61.9% of Undergraduates Cybercheat

RichDiesal writes "A recent study of 1222 undergraduates found that 61.9% of them 'cybercheat,' which involves using the Internet illicitly to get higher grades. Some of the quotes from students are a bit troubling. As one 19-year-old engineering student put it, 'As more and more people are using the Internet illegally (i.e. limewire etc.), I feel that the chances of being caught or the consequences of my actions are almost insignificant. So I feel no pressure in doing what ever everybody else is doing/using the Internet for.'"

Comments

Cybercheat?

[smittyoneeach]

Cybercheat?
Your brain is beat.
You're only as smart
As whiskers neat.
Burma Shave

Re:Cybercheat?

[MoonBuggy]

What makes the article particularly irritating is that their own definition for 'cybercheat' doesn't match the context in which they're using it:

Cybercheating can be defined as cheating enabled by the internet – so cybercheating can occur in any course.

61.9% (757 students) admitted to engaging in online plagiarism. 59% copied a few sentences, 30% copied a few paragraphs, 12% copies a few pages, 4% copied entire documents, and 3% purchased essays. 22.3% admitted to engaging in such behaviors regularly.

It's plain old plagiarism, hardly 'enabled' by the internet and certainly not worthy of it's own new word.

The actual figures, while not brilliant, are far less worrying than they seem to be trying to lead us to believe, and the word 'cybercheating' is just another one of those ploys to gain extra coverage by still implying that the internet is something new and scary, rather than a day-to-day avenue by which old behaviours, from simple conversation to bullying to cheating are carried out.

Re:Cybercheat?

[MaXintosh]

+1. Do we need a new word for each technology? When people invented the Xerox machine, did people start talking about "Photo-cheating?"

In any event, most of the 'cheating' measures are only useful in the more vacuous subjects. In most most of the hard topics, it's easy enough to see if student know material in short form ("Finish in the following: Glucose 6-phosephate is rearranged into Fructose 6-phosphate by _____") and in long form, slightly trickier, but you can generally filter the bulk of cheats by simply asking students some intelligent questions about their papers verbally. It's just that many people have got horribly lazy, or have been forced to lecture unreasonably large classrooms, or both.

Re:Cybercheat?

[alexborges]

People that cheat, don't learn. In the future of all those students, it will all be sorted out: people that cheated constantly only to get a degree, will have lost time and money to get an education that they rejected when they cheated themselves out of actually baking the certificate with actual skills (beyond stealing). So, long term competition, I think, will favor the intelligent. Non cheaters with a degree will go further and get another one, will go to a company and actually make it money instead of looking like they make them money....

Re:Cybercheat?

[MoonBuggy]

Bad form to reply to myself, but this seemed worth adding:

The study also examined “traditional” plagiarism and found similarly high levels – again, 61.9% of the sample reported some type of plagiarism, though this time from books and articles. I am not wholly convinced that the researchers adequately differentiated “online articles” and “offline articles” (students may consider these to be the same thing), but there is not enough detail reported on their method to be sure either way.

Fits pretty well with what I said, IMO. Firstly that the level of plagiarism is about the same either way - it's not some scary new phenomenon that's sucking in our students from those devil-boxes on their desks - and secondly that there's so little actual difference between an online article and a printed one that people (rightly, in my opinion) don't even consider them as different things. An utter non-story, but one of the type we'll keep getting for a while yet, by the look of things.

Re:Cybercheat?

[MoonBuggy]

In any event, most of the 'cheating' measures are only useful in the more vacuous subjects.

Although I find the article to be fairly poor, the one thing that did surprise me was the subjects arranged by cheating level. My assumption would have been the same as yours, but apparently no so:

1. Engineering and technology (72%)
2. Computer sciences and mathematical sciences (71%)
3. Social studies (64%)
4. Business and administrative studies (63%)
5. Law (62%)
6. Creative arts and design (61%)
7. Architecture, Building and Planning (60%)
8. Medicine (58%)
9. Natural sciences (57%)
10. Humanities (46%)

Although it does seem that 'traditional' subjects are firmly at the bottom of the list. More plagiarism from those doing a degree to get a job, and less from those doing a degree to learn, perhaps?

