should be unique from year to year, calibrated
to what has been taught in class, made hard enough that very few can answer
all questions, have no multiple choice questions as they usually just rely on
rote memory and be made in such a way that taking the test open book doesn't
influence the result of the students (that's mostly for engineering...)

The problem I found when I was a student (and it was much more acute in the US
when I was an exchange student at RIT) is that some test instead of measuring
if the students understood the materials and was able to use critically, would
only test for rote memorization and be worded such that students who have
learned the content of the course of by heart without understanding it could
still pass...

But later in life, pure rote memorization is useless, understanding the
different subjects and being able to apply the knowledge gained during one's
studies is what matters...

~~~
phren0logy
Writing bad test questions is easy. Writing _good_ test questions is
exceedingly hard, and very time-consuming.

I'm not taking sides, I'm just saying...

~~~
gommm
Yes of course it's not easy but it's the job of a teacher... And, in that
case, the teacher didn't even make the effort to design test questions; he
took the easy way out and didn't do his job...

Of course, the problem too is that too often teachers are researchers foremost
and for them teaching is a requirement that they'd love to get rid of... I'm
not sure how to solve that, because I do think that in a lot of cases it's
good that university teachers contribute to research...

------
protomyth
"What is clear is that some students gained access to a bank of tests that was
maintained by the publisher of the textbook that Quinn used. They distributed
the test to hundreds of their fellow students, some of whom say they thought
they were receiving a study guide like any other -- not a copy of the actual
test."

Using a pre-fab test is the teacher's fault. I am very concerned that the
content of the class must have been pre-fab too.

Story: In my early years during my epically ill-advised attempt at an MS
degree, I was a TA for an intro to programming course. The class had
previously been taught by the same person for a number of years. The new class
used an updated version of the language (think MS-BASIC to QuickBasic) and the
other TA and I changed pretty much everything.

First day of class, I hand out the standard stuff with the class schedule and
when the tests are going to happen. About 5 students are not seen again until
the first test. I hand out the test, and see massive confusion in their faces.
One (a freshman) actually says to me "This isn't the right test!". I am
confused. I walk over, check the test, and say "yes, this is the first test
for the chapters we covered". I am still confused, and while they are taking
their tests I check the grade book and the 5 haven't turned in their 2
programs. I ask and he didn't know about them. All 5 failed and dropped the
course.

After talking to my fellow TA, I found out the old teacher had given the same
test for a number of years and every Greek / Club on campus had copies. Oops.

~~~
kwantam

        > I found out the old teacher had given the same test for a number 
        > of years and every Greek / Club on campus had copies. Oops.
    

I think this is true of a lot of frats and clubs: there's the "course bible"
that you consult for help with your psets. I don't know about your class, but
when I've taught classes we had a very clear policy with respect to bibles: if
you're copying your answers out of a bible, you're cheating, period.

There's nothing wrong with using previously-distributed material _to help you
study_. There is something wrong with copying answers from an old test. There
is also an obvious difference between the two, namely, one helps you learn the
material, the other only helps you get a passing grade.

~~~
protomyth
I really didn't have a dispute with the using of the old tests to study, but
it probably would have helped them if they had realized that the tests they
were studying had nothing to do with the current course. I changed my tests
each semester expect for the first two questions of the final (write an insert
sort and a selection sort). I figured it was just good form to change the
tests as you might have learned something as an instructor from the previous
year or had different programming assignments.

Story part 2: Three classes before the final I announced that the first two
questions would be the two sorts we covered. I reminded the classes and wrote
them on the board for the next two classes (it was kinda important they learn
those for reasons I really don't remember). I arrived early for the final and
was asked, in a joking manner, "What's on the test". I read the first two
questions. I am pretty sure I allowed a 3x5 card for notes.

I had a space for comments at the end of the test. A senior from another major
(engineering) wrote a rather pointed opinion on giving out the answer to the
first two questions and how I babying the freshman. It was rather good (if
insulting) reading and "had a lot of energy" as the other TA said. She
sheepishly came to apologize the next day (I think she hoped I hadn't read it
yet). I told her she had got her "A" but that she needn't have worried as no
freshman answered the first two questions correctly.

So, knowing the answer before hand relies on knowing.

------
zootar
The ethical reasoning about student plagiarism has become pretty simple-
minded.

