Cheating

perfect example of a liberal education, and the results.

The Reaper wrote: perfect example of a liberal education, and the results.   1/3 of the class cheated... What are they trying to teach some silly moral lesson or something. Don't they know that stuff is based on religion, and morals are relative...

The Reaper wrote:  perfect example of a liberal education,

ParielIsBack wrote: Cheaters only think they're winning.

QFT

I have seen the results when those that cheated there way through school reach the real world.  The number of enlisted who had this attitude and found themselves involuntarily regurgitated into civilian life is depressingly large.  (And they were the lucky ones, some of the less lucky ones got to spend time in base confinement--or, if we felt like turning over jurisdiction, as a guest of the state or county.  Others got to truly experience the joy of joining the military and visiting new places; places like the Naval Brig at Mirimar CA, or Ft. Leavenworth KS.)

The one officer I dealt with that seemed to have this attitude got to experience the joy of being a former officer at Ft. Leavenworth.

I chatted with a professor I know back there today, and apparently quite a few people are taking the professor up on the whole "Come forward and I'll clear your record," thing, which is what media folks and outside observers are using as proof that they really did cheat. 

The Reaper wrote: perfect example of a liberal education, and the results.   1/3 of the class cheated... What are they trying to teach some silly moral lesson or something. Don't they know that stuff is based on religion, and morals are relative...

 

So... I see the professor partially at fault. If the students are using the book, and the book gives study questions, then the professor should not use them if they are accessible. What do they expect? At least change topics or numbers in the questions.

New things are floating about in this test situation.

Some fine folks went back and reviewed the video of Quinn's first day of class - the same class who got busted - and found him saying that he makes his own tests by hand.

Now, that is interesting because: 1) It means that if he did pull a test from a test bank, he was going against what he said early on in the semester. 2) It means that if you are a student in the class and you receive an e-mail with an attachment containing sample questions and sample answers, you might be more apt to expect they are simply practice problems from another source, as how would anyone have an answer bank to a test he has not made yet?

That said, the commenting/rumor mill is churning out another point, which is that the "test bank," if Quinn pulled a test from there, would have been closed to the students and only open to the professor.

Meaning, yes, some students did get a hold of the answer bank by getting into the textbook publisher's system.

That said, I'd suspect that means that only a handful of the accused 200 actually knew they were cheating. The rest thought it was cool that a study guide was going around.


Edited by agentwhale007 - 15 November 2010 at 2:36pm

On a related note...  In a computing class I once had, the midterm and final exam were made available, by the professor, 1-2 weeks before the test.  They were of course in a password protected zip file but with the password being a dictionary word related to something recently studied in the class.

One has to wonder whether the professor was just begging to have it brute forced...  (I'm going to go ahead and say that's definitely cheating).

Another prof had question bank of 100 questions per test.  Each semester he would generate a practice test of 40 random questions from the band, and then the test came from the same bank.  He had done this for a few semesters.  If you got 1-2 semesters of old tests and practice tests, you essentially had all the possible questions that could be on your test.  Is this cheating?  Irresponsible prof?