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Following Cheating Scandals, Harvard Dean of Undergrad Ed Visits CS50 Class and Tells Students Not To Cheat (thecrimson.com)
theodp writes: After a flood of cheating cases roiled Harvard's Computer Science 50: "Introduction to Computer Science I" last year, Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay Harris implored students in the course not to cheat on assignments at an orientation session Wednesday night. Course head David Malan, the Harvard Crimson reports, spent the last five minutes of the orientation session fielding questions from students confused about the course's collaboration policy and whether or not CS50 enrollees are allowed to use code found online. He told them never to Google solutions, and never to borrow a friend's work. Last week, CS50 students were informed via a CS50 FAQ that they are also now "encouraged" to physically attend the course's taped weekly lectures. In an essay last year, Prof. Malan had questioned the value of saying everyone should attend every lecture. Attendance is now also expected at every discussion section until the first mid-semester exam. In case you're curious, the estimated sticker price for attending Harvard College during the 2017-2018 school year is $69,600-$73,600 (health insurance sold separately).
Just seems like a really expensive degree that doesn't mean much in the world of programming.
What. The. Fuck! Charles!
Shit! It's not first ! Oh wait, it is ! Oh no, it isn't Oh who the fuck cares.
The problem was that nobody told the students not to cheat. Now that that little misunderstanding has been cleared up, the problem is fixed.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Right now, I'm teaching a Web Programming & Database integration course. I do a flipped classroom model where I record the lecture, and we work on the homework in class. They can do the homework before class, but they have to show me their code & explain it before they hand it in. That way, I can catch any errors they have before they hand it in, and answer questions that they run into if they haven't finished it yet. I also know that they're doing their own work.
Also, if I see a common issue, I can do a 5 minute "mini lecture" to give an example technique in front of the class. If I come across a common issue after things have been submitted, I can do a 5 minute recorded lecture to reinforce what they should do in the future in that situation. Seems to work out well for my students.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Harvard's endowment provides sufficient income to the school that it doesn't actually need to charge tuition. The tuition it does charge just goes into growing the endowment.
Indeed, most Harvard students do not pay tuition at all, because they are minorities or minority women. 79% of all tuition collected at Harvard is from white males, another 18% from white females, and the remaining 3% from minorities.
I am pretty sure that Harvard has previously told students not to cheat.
Doing it again is not useful. Try using tests (including testing conditions) that make it difficult to cheat, rather than yelling at people that do it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"..In case you're curious, the estimated sticker price for attending Harvard College during the 2017-2018 school year is $69,600-$73,600 ..."
Let's be clear, the sticker price ..really only applies to white and Asian hetero males.
-Styopa
big lectures classes are BS and cram tests don't prove much anyways.
Failed all your classes, huh? By your posts, you're quite stupid.
More advanced classes and I'd really want to search around and bounce ideas off anyone I can find. DO :? "Hello World":LOOP type stuff you can use the textbook.
big lectures classes are BS
I prefer big classes. In small classes, the prof will digress to give a detailed answer to every question, so the class progresses at the pace of dumbest moron in the room. In big lecture halls, the prof just says "See me after class" or "Go talk to the TA", and moves on.
First things first, if the lectures are available online, I wouldn't make attendance mandatory. Instead, I'd explain to students why it benefits them to be in attendance:
1) It simply isn't possible to respond to respond to email or discussion forum questions immediately like what can be done in an in-class lecture.
2) It's far easier for an instructor to help students if the instructor knows who they are. It's not that the instructor is biased against anyone else, but it's hard to directly help students who you don't have any direct contact with.
As for cheating, reduce the incentive and value of doing so. That means eliminating any memorization questions. When I taught, I started creating multiple choice questions that asked the students to apply a particular concept to a very simple and straightforward case. It's easy to grade and yet students can't possibly look the answer up online because the question was unique to my class. There isn't a whole lot of extra work needed to create assignments that are mostly resistant to cheating. The ancillary benefit is that students learn the material better if they're asked to use it rather than simply recall it. For an introductory CS class, one simple approach is providing the students with a bit of code that's unique to the class and ask them to modify it in a relatively minor way. The grading is still simple, but it some basic competence is required even to find the appropriate solution online.