Of course, students must not cheat. But instructors must not create
irresistibly tempting opportunities to cheat. If a test becomes available on
the internet, it's the instructor, not the student, who fails to meet an
ethical responsibility. To ignore the possibility that a copy of your upcoming
exam is freely downloadable from a website (nevermind your inbox) would
require an inhuman resistance to curiosity. I don't expect the professor in
this case would find this reasoning convicning, but if he had even considered
it, I doubt he would now be "physically ill, absolutely disgusted, completely
disillusioned".

Another example is the "the person who lets someone copy is as guilty as the
person who copies" dogma. This idea is routinely cited without explanation or
evidence on the first day of classes. It may be practically necessary to
punish those who enable plagiarism, but we can say that without denying the
philosopical difference between handing in someone else's work and sharing
your work with a friend. Indeed, I can't help thinking that Richard Stallman
would oppose this kind of rule, which can make people who naturally want to
help their friends terribly uneasy about doing so.

------
gilgad13
So here is a situation that happened to me. A professor of mine has taught the
same class year after year, and builds his tests for this year from last
year's, changing only a few numbers. This professor also allows 1 8x11 "crib
sheet" to be brought into the test, and distributes past years exams as study
material.

For the first exam, I studied honestly and filled my crib sheet with important
formulas I didn't want to memorize. I got a decent grade, but nothing
spectacular. However, for the second exam I realized that all the questions to
the last test were from previous exams, and just printed out the previous
years exams as my crib sheet. I got close to a perfect score on this second
exam.

Did I cheat?

Once you start limiting the publicly available information student can use to
study, the situation gets very sticky very quickly.

------
sev
Whatever is available online or anywhere public is fair game, as long as it's
not gained by hacking the professors computer or something along those lines
(and not used DURING the test). That's just my opinion.

~~~
cicero
"What is clear is that some students gained access to a bank of tests that was
maintained by the publisher of the textbook that Quinn used." Textbook
publishers usually make these things available only to teachers. Some kind of
hacking or fraud would be necessary for a student to gain access. There is a
growing sense in our online culture that if I can figure out how to access
some information, then it's ok for me to use it how I want.

~~~
sev
> Some kind of hacking or fraud would be necessary for a student to gain
> access.

Unless someone else had access to it, made it available online as a public
"free" download and they found it by searching for it. No hacking or fraud was
necessary there (by the students at least)

For example, when I was a student the professor assigned even numbered
problems so that the answers wouldn't be in the back of the linear algebra
book. However, I found a PDF online that contained all answers with solutions!
I didn't have to hack anything.

~~~
billswift
That strikes me as an obnoxious professor. What conceivable reason could there
be for a college instructor to do that? I only took a few courses before I
withdrew, but the math instructors always assigned problems with solutions for
homework, that way we could tell if we didn't understand something and ask
about it in class.

------
alex_c
>To some observers, the incident has amplified fears about the moral character
of the generation that is now coming of age.

>The divide between the generations can be seen in Quinn's lecture to students
after the cheating was discovered, and the response posted by a student in the
YouTube caption.

I find it fascinating that previous generations have never cheated on a large
scale, or when caught have never tried to justify it or weasel out of it.
Well, I guess the YouTube part is true, at least.

>McCabe said the shifting norms that relate to cheating make it difficult to
say whether the problem has grown worse over time. While acknowledging that
his empirical data don't support the conclusion that the problem has worsened,
he believes that it has.

Well, I guess handwaving about this generation without providing any solid
data or points of comparison for previous generations is sufficient for this
(and most "generation gap") articles.

------
timdellinger
I think much of the guilty / not guilty verdict would come from the intent of
the person who first obtained a copy.

If they gained unauthorized entry into a computer system to grab the test
bank, and then advertised their intent to get a copy of the exam over emails
on the UCF network, then they're sunk and should just take the amnesty deal.
If they got a copy from a TA friend at another school, with the intent to use
it as a study aid, then they're on the whiter side of the fuzzy grey line.

------
iwr
And at the end of it all, a student will come out of a business school
sporting a shiny degree, but not much else. If he didn't cheat on his tests,
he would be surely cheated out of an education.

This professor places more emphasis on a test with recycled questions than
practical work.

~~~
Shengster
No kidding. Every question on that midterm came out of a test bank. Why didn't
the professor come up with the questions himself?

