interesting story.

side note: i hope it's not a math course...
"the midterm exam makeup will open at 7AM on Monday morning, Nov 8.... it will close at midnight on November the 10th... it will be open 51 hours."

Sorry professor, that's 41 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He took an interesting compromise so that these students didn't get their asses handed to them by the disciplinary committee.

Makes you wonder if it would have been a more effective deterrent if he would have crucified those 200 students and made an example of them.

While I appreciate the lecturers disappointment, I do believe he needs to get out more. In my professional experience the business types are all about cheating, cutting corners and taking shortcuts if such an opportunity is offered to them. And if you're teaching future business/managerial types, this kind of behaviour is only to be expected.

What I don't get is what a four hour ethics course is supposed to do. If you're inclined to cheat by laziness, lack of character or wrong upbringing, a few hours of stern talking to by someone who the culprits don't give a rats anus about isn't going to change much, other than waste everyones time. If someone is prone to cheating, the only way to stop them is to keep a close eye on them. Or a real long term effort to readjust their moral compass. Something that isn't easy at that age anymore though.

I, for one, have NEVER cheated in middle school, high school or college. I cheated once in elementary school and that shit scarred me for life...

Never saw the point of cheating...because everyone else was stupidest thay me.

Fact of the matter is that cheating IS rewarded in the real world. It sucks...but it's the truth.

We CONTINUE to live in a society where we tell our kids and our students to act one way...but when we get out there in the real world, it's ok to act in a completely different way.

Cheating will NOT stop until that behavior stops

>> ^srd:

While I appreciate the lecturers disappointment, I do believe he needs to get out more. In my professional experience the business types are all about cheating, cutting corners and taking shortcuts if such an opportunity is offered to them. And if you're teaching future business/managerial types, this kind of behaviour is only to be expected.
What I don't get is what a four hour ethics course is supposed to do. If you're inclined to cheat by laziness, lack of character or wrong upbringing, a few hours of stern talking to by someone who the culprits don't give a rats anus about isn't going to change much, other than waste everyones time. If someone is prone to cheating, the only way to stop them is to keep a close eye on them. Or a real long term effort to readjust their moral compass. Something that isn't easy at that age anymore though.


Especially since what our society teaches us is to screw others and cheat to get ahead. Because it doesn't matter how you get there...it's just that you get there.

He's bluffing. There's no way they could prove conclusively whether or not any one person was involved without searching their rooms/belongings for the cheat-sheet.

This really makes me wonder what lesson the students take away from this:

1) Do not cheat
2) If you can cheat, do not tell anyone else how to do it and/or brag about it

He is bluffing the cheaters. Somehow I doubt they stick up for each other much and for everyone that tells the remainder might just be easier to pick off. Also, the price of getting caught seems to far outweigh the price of admitting to cheating and remaking the test like everyone else.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

He's bluffing. There's no way they could prove conclusively whether or not any one person was involved without searching their rooms/belongings for the cheat-sheet.

I've not cheated in any exam either, but there's different levels of cheating too. Is copying some of your earlier work cheating too, for instance? I don't think so, if it's relevant.

When an "exam" is just a multiple choice form, it's stupid in any case - it means you have to know the answers, not know how to figure out the answers - this means you basically have to have a fact sheet in your head anyway, that doesn't teach you anything any way.

Knowledge is not knowing things, it's knowing how to figure out things.

*law *talks *conspiracy *fail

Adding video to channels (Conspiracy, Fail, Law, Talks) - requested by gwiz665.

I'm sorry but I disagree with your definition of knowledge. What you seem to be describing is any process that accrues knowledge, such as science for example. Knowledge is the end product of applying that process to surroundings such as the natural world.

I do agree however that multiple-choice exams are kind of stupid but I had always thought it was to make the task of correcting 600 papers less daunting for the teacher. I've had to correct nearly 100 non-multiple-choice exams at a university level and it took a long time.

>> ^gwiz665:

I've not cheated in any exam either, but there's different levels of cheating too. Is copying some of your earlier work cheating too, for instance? I don't think so, if it's relevant.
When an "exam" is just a multiple choice form, it's stupid in any case - it means you have to know the answers, not know how to figure out the answers - this means you basically have to have a fact sheet in your head anyway, that doesn't teach you anything any way.
Knowledge is not knowing things, it's knowing how to figure out things.

