
Dean of Undergrad Ed Visits CS50, Tells Students Not to Cheat - sharjeelsayed
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/7/jay-harris-cs50/
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phamilton
Our CS department had harsh penalties for copying code. You would be banned
from CS classes for 1 year. It bred a culture of zero collaboration. Our
Computer Engineering department was pro collaboration and rarely did anyone
get accused of cheating. If it looked like someone else's solution, then you
probably worked together on it. I even saw one student get caught copying and
the professor asked the student if he understood the code. If so, then who
cares. That student did not understand the code, so the professor told him to
start over and gave him a deadline extension.

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guskel
In an intro CS class, a TA once accused me of cheating because my code was
identical or almost identical to someone else's. The assignment was to write a
simple Java class with only getters and setters, only a few private variables.
The TA assumed me of copying the other student's code, not her copying me. How
do you even prove your innocence if people are going to assume you cheated for
even dumb things like that?

I can definitely see how if the assignment is small and students are using the
same coding style and naming conventions it can look as if students are
cheating.

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ben_jones
High schools and indeed the whole college admissions process teach students to
cheat a little bit. Whether it's copying a homework assignment before class,
working with a tutor to write an admissions essay, taking aderal before the
SAT, it is all rewarded with better scholarships at better schools. Then when
they get to college we expect them to revert back? Haha.

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thomastjeffery
How about you fix your UX problem instead of whining at your users for "doing
it wrong"?

"Cheating" is the same sort of absurd metric to academia as speeding is to
police. It's not a particularly helpful metric, but it's quantifiable, and
therefore gets the focus.

Academia has been driving farther and farther from real _learning and
creating_ , and closer to _memorization and testing_. This is why computer
science courses focus on physics and math, rather than designing software and
writing code.

The entry level to creating something meaningful is much higher in abstract
science than in practical application, so courses for abstract concepts can
lazily slide along with rote learning, and testing -grading tests seems to
scale well- rather than have students create something unique and meaningful.
The more unique homework is, the harder it is to compare.

Cheating is simply the byproduct of an optimised-first design. It is a metric
that clearly shows where academia has _optimized out_ the value.