If his "team" was able to write a new midterm exam in a few days without any
recycled questions, I'm not sure why his "team" couldn't do this for every
exam. This would ensure that no student would be able to cheat even if they
wanted to.

~~~
anigbrowl
Using standardized questions for part of the academic evaluation gives the
schools and students some sort of objective benchmark. If all I know is that
'X% of students passed a test set by Professor Y,' it's not very informative,
because I have no idea how rigorous or easy that test was.

Schools competing for student applicants want a meaningful way to measure the
performance of their faculty against those of other schools, so as to attract
more students and thus more funding. The same is true for students who work to
achieve a good score on exams such as the LSAT or MCAT which can aid them in
getting a scholarship; graduates competing for jobs want to demonstrate good
performance at a school which is known for high standards. Academic brands can
have a considerable impact on graduates' future earning potential, and so the
tuition fees a school can charge, and the quality of the applicants for
admission, are heavily dependent on how well its brand stacks up against those
of its competitors in academic rankings.

Unless a school already has a good academic reputation - either because it is
considered elite, or as a new school hiring a demonstrably well-qualified
faculty - it may well be more effective to outsource part of their evaluation
process than to spend years trying to improve their reputation by word of
mouth. Excellent schools will tend to graduate excellent students who go on to
do well in their academic or professional fields; but it takes a long time for
such a pattern to become apparent. An external evaluation tool provides
results within a single semester.

~~~
gte910h
Nice theory, I've never heard of anyone caring how students performed against
a test bank.

------
alextp
As an anecdote, I'm teaching my first class this semester, and had a similar-
ish experience, but with a much worse outcome for the students. To avoid this
issue of people not knowing how the test is going to look like (and hence not
knowing how to study for it), I decided to make two versions of each test
question (and each question focuses on a simple part of the material that I
want them to take home) and randomly assign each version of a question either
to the actual test or to a practice test that I give them out a week or so
before the actual test and then solve the practice test in front of them,
clearly stating what I do and don't expect them to do.

Now, in the first test they did well, but in the second test a significant
fraction of the class (like 60+%) just wrote in their tests _my_ answers to
the practice questions, and some argued that since there was some similarity
they should get half credit or something. My reaction was, and still is, wtf?

~~~
Tycho
My teacher for the ASP.NET class said he used to make the link to the 'final
test' live/unprotected early in the term, as if by mistake (the tests were
online and performed at workstations), but uploading a paper which _wasn't_
the actual test and only changing it on test day. I don't know if he was
joking but it cracked me up. I remember when the Turnitin.com plagiarism
detection system was introduced to us in a lecture, some audibly worried
students at the front had the gall to ask if they could submit their essays in
handwritten form.

~~~
JimmyL
Turnitin was just being brought online at my university while I was there, and
there were some interesting (university) Senate cases about it - in
particular, one student who refused to submit his final exam to it for various
reasons was failed. He then appealed it, and in the end won (and got it marked
without submitting it). When I left the school - and things may have changed
since then - the deal was that for classes that used Turnitin you either had
to submit your paper to them, or you had to submit multiple drafts of your
paper (with notes and edits in them) and be open to an oral exam and
discussion on any part of it, which seems like a fair compromise.