Re:Cybercheat?

[Tr3vin]

I had to cybergoogle 'velocitycheat' to mindunderstand what you were cybertalking about.

Re:Cybercheat?

[MoonBuggy]

I've studied physics in UK and US universities, and while both had their share of good and bad professors, one thing I noticed in the US that never happened in the UK (admittedly extrapolating from two universities to two entire countries, but anyway...) was that questions from the textbook would be set as graded work, rather than the professor making up their own unique problems (as you experienced, and as they always did at the UK university). I'm guessing that swapping PDFs of textbook answers is what they're talking about in engineering.

Re:Cybercheat?

[deapbluesea]

I'm replying to the parent because all of the children who replied to this have said basically the same thing and it needs to be addressed.

It appears that the slashdot crowd has no need for a liberal arts (in the classical sense) education. They only want job training instead. This is the problem with our current concept of college. Instead of going to get a well-rounded education that makes us better thinkers, more able to understand and inquire about the world around us, and generally improve our ability to be inquisitive successfully, college in America (and some other countries) is viewed as a way of gaining specialized job skills.

The school I attended had a very broad curriculum. I majored in Computer Science, minored in Math, but also took a year of Chemistry, Physics, History, English Lit, EE, Foreign Language, Biology and a semester of Aero, Astro, Civil Engineering, and Psychology (not an exhaustive list, just the ones I remember off the top of my head). I haven't used the majority of those subjects in my current job. In fact, I haven't even committed any Computer Science for most of my career. Does that mean my entire education was a waste? I certainly don't think so. I've been in situations where my Civil Engineering class actually proved useful to me. My wife loves to talk with me about history, and I draw heavily from my world history classes in those discussions. When studying genetic algorithms, my biology class came in rather handy, and I was grateful for that foreign language class when vacationing in Germany.

In short, my college education has enriched my life, made me a better person, and provided a broad foundation from which to launch new inquiries when I'm feeling curious. I humbly suggest that those who view college as only vocational training take a look at their local community college. There are many degrees offered there that don't require a liberal arts education, don't put you in a position that you feel you have to sacrifice your honor just to get a grade in a class you do not care about, and cost dramatically less than a college where you basically paid for the privilege of cheating your way through the classes you didn't find "useful" to your career choice.

Re:Cybercheat?

[MachDelta]

One of my favorite profs evar is my compsci professor. All of his exams, every single one, is open book. Bring your notes, bring your laptop, search google, he doesn't care. Just no talking to other people (the school doesn't like that). His reasoning? It represents the real world. He always says that your employer isn't going to slap you on the wrist for looking something up if you don't know it off hand. But your employer WILL slap you upside the head if you cannot implement it. So, almost all of his tests revolve around understanding concepts and not regurgitating definitions. He asks questions like "what does this function do?" or "what's wrong with this program?" In later courses our tests are more about programming on the fly (which is fucking tough), so the more you can "cheat" and swipe entire functions from class examples or labs or whatever, the better you'll do - because inevitably the test comes down to understanding how all the puzzle pieces fit together and why the fucking thing is compiling, running, and then exploding in your face. Fortunately he gives lots of part marks. Last midterm I got 84% for a program that didn't even run (thanks to a null index I forgot to initialize... ugh.)

The only downside to his approach (and he warns us of this) is that we should try very hard not to cheat outright and mass-plagiarize entire programs/assignments, because if he has to put us infront of the faculty judges - most of whom are english profs - they will nail your ass to the wall because they won't understand that programming is a cumulative process. So there's some give and take on both sides.
In any case, he's by far my favorite prof. Particularly for his little programming maxims... my recent fav: "Always code as if the person maintaining the program is a homicidal maniac... and they have your home address!"

Re:Cybercheat?

