Slashdot Mirror
200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant
Over 200 University of Central Florida students admitted to cheating on a midterm exam after their professor figured out at least a third of his class had cheated. In a lecture posted on YouTube, Professor Richard Quinn told the students that he had done a statistical analysis of the grades and was using other methods to identify the cheats, but instead of turning the list over to the university authorities he offered the following deal: "I don't want to have to explain to your parents why you didn't graduate, so I went to the Dean and I made a deal. The deal is you can either wait it out and hope that we don't identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor and you can complete the rest of the course and the grade you get in the course is the grade you earned in the course."
Only a sucker would come forward.
If he could identify you he would. He and the dean know that if they tried failing people based on "statistical evidence" the university would get its pants sued off.
Tell him to get back to working 20 hours a week for $130,000.
This just shows me how sad of a state our society is in, when we have to pander to cheats and liars simply because there are so many. For the record, if I were that professor I would've had all their butts thrown out of school. It would've been a good example to the rest.
I have no problem believing that so many students would cheat, if they had half a chance to do so.
I don't quite get (nor does TFA adequately explain) how such a large number had that chance to cheat, however - And on a midterm exam, at that? What, did he hand them out and leave the room?
I imagine he had suspicions that many students had cheated, but did he actually have the means to generate the proof? Maybe this was all an impressive bluff. He couldn't pin it on everyone he wanted to, but by making it look like he could, he forced everyone into a difficult position. They could either fold and potentailly pass the class, or hope he was talking out his ass. After all, what you know doesn't neccessarily matter. Instead, what everyone thinks you know matters.
The burden of proof in the case of faculty vs students is also much much lower..(if its against the student) And the stakes are the students degree, which is a pretty big thing it can be seen as paying a false speeding fine to avoid getting your DL cancelled
As a student, I would be pretty pissed off if I had actually studied for that test and had my work thrown out because other people cheated.
That's at least partly the point. People don't help cheats if could cost them.
Wait...
You're seriously trying to blame the professor for cheating? Seems to me that if it's "massive amount of materials," that's all the more motivation for you to actually learn the material.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This is all rationalizing BS. It really depends on what you're really in college for. If you're in college to learn and better yourself, then cheating is idiotic because you're only screwing yourself over. If your lecturers are boring, then study the material on your own. Sure it's extra work, but it's worth it if you really care about your own education. I work a full time job and carry a full class load and I still find plenty of time to study enough on my own to do well in my classes, even the ones with boring lecturers. The secret is not to go out and get loaded every night like most college students do.
If, on the other hand, you're like these other morons who are apparently in college to drink, then studying is just a waste of your time. Cheat your ass off and get the degree your parents paid for without learning anything and devalue it for the rest of us who actually care about getting an education.
So honest people have to do extra work, and cheaters get a second chance. What a great life lesson this school is teaching.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If the schools realized that it's 2010, not 1810, and if teachers actually were a bit more passionated about learning than a corpse i'm certain cheating would drop a fair bit.
I don't normally criticise people for language and grammar, since it is beside the point, but I think since you are criticising university teaching quality and seem to imply that you are a student on one, it is fair in this case. So, don't you mean to say something like "If teachers were a bit more passionate (note the form of the word) about teaching (teacher may learn, but they are supposed to teach)"? It would lend more credibility to your arguments if you didn't commit such sloppy errors.
Apart from that - this is a university you are talking about. You are supposed to be an adult, who takes responsibility for what you learn, at least to the extent that you read and try to understand the day's subject before the lecture, so you can pick up the presumably few points you didn't quite understand. Lectures are only meant to be a minor part of your effort, so I think your rant is misplaced.
It is a business course, and that's pretty much the central lesson of modern business.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
If you actually learned the material it shouldn't matter, you should still be able to pass the retake several weeks later. If on the other hand you were like so many students who crammed the information into their brain just long enough to disgorge it on the exam then I have little sympathy if you have to recram or get a significantly lower grade.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
For what exactly? I'm not aware of any contract between a student and the university guaranteeing that they will only be tested on material once or that every test taken will count towards your final grade. I mean you can sue for anything, but your chances of winning such a suite seem remote at best to me.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Prof too lazy to write his own tests (and don't give me any shit about how this is how they all do it; the prof is responsible for the test content, including the security of it, period)? Check.
Prof too morally lazy and incompetent to stand up to cheaters by identifying them and getting them kicked out? Check
Prof too stupid to realize that relying on the security of a "test bank" (or anything like it) is foolhardy beyond belief? Check.