Personally, if I had been in a class that used it (or in a field where we
regularly wrote papers), I wouldn't have submitted my papers to it. Arguments
aside about how it poisons the feeling of trust (which I think are somewhat
valid), I don't like that Turnitin makes its money off my work without my
getting any of the action. The value of their product is dependent on getting
a copy of my papers, so they clearly have some value. If that's the case, why
should I be forced to give it to them for free?

~~~
Tycho
Yes there's something not quite satisfactory about handing over your IP to
Turnitin with little choice in the matter. I think in the end though I
concluded that for honest students like us the pros outweigh the cons. I'm so
sick of plagiarists in higher education.

Ironically Turnitin ended up costing me dearly - it shows your marker a
percentage of how much of your essay consists of quotations. I was penalised
for breaching the maximum threshold of original content to citation, my grade
capped at 59/100. But I doubt the marker would have realised otherwise,
because it was a well written report (about database copyright) that flowed
naturally; I simply included longish quotations from my sources to make things
clearer. Being told to 'learn how to paraphrase' rankles to this day. Argh.
Maybe I can have the last laugh by making it my glorious blogging debut...

------
sph
This seems like a classic case where many people tried to cut corners and
they're now trying to claim that they're the victim.

The professor claimed that he wrote the tests while he was actually using pre-
fab tests. One can argue that the pre-fab tests are as good or better than the
ones he would write himself and, as such, there's nothing wrong. Except that
passing off another's work as your own is usually known as plagiarism. With
that declaration, it is perfectly conceivable that students would expect that
these pre-fab tests are things from the textbook manufacturer that they could
study off of. If that is the case, there is no generational disconnect about
cheating and the premise of the article is overblown.

Personally, I'm very sympathetic to the students. Logic tells me that if
you're cheating, you try not to spread it around to a group of 200 - most of
whom you won't know or trust. I mean, there are two ways it could have played
out:

1) You send the exam (or it gets continually forwarded down the line) to 200
people telling them that it's cheating (acting with bad intent). Odds are that
one of those 200 is going to tell the professor that you're cheating before
the exam. Plan foiled.

2) You send out the pre-fab exam to people thinking it's just a study guide
from the teacher's edition of the book since the professor makes up his own
exams. It gets widely forwarded because, hey, awesome study guide! Then it
turns out that it's the actual exam questions and someone tells the professor
that.

#1 seems more believable because it came to light after the exam rather than
before. It seems plausible that the professor had been lazy for years using
pre-fab tests and by chance got caught this year passing off pre-fab tests as
his own. Rather than say, "well, unfortunately a lot of students got a copy of
the test before since I wasn't making them myself and we'll have to re-do the
midterm", the professor tried to defend himself by attacking the students. By
accusing them of cheating, it wasn't his laziness that caused a re-take of the
midterm, but cheating students. He shouldn't be blamed for wasting time, it's
cheating students.

At the beginning of the article, I really disliked the students - people who
didn't want to put in the work trying to get a good grade they didn't deserve.
It's possible that's what they were. However, I can't see any evidence that
indicates that's the case. All of the evidence seems to point the other
direction.

* The professor said he made the tests

* The situation came to light after the exam, not before and _one would think someone of the 200+ would snitch before the exam_

This isn't a generational disconnect on what constitutes cheating. The
students aren't defending themselves saying that it's ok to get a copy of the
exam beforehand. The soul searching that the professor needs to do is around
his exam preparation.

Let's say there's an open-source econ exam online (someone's written and
published it). I, as a professor, print off 600 copies and give it in my
class. It just so happens that many of the students, while looking for
practice materials, found that exam. It's my fault for using a public exam.

In this case, the professor was using semi-private materials. The questions
seem to be from the teacher's edition of the book (you know, the kind with the
answers already written in). Yeah, it's not "public", but it isn't quite
private either. If students think that you're going to be making your own
questions, maybe an exam in the teacher's edition of the book they're using
seems like the perfect practice test. It's the material you've been covering,
but not the exact exam.

I don't want to sound too harsh on the professor, but sometimes you have to
own up. Saying, "I thought that the teacher's edition materials wouldn't be
available to students. Unfortunately, they were" makes me feel bad for the
situation that both parties are in. It's a little sketchy whether it's ok to
grab the teacher's materials of a textbook if you're a student. Clearly it's
not all roses - you know that it wasn't written for you (a student), but if it
doesn't affect the course of the class it isn't so bad, right?

This feels like when Harvard Business School denied entrance to students who
looked at whether other people were admitted. Phil Greenspun wrote about it
(<http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2005/03/08/>). Baiscally, they gave
students a URL that had a code in it (with no check). So, students typed in
example.com/admitted?stud=12345 and saw whether they got in. However, they
could just change the number and see other people and were accused of hacking.
They blamed the students for what was their error when, really, their
disclosure of admissions info without protections might have left them open
for a lawsuit. And it isn't just "hacking", curious users wondering whether
their software was really so bad and those who made typos could cause
problems. Imagine that I'm #12346 and you're #12345. I accidentally type in
12345 and pull up you, realize my mistake and pull up me. Now they think that
you looked at you and then "hacked" the system to look at me when you're
innocent all along.

In this case, even if a few students had malicious intent, it's highly
unlikely that a secret conspiracy of 200 students of malicious intent could
happen and the vast majority just thought they were getting a practice exam.
Now, the professor and the university want to make them out to be immoral
cheaters to cover themselves. I'm not saying that getting access to teacher
editions isn't problematic and morally above reproach. However, if you're
operating under the assumption that the professor isn't using it, it's
understandable and certainly not the type of immorality that the professor is
trying to paint.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I'll leave the professor's side out of it, as you've covered it adequately,
but on the student's side, even if they did think they were just getting a
practice test or study guide, it became cheating the moment they realized it
and failed to inform the professor that they had already seen the test.

~~~
sph
That's exactly what I failed to articulate. I knew I was missing something
because the students didn't feel blameless to me. That's why it feels like a
situation where each side is trying to yell at the other rather than both
accepting responsibility for messing up a little.