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem is that colleges and universities in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere) have been selling themselves as the route to a better paying job for 50 years. They gave up trying to sell a "liberal arts" education (as opposed to a Liberal Arts education) years ago. The market for vocational training is much larger than the market for a "liberal arts" education, so they have chosen to go for the vocational training market.
You are correct that there is value in a "liberal arts" education, but you are going to find it difficult to convince people to spend more than the price of a new car every year for four or more years for one. The thing about community college is that the big schools spend a lot of time telling you how much more you can earn if you go to them rather than to a more vocational training oriented school.

Re:Cybercheat?

[robthebloke]

I don't think that humanities are necessary, useful, or horizon-expanding, for that matter: hard sciences are a study of all Nature, with results that often are very widely applicable, whereas humanities are a specialized study of mostly artistic output of homo sapiens. Knowing literature won't help you in understanding what makes our world work, but knowing biochemistry may well help you understand what made your favorite author "tick" ;)

Nonsense! I'm a senior graphics programmer in the games industry mainly doing low level simd/gpu optimisations for, well, graphics! My education is as follows: I did an Art foundation, followed by an animation degree, and then a masters in animation (And in my spare time quite enjoyed playing about with C++ and OpenGL). I actually started in the games industry as an animator, and accidentally ended up as a programmer (Started somewhere new, the dev team said something was impossible. I proved them wrong with a bit of code, and was immediately re-assigned as their graphics programmer).

Very soon I found I could communicate all technical information from the programming team to the art team in a way that made sense. I could also communicate problems from the art team (which tended to be along the lines of "leg is squelching too much"), into technical jargon ("looks like you're accumulating the wrong matrix into the skin deformation"). Then we have the small matter that developing aesthetically pleasing graphical effects is significantly easier if you've got a well trained aesthetic eye. Understanding how light, shadows, and colour interact is absolutely invaluable in my field - one of those things you get taught in art classes!

FWIW, I'd say about 35% of the programmers I've worked with in the games industry (that figure is MUCH higher in filmFX), have tended to come from an art background. Almost all of the programmers I currently work with, actually attend life drawing classes in their spare time (Even if they can't draw for sh*t!), and spend countless hours honing their art skills. The reason is pretty simple: It's one of the most useful skills you can have in this field!

Cybercheat?

[Locke2005]

And about 97% of drivers "velocitycheat", or drive faster than the posted speed limit. See, I can make up new words too!

Cheating vs. Illegal Downloads?

[hal2814]

What does using the Internet illegally have to do with cheating? There's a huge difference between downloading the newest Ke$ha song and plagiarizing a source online for your paper (where the 61.9% figure comes from).

Sounds Like A Plan

[WrongSizeGlass]

As more and more people are using the Internet illegally (i.e. limewire etc.), I feel that the chances of being caught or the consequences of my actions are almost insignificant. So I feel no pressure in doing what ever everybody else is doing/using the Internet for."

Those of you who agree with this student please stand up and be counted. Post it on your Facebook pages, MySpace thingies, personal blogs, etc. I want to know who you are when I'm interviewing to hire new talent.

Fuck you neoacademic and fuck you Taco

[geminidomino]

You don't create a new fucking word by prefixing "cyber-" to it. Didn't we already go through this with that fucking "E-" shit ten years ago?

The word is "cheat," dickholes. It's not any different because it's on the internet. What is this, a fucking patent application? /rant

Re:Fuck you neoacademic and fuck you Taco

[kalirion]

Somebody forgot to take their cyberlithium this morning....

Cybercheating

[Confusedent]

61.9% have cybersex with someone other than their girl/boyfriends?

This just in from 1985

[pablo_max]

87% of students in the pre-internet age copied directly from the encyclopedia.

How is it news that kids cheat? Teachers never had it so good. Google has made it so easy to catch them it is ridiculous.

Re:This just in from 1985

[TheRaven64]

If you can copy from an encyclopedia and get a good mark, that says more about the course than about the student. It says that the assignment is testing knowledge, not understanding. These days, it's trivial to acquire knowledge, but understanding still has a lot of value.