Prof too ethically incompetent to realize that punishing the ones who did right along with the guilty is an act more despicable than the original cheating? Check.
Prof too full of himself to realize that his emotional reaction is entirely innapropriate? Check.
Prof too incomeptent to realize that changing the rules midstream is an unforgivable breaking of a contract, something no one in a business school should countenance when there are already established procedures for dealing with cheaters? Check.
I'm not even going to try to list all the WTF moments in that vid. If somebody wants to go to the trouble, there are at least a half-dozen quotes that are absolute howlers.
What's really going on here? Off the top of my head, I can come up with two theories. Maybe the prof was pressured not to turn them all over for discipline because the uni higher-ups didn't want all the hassles and potential litigation. Or maybe he's bluffing and doesn't really have a perfect idea of who did and didn't cheat.
Either way, if I was in his class, didn't cheat, and was forced to come back to do the re-test, the physical violence I'd direct toward this idiot would track with whatever I had to give up. If he made me miss the birth of my son or the funeral of my mother, I'd beat the bastard to death. If he made me miss a date with some chick I didn't really care about, perhaps a stern email would suffice.
This situation is screwed up no matter how you look at it. I hope a whole bunch of students are demanding their money back from that institution. And I hope this idiot either decides to start educating, i.e. working directly with students, writing their tests, etc., or, better yet, gets the hell out of the business.
One "inB4" for the people who will be anxious to point out that I obviously went to university far too long ago to understand the modern, high-volume business of churning out sheepskins for job-seekers - You're absolutely right. My ignorance, however, still doesn't excuse the idiocy of this prof's actions.
You've missed a very significant third option: those who are there with the (sole) hope of furthering their future career choices. At the end of the day it's perfectly possible that the A grade on their record is worth more to them than the material they may have learned. It may not be 'right' but it's perfectly logical. To that end, they may have a good grasp of the material (or they may not, it's true) but consider cheating a worthwhile risk since the final grade is really what matters to them. Sure, they should probably be at trade schools if that's their attitude, but the system doesn't work properly and a degree will serve them much better. I'm not saying they can get away without learning anything, and I doubt most of them would want to, just that the exceptional grades could help their CV percolate to the top of the heap, giving them a better chance to display the useful knowledge and skills that they did pick up.
Sure, you might get to a higher position faster if you spend those four years gaining experience rather than a degree, but you have less choice, and if you want/need to move career paths significantly in the future you're starting again from zero, whereas a widely applicable degree will gain you points in many industries.
What surprises me is how emotional and "utterly disgusted" the professor was. Why?
Because 200(+) students lied to him and thought he was stupid enough never to notice. Back when I was a TA, after I graded a test, I had a student erase his incorrect answer, put in the correct answer, and tell me I made a mistake. I was livid. Still gets me angry thinking about it. It's a good thing I made a mention of _why_ his answer was wrong, and had photocopies.
....and if teachers actually were a bit more passionated about learning than a corpse i'm certain cheating would drop a fair bit.
It's so hard to find instructors that are passionated these days. In fact, I would consider it a epidemicalamity.
Students cheat to appear more proficient than they are. The authority of the system says, "You were very bad, but we'll give you another chance if you pretend to be contrite." Students pounce on it.
Following this, the university was flooded with calls from law firms, congressional offices, and investment banks, all seeking contact information and resumes. "These kids have shown real initiative in both presenting a patina of proficiency, and recognizing a wristslap. In today's image-driven business and political environment, it is absolutely critical that we nurture these young charlatans to help them reach their full potential."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Since a syllabus is not signed by either party and doesn't not have consideration for either party I fail to see how it is a binding contract.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Punishing the innocent to get at the guilty is an act far more despicable than the original cheating. The prof is an idiot and the school that allows him to get away with this crap is not worth attending.
You photocopied all of the tests you graded?
Well, what do you think? Obviously it wasn’t the first time someone had thought of changing their answer.
Plus all you really need to do is scan them all to PDF. It wastes no paper, it’s easier to organize, and you can delete them eventually.
However, to GP: Why get angry? Just get even. Take the modified paper, write a big fat ZERO at the top of the changed paper with a very short description of why, staple it to the original, file copies as always, and then send it in triplicate: one to the student, one to the prof, and one to the dean. See how the student likes that grade.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I had an A, B and C exam spaced out so that you never sat next to or in front of your own test. And yes, I would say that almost everyone cheated. The exceptions would be the few who got quite high grades. I should add that I failed the person in the middle who fed the answers to those around them (quite easy to see who that was based on results and seat numbering).
