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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."
First test (that I'd taken 2 yrs prior) I realized over half of the 180 students cheated. I told him and he could not believe it was possible. So instead of proving it I devised a new test. 3 identical looking exams with 3 entirely different answer keys. Most of the students were using a key person to cheat from. About 4 people were getting the (live) answers from 1 person. With the new test I did nothing to stop the cheating. The questions were all entirely fresh as well. Nothing was brought into the exam room. The class had a normal pas/fail slope on the first exam. On the second 64% failed with less than 25% correct. 20% more got less than 70% correct. So 16% of the class comfortably passed the exam. The professor was outraged. I just thought it was funny. When many of them protested I simply showed them the results to prove who they cheated off and explained they were more than encouraged to go to the administration with the results.
I cheated once in undergrad.
It was on a humanities class I took in my final semester. I didn't care about the knowledge, I only needed credit for completing the class. I miscalculated the minimum amount of work I needed to do to prepare for a test, and was really freaked out I would fail the class I be forced to enroll in another semester just to complete a humanities requirement. So I tucked my textbook under my shirt and took a bathroom break.
I am a little ashamed. Mostly embarrassed that I miscalculated so poorly. Given the moral and ethical greyness that I've come to expect in the adult world though, I am not sure that I can say that I wouldn't do it again in the same situation. I can't even recall what class this was for, so I don't feel that I robbed myself of any learning. In fact I think it taught me a greater lesson about being prepared, and gives me a great story to pontificate on when I lecture my kids about academic honesty.
Usually a course has what my school called a ROASS document: responsibilities of academic students and staff. This document outlines how many assignments there will be, roughly when they will be assigned and due, number of examinations, the relative weighting of each of these, penalties for cheating, etc.
This document helps the students plan their term because often they are taking 4-5 heavy workload courses. If all of your courses are backloaded with big projects or exams, you may want to replan your semester. The document also protects students from lazy profs who fall behind and would then dump 3 assignments on the students by surprise at crunch time at the end of term, or from inventing course projects at the last minute, etc. Also from shifting weight to the final exam with short notice because their students did too well on assignments, or because they bombed the assignments, etc.
If a student lives up to his/her responsibilities as outlined in the document, but the professor does not, the student has grounds to file a complaint. Extreme cases are needed for anything to come of it, but it definitely happens. More often you would talk to the dept head and he might have a chat with a rogue professor who is abusing their students.
Judging from what the professor said in the video its clear that this is NOT a resource available to students unless they gain access illicitly. He specifically mentions that the question bank proprietors are looking at the problem from a legal perspective. It isn't like the students just went to the site and hit print. Much more like is someone gained access by breaking in or (probably more likely) someone with legal access decided to make a quick buck and sold a copy of the database to a student and it went from there.
Frankly, the whole question bank thing just makes any argument that's remotely pro-cheating moot to me. So you're willing to memorize hundreds of questions & answers that may not be on the exam, but you're not willing to learn the material?
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
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.
Hah, you say that like it's easy! I highly doubt you've ever been in that position yourself -- it's easy to say "all they have to do is..." when you have no first-hand idea what that means. Let me share a bit of my experience with you.
As a CS grad student, I paid for my education working as a Teaching Assistant. After my first two semesters, the TA coordinator assigned me to be the primary instructor for a night section of CS101: Introduction to Computing. I had control over what material to teach, I made the tests, I created the assignments, etc. I thought this would be great, as it would give me the opportunity to design some creating, engaging, interesting assignments and even participatory activities to take place during lecture. (i.e. I was very passionate about my students' learning.) I went into the first class very excited -- and it didn't take me long to see I was totally failing to excite my students even slightly. Still, I kept at it, hoping that it just wasn't what they were expecting, and that it might take a bit to sink in. Toward the end of the class, a student made a comment that made me realize what was going on. This class was required for all business majors; it had the potential to be a very useful class for many of them (it covered how to use both Excel and Access, among other things), but they didn't care how useful it could be. They also had no interest in being interested in the class. It was just a class they had to take, and they were hoping ideally for an easy A, or if not that then at least for the course not to bring down their GPA too much if they only exerted the minimal energy required to coast through the semester and cram for the exams. Let me repeat that, in case that didn't sink it -- they had no desire for the class to be interesting. They were not there to have fun, or even really to learn. They were there to get a grade because it was required for their major, and they wanted to do that by expending the least amount of time and energy that would yield a reasonable grade. So tell me: how many semesters in a row could you stay passionate about what you are teaching under those circumstances?
I lost a lot of my passion and motivation for teaching the course that day. It was very disheartening to discover that 95% of my students didn't care if I spent an extra 6 hours a week to make the course interesting -- why should I spend that extra time and effort myself if it wouldn't make any difference for more than maybe 2 or 3 of my students? In the end, I still made an effort to keep things interesting, and I'd like to think my section was more interesting than the day sections which had 300+ student lectures, but I didn't put nearly as much of myself into it as I could have.
Interesting story and you're on the path to the reason I cheated my way through about 1/2 of college: bloated requirements to graduate. Out of the 120 credits I needed to complete, I'd say about 40 had any application whatsoever to my actual major or taught any sort of lesson I could use elsewhere in life. The rest were courses tacked on to bloat out the coursework and find a way to justify the extra wasted time before I could be given that piece of paper I still have sitting in the envelope it was mailed to me in and I could finally move onto working. Just as a small sampling of what I am talking about....
I had to go through Calc 1, 2, 3, and 4. All were a bit borderline useless, but all past calc 2 were completely useless and the professors actually only really cared to talk to/take questions from/address students who they knew were math majors and were going to take even higher level classes (ya know, the ones they actually cared about).
I had one WONDERFUL business course (and side-note, the tests in that course were all completely open-book and we could even take the tests home with us if we needed, since the class had under 10 students, attendance was mandatory, and the tests were 100% essays, the professor would know right away if someone was trying to cheat, compared to how the student did in class). The rest were all an utter waste of time asking me to regurgitate definitions onto a piece of paper.
I went to college for IT. I was told I had to take 2 physics classes (each with a lab included as well). Why? Because they felt like they had to throw some kind of science class in there and couldn't come up with a better solution.
I think you get the idea. So what was the result? I cruised through college well enough, and instead of wasting my time learning crap I would NEVER use again in my life, I could spend that time learning more about what I actually wanted to do in life outside of class, was able to put more extra-curricular activities on my resume coming out of school, and compared to others in my major who did play by the rules, am generally doing better professionally than them.
If, instead of bloating out a curriculum with garbage, more schools took the approach of actually adding in more appropriate classes and maybe even work to help students get some light real-world experience while there, there would be less students just there to coast through a class and more really interested in learning what they're being taught.
Conclusion: at worst, students just want to get a piece of paper to get them a job and get the hell out. At best, they want to learn about a fairly specific topic. None want to waste their time on things they will never apply in life, personally or professionally.