Collaboration is a tougher one, but individual exams are a way to thwart impermissible collaboration. I think the best solution is to tell students that they can discuss assignments with other students, but they need to generate their answer individually and are responsible for understanding the solution. It's completely fair to reference assignments on the exam or even to reuse questions. I've done both, and it places greater value on understanding the answers to the assignments if they will come up again on the exam. I liked this because the assignments directly helped in preparing students for the exams. It also takes away many of the potential complaints about exams being unfair if they are given a very good idea of what's going to be on the exam. My view is that there shouldn't be any deception about exams -- be upfront with students about what's going to be on the exams. However, make the questions require an understanding of the material and the exams will still be challenging. If the assignments directly relate to the exams, there's far less incentive to copy answers on them.
I believe that a lot of cheating can be stopped just by designing the course a bit differently. You'll still have students who try to be lazy and get by, but they'll eventually get exposed by the exams anyway.
Video of the Harvard dean addressing the freshman in CS50 has now surfaced:
https://i.imgur.com/zPn4CNd.gi...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I thahght we collaborated heah at Hahvahd? Google and I wahked on this togethah!
An introductory CS course shouldn't have cram tests. There's no end of practical material to test on and if you know how to code, a programming exam isn't going to be that hard if it asks you to write small bits of code. Big lectures don't really seem to fit CS either. I don't know what Harvard does or if things have changed, but when I got my degree is was smaller classes and a lot of time spent in a computer lab actually coding.
The Dean shouldn't have to beg students not to cheat either. Toss some of the worst examples out on their ass and the rest will get the message, or at least learn to cheat more intelligently. This sounds less like an education and more like an expensive daycare for adults.
According to "One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School" by Scott Turow, Harvard law students would better qualify themselves for financial aid by dumping their life savings into a fancy sports car. Excess savings reduced the amount of financial aid, but owning a sports car doesn't. God help you if show up at Harvard Law School with the Honda Civic that got you through pre-law.
whats up with all this k0dink crap? rent-duh-k0d3rz are a dime a dozen.
I recall one of my CS classes, the prof gave an assignment. You were guaranteed to run into a problem. Way back when, the batch file had a limit on memory usage and the assignment needed more than you had. So you went to the prof and he would put a check by your name and tell you how to up the resource. At the beginning of the assignment he was very clear. Do not cheat and that included asking classmates about anything about this assignment. If you did not go see him, you flunked the class. A clever prof figures out ways to detect cheating.
I've had the exact opposite happen - 400 student lecture, Prof spends 3-5 minutes on lecture, the remainder of the period answering questions in detail, TAs for this class pretty much had to fill in the rest of the lecture. 20 student lecture? Prof says "See me after class, talk to your TA, or come to my office hours on Thursday".
I stopped going to the big lecture.
it's a mish-mash of random topics without any proper presentation or preparation, and the whole course is being presented as a stage for the current teacher to show himself off, prancing on the stage. It's a show, not a course.
If a white student cheats in a class that grades on a curve with black students in it, does that constitute a hate crime now?
Fewer people are taking these schools seriously any more. All you need to be admitted to Harvard is to be black and shriek louder than all your peers.
The ONLY value over a better cheaper education is the networking. Reputation is really only part of the networking.
The filtering game adds to the prestige but even that is still networking: You WANT rich powerful brats connected with only the best nerds to help them stay ahead. Those nerds want to get connections with so they can work for our next gen of power "leaders".
They really need to ask about copying from online resources or each other?
Who admitted these morons?
Think about the ethics of these students.
Back when I was taking CS101 in the late 80's (at one of the many "Harvard of the South"s), I remember they ran a "DIFF" on all programming assignment submissions. Three people were caught turning in the same code, and kicked out. I think the class had maybe 15 people in it tops.
I remember a lot of pearl-clutching at the time, because our school had an honor code, and those three had agreed to it. Imagine that, a signed honor code hadn't weeded out cheaters!
The only details I'd ever heard about it was that the lazy SOB's had tried to change variable names to make it look different, but otherwise hadn't even changed a byte of the source files.