It just makes me sad because everyone is posturing. Rather than saying "well,
life happens and things go wrong and we'll work together to fix them" they're
working on who is at fault. The professor wants the students to admit "guilt"
or face sanctions for cheating because then things are found in his favor. The
students would rather blame the professor for being lazy and not making up the
test himself when they should have come forward once they recognized that they
had seen it. It's unfortunate when we (and I've done it too) try to cover
ourselves rather than working toward a solution.

------
gamble
Anyone who teaches these days needs to keep in mind that pirated solutions
manuals are easily obtained online for almost any text. Using problem sets or
exams that are provided by a publisher for any course component with
significant weight just invites cheating and punishes the students who don't
cheat.

~~~
AndyKelley
I find it ironic that he emphatically stated, "The days of finding a new way
to cheat the system are over."

Before that he said that he had been teaching for 20 years and hadn't ever had
to give this lecture before.

------
callahad
I can't see any ethical issue with the students' actions, so long as they were
honestly under the impression that the professor would be creating a bespoke
exam, and that canned exam came from a legitimate source.

The appropriate response, in that case, would still be to invalidate the exam
due to the unfair advantaged gained by the students who studied from the
canned one, but I can't see punishing those students much less disparaging
their moral character.

Practice examinations are routinely used to study for standardized tests, and
the organization responsible for creating and administering the LSAT even
sells previously administered tests directly. If that isn't cheating, I can't
see how this instance can possibly be construed as such.

~~~
JimmyL
The thing I'm not clear on (and to me, this makes a difference) is the nature
of just how canned the exam was. Specifically, was an entirely pre-made exam
(from a teachers' edition) given to these students, or did the teacher himself
select an assortment of pre-made questions from an exam pack, thereby creating
his own exam (made of canned components)?

------
jseifer
This is really weird. I went to UCF and it was regular practice for
instructors to either give you the tests beforehand, previous test for
reference, or tell you to find students that may have taken the class before
and look at their tests for reference.

------
joshes
Of course the students blamed the professor: they've been taught by example
throughout their lives that the proper reaction to fucking up is to point the
finger at everyone else.

An incredible lack of personal responsibility is a growing problem in this
generation.

~~~
spinlock
I love that the only lens we can see this story through is to take sides with
the students or the professor. I expect any professor to write his own tests
(or have his TA write them). I consider it cheating for a professor to
contract out the work of writing a test.

If students knew that they were seeing the test early, then they cheated too.

I find it impossible to determine who has the high ground in this story
because both the professor and the students are standing in the mud.

~~~
flatline
Here's an analogy: if you visit a web page with a password field, and the
password is embedded in a comment in the HTML markup, who is at fault for
unauthorized people logging in? While it may be morally wrong (and illegal) to
exploit the system, I have a pretty strong opinion on which party is more at
fault. The students' punishment seems fitting, it's sad that there is no
mention of disciplinary action against the prof who is crying foul for leaving
his password barely hidden, so to speak.

------
bialecki
I took a physics exam once where we had studied previous years exams and the
test was essentially questions from those tests. Needless to say, that exam
went fine, but it felt very weird. We weren't cheating, the exams were
publicly available on the college's website, but the professor clearly didn't
know that. The idea that you can reuse an exam multiple times especially in
the science is just over. It sucks, but it's the truth. The same is becoming
true of interview questions.

~~~
xilun0
"just" over? and why especially in science?

I'm remember as soon as in middle/junior high school ("collège" in France, I
believe equivalent to US grades 6 to 9), which i started in 1993, and
continuing throughout high school and then superior studies (maybe excluding
"classes préparatoires", which are notoriously very hard), it was well-known
that _some_ teachers used to recycle their exams from previous years. And we
had no need to use information tech to find somebody able to provide us both
questions and answers. It did not happened a lot, but we definitely did so a
few times, transmitting the informations in very small group of very close
students. We occasionally heard about other small groups having had access to
the exam prior to taking it (because it was recycled, not by stealing it)
while we were not aware of it available too. I'm pretty sure it _always_
happens when a teacher recycle its own exams or only construct it using open
or quasi-open content always from the same source. It was felt by pretty much
every student as "fair game", taking advantage of teacher laziness. In
retrospect it was clearly a form of cheating, but a kind of light cheating not
as hard as e.g. getting the answers in the exam room, and also I would not put
all the blame on the students (well it's hard to blame himself, so I'm biased
on this)... Also it would have astonished me to see an exam canceled because
of that, because the teacher would clearly be shown as lazy and sharing a huge
part of responsibility.

------
anigbrowl
If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching the video of where he explains how
he spotted something was amiss via statistical analysis:
<http://vimeo.com/16637201>

That's all in the first 4 minutes BTW; the rest of it is about the
arrangements for re-administration of the test, chastisement of the cheating
students, explanation of school ethics policy and so on. I found this equally
interesting but for social rather than technical reasons.