If it wasn't 99% memorization no one would cheat

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what: we "cheat" in the real world, universities and schools. We have reference materials to give us facts and information. Our real skill comes from how we *apply* that information, and separates the merely good from the great. Schools don't teach or measure that true ability, all they "teach" is how to recall facts that we can look up in the first place.

It's pathetic. We don't actually learn anything, schools are just a training ground for trivia shows, and give unfair advantage to people that have a better memory. Has nothing to do with your actual skill.

It's time to stop this garbage and teach people real skills and test to that, instead of making schools and universities glorified "Jeopardy!" games.

Just Rewards

[Anonymous Coward]

I found some pretty damning evidence that a relative of mine was cheating in high school, using the "purchase a paper online" method to "write" instead of actually doing the work himself. While he graduated high school without incident, you wouldn't call him a great student. He went on to college, but dropped out after one year of his own volition, though most of us suspected the real issue was (though never confirmed, as he wouldn't share) his grades. The work is there to for educational means. Cheating means you learn nothing, and yes, sooner or later, you will reap just rewards.

Cheating

[Spad]

You're only cheating yourself.

Nobody cares that you have a degree if you can't even answer simple questions about your subject in an interview.

What Classes Are They Cheating In?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

TFA does a cheater percentage breakdown by field. They show fields like engineering and tech and computer sciences as having a higher percentage of cheating students in them than other fields. I want to know what types of classes the students are cheating in. TFA mainly discusses using online "paper mills" to print out reports that the student themselves didn't write. As a recent engineering graduate, I rarely had to write a report for any of my classes that actually mattered for my education (math, sciences, engineering applications, etc.) All of the work was done primarily as projects and problem solving. The only reports we did have to write were discussions of our own projects, something that couldn't be plagiarized or downloaded from online.

The classes that did involve report writing were things like Jazz history, Literary Analysis, Political Studies, etc. In other words, us techie majors had to write extensive reports on matters that we just didn't give a fuck about, for classes that added absolutely nothing to the skill set we would need for our careers. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the engineering and and compy sci. students that were cheating, were cheating in their GE and liberal arts classes because they just don't give a shit about those topics. Furthermore, they are probably overworked and under-rested when it comes to studying for the classes they do care about. So, rather than waste their valuable time writing a report about The Scarlet Letter (something that should have been done in HS), they say fuck it and download one. Honestly, I can't blame them for that. It's good time management and it shows they know how to budget their energy for things that matter.

I would rather see a breakdown by class type that involved cheating for each one of those field breakdowns. If my guess is correct, I say go forth and cheat my young engineers. Spend your time actually learning calculus, mathematical analysis, and designing something. That's what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life so you might as well learn it now.

Re:What Classes Are They Cheating In?

[ALeavitt]

Maybe you and people like you should stick to trade schools so that you can learn a career and nothing but a career, and leave higher education to the people who actually want to get an education. Cheating your way through an education that you don't want is a disservice to you and a disservice to all of the people whom you are preventing from getting an education by taking up a spot that you don't even want in a class that you don't even care about.

Re:What Classes Are They Cheating In?

[Skarecrow77]

you are working under the assumption that 4 years (or rather, 120 credits) in college is "an education". I understand your misconception, they do everything in their power to convince you of such.

Re:What Classes Are They Cheating In?

[dkleinsc]

There are a lot of problems with that view on things:
1. If you're taking classes on jazz history, literary analysis, political science, etc, I sincerely hope you're interested in it, because it's probably costing you something on the order of $200 per class session. If you wanted to attend a school with practically no requirements beyond technical work, you should be looking to transfer to a school that has that.
2. Being able to digest information about non-engineering topics matters more than you'd think in engineering. For instance, if you were designing 'green architecture' buildings, wouldn't it help you to be able to make sense of all the political, scientific, and economic discussions around green architecture?
3. Being able to write well really matters, because part of your job as an engineer is being able to describe your designs.
4. Why would your life possibly be worse off by knowing something about jazz history or literary analysis?

