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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).
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 does actually have a very well regarded CS program, and it's wishful thinking that you can get as good at any state school. I recently worked with someone just out of Harvard CS who was phenomenal, and he actually explained to me that CS50 is not actually part of the Comp Sci program, it's a programming class for non-CS (hence being sub-100 level).
you can get a CS degree at any state school and they are far cheaper and just as good.
No, they are not just as good. A degree from Harvard will open a lot of doors. Not only because of the reputation, but also because of the alumni network.
It's not as if the faculty at Harvard are somehow better
It is not the faculty that is better, or the instruction, but the classmates. They learn a lot from each other. Which is why the restrictions on "collaboration" are so stupid. They are taking away the very thing that makes Harvard special.
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.
Indeed, most Harvard students do not pay tuition at all, because they are minorities or minority women.
Well, that is a load of crap. Roughly 50% of the Harvard student population is white. An additional 22% are Asian-American, who generally don't get classified as underpriviliged minority.
https://college.harvard.edu/ad...
Also, "minorities or minority women"?! Like the latter group magically doesn't get included in the former?
#DeleteChrome
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.
No, they are not just as good. A degree from Harvard will open a lot of doors. Not only because of the reputation, but also because of the alumni network.
So it's an expensive popularity contest. He was talking about the quality of education.
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.
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.
CS50 is also available for free on edX. Malan is actually a pretty engaging lecturer as well.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It is not the faculty that is better, or the instruction, but the classmates. They learn a lot from each other.
They are calling out Googling the answers which suggests that their assignments are too simple. Though if it is sufficiently complex that you can cobble together a solution (i.e. build a system) from various different answers to specific problems by googling them then that would be representative of the real world.
Which is why the restrictions on "collaboration" are so stupid.
If it's true collaboration then sure, but at the other end if it's 3 people just copying the answers of the one smart person then that just means 75% of your graduates have just learned how to leech of others. Collaborate on business opportunities sure but if you can't get through intro to CS on your own then you're heading for the wrong industry.
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.
But he shouldn't have been. He started out talking about the quality of the degree, then shifted.
So it's an expensive popularity contest.
No. It is an expensive filtering contest, that has little to do with "popularity". To get into Harvard, you need high SAT scores, a near perfect GPA, all the right extracurriculars, etc. People hire Harvard grads, not because they were educated by Harvard, but because they were accepted by Harvard.
He was talking about the quality of education.
The quality of education is not the same as the quality of lectures. If you are in study group with Harvard classmates all at the 99th percentile, you are going to learn a lot more than you will in a study group at Iowa State with classmates that got a 1200 on their SAT.
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.
I have a very hard time believing that. I can't speak to the quality of Harvard's education because I've never stepped foot in the place, but I've met a few people who went to those so-called 'elite schools.' They didn't seem any better or worse than those of us who could not afford the feeder schools, extracurricular activities, and other elements of institutionalized classism. The only difference I could tell was that they had nicer clothes and more expensive hobbies. Pardon me if I am highly skeptical of the claim that there's anything special going on there beyond networking and brand recognition, but I for one would much rather work with an Iowa State grad than someone from Harvard. At least I know which one has the ability to justly earn their position.
To get into Harvard, you need high SAT scores, a near perfect GPA, all the right extracurriculars, etc
and the best part of a quarter of a million dollars. I wonder which of those requirements is most important?
No, they are not just as good. A degree from Harvard will open a lot of doors. Not only because of the reputation, but also because of the alumni network.
So it's an expensive popularity contest. He was talking about the quality of education.
Dunno about most people but when I hear Harvard I think rich, not smart.
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Harvard does actually have a very well regarded CS program, and it's wishful thinking that you can get as good at any state school.
It's one of the better programs, especially if you're a mathy type and more theoretically inclined.
I recently worked with someone just out of Harvard CS who was phenomenal, and he actually explained to me that CS50 is not actually part of the Comp Sci program, it's a programming class for non-CS (hence being sub-100 level).
I have a hard time believing a Harvard student would know so little about Harvard. In general sub-100 level classes are aimed at undergrads (and unless you're some savant, yes you'll take a few of these in your major field), 100 level is undergrad and some grad students, and 200 level is mostly grad students. And to fulfill the CS major requirements you need to take at least two classes among CS 50, 51, and 61, so no CS50 is absolutely not a programming class just for non-CS students. With crazy 500+ student enrollments lately though it does get taken by a lot of non-CS majors who want to see what all the fuss is about.
you can get a CS degree at any state school and they are far cheaper and just as good.
No, they are not just as good. A degree from Harvard will open a lot of doors. Not only because of the reputation, but also because of the alumni network.
It's not as if the faculty at Harvard are somehow better
It is not the faculty that is better, or the instruction, but the classmates. They learn a lot from each other. Which is why the restrictions on "collaboration" are so stupid. They are taking away the very thing that makes Harvard special.
And yet my degree from my local state college has kept me well employed at one of the top engineering firms in the country. It only cost me ~$20k which I paid off in the first year of employment. This same degree gave me entrance to start PHD work at one of the top colleges in the country and they only require me to take two additional classes, the rest I gained credit from my graduate studies at the same state college.
So yeah, state college is no good.
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.
It is not the faculty that is better, or the instruction, but the classmates. They learn a lot from each other. Which is why the restrictions on "collaboration" are so stupid. They are taking away the very thing that makes Harvard special.
...not to mention that nobody these days is looking to hire programmers to work solo projects. Collaboration is central to the job. I can remember during job interviews a lot of people were only interested in what my grade in the Software Engineering course was, and details about how my group project for that class went.
It was really weird being in that class because suddenly we were *supposed* to work together, and everyone (in my group at least) was absolutely terrible at it. Not only had we never done it before, but the entire culture of the university discouraged it.
I can still remember being flabbergasted after screwing up the 7th manual merge or so when my TA told me about this program the server had that did something called "Revision Control". This wasn't even being taught!
You're getting the stealth finger right now buddy.
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George W. Bush is an excellent example. I've heard him accused of many things, being smart is not one of them.