~~~
achompas
His explanation of bimodal distributions isn't satisfactory. Bimodal
distributions can occur naturally in nature--they don't require external
force.

With that being said, DAMN that graph skews right. Almost everyone got a B or
above.

------
phamilton
I wonder how hard it was to get access to the first copy.

I know I've done similar things. Whenever I have a midterm in a class that I
know is taught at other universities, I try to track down past exams to go
through. They are really helpful to work through similar problems to those
being presented on the test.

Also, whenever the class is widespread enough to have solutions to homework
and labs posted online, our Professor generally tells us directly on day one,
and that we should avoid them.

~~~
gte910h
If they're widely available, he shouldn't be reusing them.

------
JWLong
I've had far too many high-school teachers allow students to study copies of
tests. The teachers are so worried about grades that they're willing to
sacrifice integrity (?) to inflate them. As I understand it, this is something
of a nationwide issue.

When these students get to college, why should we expect them to expect any
differently?

This argumentation is assuming that the students really did cheat, but I
suspect that there is not yet enough conclusive evidence available to make
that call.

------
mcarrano
As a student in college, this story is alarming to me.

At my University, it is common for... 1\. Departments to post up old exams for
students to practice. 2\. Professors recommend that you track down older
students for their old tests. 3\. Students often create practice exams and
hand them out to their peers.

I do not believe that all 200 students are guilty of cheating but perhaps the
initial few who had their hands on the practice exam knew exactly what they
were getting into.

------
ghshephard
One point that nobody has brought up yet:

The instructor represented the tests as having been created by himself (a
fallacy, as it turned out). If that was the case, then when students saw the
exact same questions ahead of time, wouldn't the implication be that the test
had been stolen? If that was the case, then wouldn't the students have had a
moral imperative to report this fact when they saw the same test during test
day?

~~~
gort
_a fallacy, as it turned out_

A falsehood. A fallacy is an argument where the conclusion does not follow
from the assumptions.

------
jasonkester
I can see the motivation behind this sort of "grades over learning" behavior
in business school, since it's the sort of place where the Degree is all that
matters.

For other disciplines though, where you're actually there to learn something,
I just could never understand why you would do that. Why would you pay money
to take classes, and then cheat on tests to avoid having to learn the
material. Couldn't you achieve the same result by simply doing nothing?

I graduated with an Engineering degree, and a terrible grade point average. I
could still, however, 15 years on, sit the final exam in any of my core
classes and pass it. Somehow I doubt that the students copying each other's
homework assignments as a "time-management strategy" will be able to do the
same thing.

------
mapphusel
>trying to figure out what was the last 20 years for

Basically, don't get involved with exams either as an instructor or a student.

Why? Exams hurt all that encounter them (including teachers, markers and even
_successful_ students).

And they're pointless by their own terms because knowledge can't be measured.

~~~
chc
Really? Because I found that my inability to do matrix math on my second Math
100 exam corresponded pretty well with my lack of understanding about how
matrix math worked.

~~~
mapphusel
Good point, but there is context missing.

Are you interested in matrix math, or were you merely trying to pass an exam?

Alternatively, if you are interested in matrix math, did the fact that you had
to pass an exam make it harder to learn?

~~~
burgerbrain
Reading comprehension fail.

Probably related to why you do so poorly on tests.

------
CoryMathews
How can the school punish students for using the prior test to study?

------
throwaway111222
These kids were business majors. I would fail them not on the principle of
cheating, but because they cheated and got caught.

First rule of cheating: never pass the exam with 100%

~~~
xilun0
Given that it was allegedly detected at first by the bimodal distribution of
the results (and BTW I've been in some highly competitive environments were
the results were bimodal too more often than not, or even more strange,
without any cheating possible), and even imagining nobody anonymously posted
the disputed study source, it would have been hard to get better results
without that detected (whether "that" or not is cheating not even being the
question). People could have tried to only slightly increase their results by
injecting lot of voluntary faults in known answers, but knowing the right
amount would be very difficult...

------
pero
Why is there even discussion about this? The prof is the cheater.