The prof felt that we were basically setting up entrapment and had a moral issue with it on the first test. From then on we told them we were doing this. To help combat potential cheating I added a D exam. Eventually the grades leveled out to a normal distribution.
After looking at this video, I have to add, this guy is a tool. He is EVERYTHING that's wrong with education today. He's a fat lazy ass who feels he's entitled because of his position. Yet he cheats the very students at whom he's pissed. If he felt like he was delivering a good product in his education career he'd NEVER used canned tests. He'd also have fresh material that needed to have a new test created each and every time. Instead uses canned lectures and he's got a bank of assistants to do his bidding while he packs on the pounds and years to get to retirement. Teaching is an easy job for this type of person because they do it once and repeat until they retire. Using the moral high ground is just a way of deflecting the fact that he couldn't even write a good test.
If I'm one of the students who lost a letter grade due to the retake, it doesn't particularly make me feel any better that someone else may have done better because of the retake, let alone the fact that the retake was to allow people who cheated to not get kicked out of school as they should have been (at least according to my old school's policies).
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
No, the central lesson of modern business is to cheat but don't let people catch you.
There was something unsettling about watching this guy lecture the students about the cheating and I could not figure out what it was but you just nailed it for me. Thank you.
I like microcars
I know of no decent university in which a syllabus is actually required for each class, let alone given any binding status. When one is given, it's always been a guideline. It's ridiculous to me to hold a course to the syllabus since there is variability between groups of students, and any instructor (even the best, and especially the best) is optimizing their class as they go along.
Maybe a diploma mill works this way, but it's a ghastly idea to me that to avoid a lawsuit I would have to stick to a pre-established schedule when the students obviously need, say, more time on topic X; or have mastered and are bored with topic Y.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I agree that the prof/school was remiss in letting things get this bad. Such a culture surely does not appear overnight. But, I think it's the only thing he could have done at this point to have restored any value to the work that the diligent students did. After all, those who studied for the original test have a leg up over those that did not, and without a retest all of their hard work is overshadowed by the scandal.
Nullius in verba
I think the answer is he made it too easy. From what I can gather, he was using canned exams that came with the textbook. Students obviously got wind of this and used their internet savvy to find a copy on line; there's a wealth of teacher and solution manuals out there.
He also says that the students can take the make up exam from 7:00 am on monday to 12:00am on wednesday. This seems odd to me, and it's either that the exams are on line or at a computer cluster of some sort. Either way it seems possible that students could be taking it before their friends and sharing their answers. Typically in this situation the teacher is using software provided by the textbook which randomizes questions, but there are only so many questions to ask a class of a couple hundred students.
The obvious solution is to design a test to disincentivize cheating. Tell them they can bring a piece of paper with definitions, terms, equations.... anything they can fit on the page. Then design the test to test a range of knowledge. Make 1/3 easy, 1/3 difficult, and 1/3 very challenging. The very challenging questions should really probe the student's knowledge of the material; pose it in a new way, ask them to extend a concept, and other questions you just can't look up or even anticipate. This way, if the student can answer the easy and medium problems, and some of the hard problems, he'll end up with a C, which is pretty much the objective.
The problem is, this is difficult and time consuming, something most Professors won't entertain. Therefore they end up recycling exams, or worse, outsourcing them, and end up with situations of mass cheating.
Cheating is ubiquitous in our education system. I remember in high school, all of the "honors" students would sit around at lunch swapping homework and copying answers. Many of them cheated on tests as well. I don't think any of those "good kids" who took a bunch of AP tests and had a >3.6 GPA didn't constantly cheat.
In their defense, their workloads were insane. I didn't take a lot of honors classes and only took a couple AP courses, and I still had 5 hours of homework a night. Every teacher acted as though they were the only ones giving homework. Meanwhile the homework was the most inane busy-work. History classes were all about memorizing names and places and dates, but you rarely got much insight into the complex causal links and cultural backgrounds underlying the events. Math courses were usually just plugging numbers into formulas that you were expected to have memorized. English courses spent a lot of time testing whether you remembered random facts and details about the book, just to prove whether you read it.