If they're overworked and under-rested, they need to find a way to lower their courseload or get some more rest, not find a way to cheat. Although I went through a pretty rigorous program myself, my solution to the rest problem was to get to sleep at more-or-less the same time every day, get up at more-or-less the same time every day, and work on schoolwork from about 9 to 4:30 unless I was in class. The result was that I found myself getting projects and papers in good-enough shape well before the due date, and would spend a few hours refining the results, and could devote my evenings and weekends to fun stuff and frequently ending up with it being 2:30 on a Friday afternoon and nothing to worry about until Monday morning.

Complementing people on their time management when their solution is to not get something done is a bad idea.

I don't recommend everything Joel Spolsky writes, but his college advice is pretty good.

Schools need to be reformed.

[flogger]

(Disclosure: I'm a teacher and I am pretty sure my principal isn't reading slashdot.)

Cheating...
Nearly everything that a "teacher" calls cheating is an accepted practice in the business world. Schools, in the US anyway, are mainly geared toward getting a student involved in some type of business.
Cheating - Looking off someone's work.
Business - Gaining direction.

Cheating - copying.
Business - Using available resources.

Cheating - use of internet.
Business - again, using available resources so you can build on another's success.

Cheating - adjusting grades
Business - Creative accounting.

Cheating - asking a friend for an answer
Business - Collaboration. This person is a team player.

Our educational system is 19th century organization using 19th century ideals. What should we teach today? How about some analysis: Teach not "what is the right answer?" but "Why is this answer right?"
Teach not "what is X?" but "How does X change when Y is introduced?"

Get people to think! You get the idea.

Solution

[ThoughtSpaceZero]

If education didn't carry such a ridiculous profit motive for everybody involved we wouldn't see:

a) situations where kids feel obliged to cheat or else their life is ruined
b) situations where the university passes you even though you know exactly nothing so that they can boast numbers

Education needs to be freely available and de-standardized. Exam grades can't and never prove anything. Like all restrictions of this kind (DRM, War on Drugs, Welfare), it just ends up alienating legitimate users, those who want to go to university to actually learn something and not practice 3-4 years of rote memorisation and regurgitation onto an exam sheet. When you think about it, the exam paradigm such an abhorrently ridiculous method of assessing people, especially in today's climate where I have a permanent connection to the internet, any time of day, anywhere I go.

We are, as a society, done with memorising trivia. The "expert" of yesterday is a relic, all you need is some logic skills and wikipedia and you can be an "expert" in something almost immediately.

I would recommend any who haven't seen to watch this video by RSA Animate on Ken Livingstone's seminar on education paradigms.

If the prof knows the student, you can't cheat

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The University I attended had a system with "preceptors." A course would have a lecture with all the students from full prof once or twice a week, and a few more times a week a session with a smaller group (~10-15 students). The preceptor could be a grad student, or an assistant prof, or also even the full prof. In that smaller group, the preceptor gets to know the students, which makes cheating impossible. The preceptor would know if some dumb-ass in class wrote a brilliant essay, which was way beyond his or her intellectual faculties. The preceptor also gave you your grade.

Unfortunately, this was not as extremely enforced in engineering, which was my major. But the prof would come by during the lab exercises, and grill everyone on what they were doing and why and what they thought they would learn.

I took a lot of high level literature courses as electives. After the first essay that I had to write for one course, the preceptor pulled me aside after the class. She said, "You're not a literature major, are you? I'll bet that you are an engineering student!" She told me that essays from literature majors had very good ideas, but they tended to ramble. Engineers didn't have the best ideas, but their essays were all very well structured. She knew that I didn't cheat on the essay, because she heard what I said in class.

Want to cut out cheating? Get more direct prof to student contact.

The original article is from 2008

[langelgjm]

The blog post is from 2011, but the article it discusses was published in 2008 (so the study itself was probably done in 2007 or so). (‘Not necessarily a bad thing ’: a study of online plagiarism amongst undergraduate students. Neil Selwyn, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1469-297X, Volume 33, Issue 5, First published 2008, Pages 465 – 479.)