Meanwhile, kids were constantly being told that "doing well" in school consisted of doing what you were told and getting good grades. The purpose of all of this was explicitly to get into a good college. No one was focused on actual learning. No one expected classes to be interesting or worthwhile on their own right. This is why our school system is absolutely insane.
Punishing the innocent to get at the guilty is an act far more despicable than the original cheating. The prof is an idiot and the school that allows him to get away with this crap is not worth attending.
I was once at a similar situation (college physics II). Some students cheated, and others (us) didn't. But the professor caught on and decided - for a variety of reasons - to have everyone retake the test. The primary reason for such a course of action is that it becomes almost impossible to determine who cheated and who did not (specially if those who did not did well comparably to those who did cheat.)
Those of us who did not cheat never contemplated calling the professor an idiot or thinking it was a horrendous, despicable act. We were pissed at the cheaters, but not at the professor. Right or wrong wrt the decision, it's ultimately caused by the cheaters.
Making us re-take the test was an injustice, albeit more of an annoyance, responsibility of which falls squarely on the cheaters. As for the professor, that's his right to order a re-test. Really, it is.
Perhaps he was being modded "Troll" for trying to turn a conversation about cheating on tests into a forum for Tea Party propaganda....
So basically, cheating isn't about the educator or the education system; it is a cultural moral deficiency. Perhaps parents should take more care in teaching their children to have a conscience instead of complaining about the way a teacher designs or repeats tests. Let's look a the root of the problem, not the facilitator.
After looking at this video, I have to add, this guy is a tool. He is EVERYTHING that's wrong with education today. He's a fat lazy ass who feels he's entitled because of his position. Yet he cheats the very students at whom he's pissed. If he felt like he was delivering a good product in his education career he'd NEVER used canned tests. He'd also have fresh material that needed to have a new test created each and every time. Instead uses canned lectures and he's got a bank of assistants to do his bidding while he packs on the pounds and years to get to retirement. Teaching is an easy job for this type of person because they do it once and repeat until they retire. Using the moral high ground is just a way of deflecting the fact that he couldn't even write a good test.
You are aware that he's an instructor, and therefore not tenured, right? And that all he does is teach classes like this one? And that his salary is probably inbetween that of a janitor and a nurse on a good year? Also, that he WRITES management textbooks that are in use in many classes other than his? And probably the test question answer banks as well?
Take a look at what they pay "instructors" at UCF. Consider that this man has been teaching for 34 years. http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/index.php?action=result&search=central+florida&state=Florida&year=2010&category=&withRanks=1 You could probably earn more teaching grade-school, not to mention you'd have teacher-tenure and a nice pension plan.
So I'm not sure where your 'tude comes from. Teaching on a contract is a miserable way to live, with 0 prospects for career advancement and constant uncertainty if you'll still have an income next semester even if you've got decades of experience.
There certainly are lazy professors out there that don't give a hoot about education, nor is the system set up to encourage them to change that in anyway, but this is one of the guys that has to pick up the broken pieces of the system. And when you consider that there are many schools that are now charging more for tuition per student per year than the non-tenured instructors actually make doing the instructing (in classes with triple-digit enrollments), you'll see they are being just as screwed by the system as the students are.
You've just made a 'no true Scotsman' argument without actually citing anything to back it up. Perhaps you're in the education industry and you 'know of' the inner workings of multiple universities? But if so, you didn't say as much.
"The midterm grades were all tossed out for everyone."
"Ok, children. Time to clean up your blocks and you will each get a piece of candy."
"Very good, but it seems that some of you cheated and simply pushed your blocks into the piles of those children around you and didn't actually put them away. Now, normally, we take such children and grind them up in the kitchen and make sausages from them, but this time we will let those that cheated admit it and we won't grind them up."
"Umm, teacher? I wasn't one of those that cheated. Can I have my candy, please?"
"Of course not. You're probably just trying to avoid being ground up into sausage like the rest of these little vermin."
It is amazing the complete crap that some people try to foist off on our children. Anyone caught cheating should have been treated according to the standard rules set forth by the school and those that did NOT cheat should have been graded accordingly. This is nothing more then coddling students that cheated so that they wouldn't be booted from the school...and take their tuition with them.
These kids are being shown the 'too big to fail' theory in action. It is a business education after all. If they weren't all cheats, idiots, tossers, and general pricks they wouldn't fit into their chosen career path very well at all. If the University was serious about keeping up the standards of behaviour in the US business world then he would kick out the 2/3 that are demonstrably unsuited for their chosen career path.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.