Fair enough. I suppose I really ought to divide it into
knowledge (wisdom) - knowing things
intelligence - knowing how to figure out things
>> ^chtierna:

I'm sorry but I disagree with your definition of knowledge. What you seem to be describing is any process that accrues knowledge, such as science for example. Knowledge is the end product of applying that process to surroundings such as the natural world.
I do agree however that multiple-choice exams are kind of stupid but I had always thought it was to make the task of correcting 600 papers less daunting for the teacher. I've had to correct nearly 100 non-multiple-choice exams at a university level and it took a long time.
>> ^gwiz665:
I've not cheated in any exam either, but there's different levels of cheating too. Is copying some of your earlier work cheating too, for instance? I don't think so, if it's relevant.
When an "exam" is just a multiple choice form, it's stupid in any case - it means you have to know the answers, not know how to figure out the answers - this means you basically have to have a fact sheet in your head anyway, that doesn't teach you anything any way.
Knowledge is not knowing things, it's knowing how to figure out things.

>> ^EmptyFriend:

interesting story.
side note: i hope it's not a math course...
"the midterm exam makeup will open at 7AM on Monday morning, Nov 8.... it will close at midnight on November the 10th... it will be open 51 hours."
Sorry professor, that's 41 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If they're keeping office hours from 7:00 am to midnight just for the makeup exam, that's 17 hours per day. (I highly doubt they would stay open 24 hrs/day, even to administer the makeup exam. They ain't working in a factory with night shifts.) If they do this on November 8, November 9, and November 10, that's three days. That would be 51 hours in total.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

He's bluffing. There's no way they could prove conclusively whether or not any one person was involved without searching their rooms/belongings for the cheat-sheet.
You're probably right. However they might compare each student's score on the cheat test with the scores they've gotten on previous tests in the course, and if their cheat test score is significantly higher than their previous test scores, then that could be a big red flag. Maybe that's just one of their lines of evidence against the 200 suspected cheaters.

However I was thinking the same thing @chtierna said: he's mainly bluffing the cheaters. The guilty parties are much better off simply retaking the exam (and even possibly doing badly) than not taking the exam and then risk being expelled for cheating.

Unfortunately this shit happens more often than many suspect, but most of the time it goes undetected. Anyone remember the cheating scandal at the US Naval Academy in the early '90s? Of course not; you're just a bunch of damn kids.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, November 18th, 2010 1:13pm PST - promote requested by kronosposeidon.

I wrote the number of atoms in a mole (or somesuch fixed quantity like that) inside my calculator cover for a chemistry exam. Teacher said we had to remember it, screw that.

metan
etan
propan
butan
pentan
hexan
heptan
octan
nonan
decan

Our whole class had to memorize the names (in Swedish) of the first 10 hydrocarbons. If anyone in the class missed a single one, the whole class had to do it again. To this day I remember the names, and to this day I've never used that knowledge. This would have been a good time to cheat.

>> ^deathcow:

I wrote the number of atoms in a mole (or somesuch fixed quantity like that) inside my calculator cover for a chemistry exam. Teacher said we had to remember it, screw that.

True, I guess that makes sense. In my undergrad degree I never had a single test where we were given a 3 day window to complete it. One winter I had the flu and I still had to walk in the snow at 8 AM to get to my exam, which we all sat and took together. Even in my current masters program, which I do remotely, I still have to be at the testing center at an exact time, and they certainly aren't open til midnight...

If they're given 3 days to complete the test, even without the test bank, this professor should already be worried about someone going in to take the test and then telling everyone else the questions.
>> ^kronosposeidon:

If they're keeping office hours from 7:00 am to midnight just for the makeup exam, that's 17 hours per day. (I highly doubt they would stay open 24 hrs/day, even to administer the makeup exam. They ain't working in a factory with night shifts.) If they do this on November 8, November 9, and November 10, that's three days. That would be 51 hours in total.

So this is what B-School is about -- learning how to cheat (and not get caught).

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

@Everyone,

I also thought that he was bluffing at first and would write off his threat, keep my head down, and my mouth shut. Then he mentioned little things like talking to the Dean and collaborating with other parties.

What a lot of you probably don't realize is that the school has every right to track all the bandwidth that goes in and out of their campus. They could narrow this down to email exchanges between students, IM chat, anything that could be pertinent to the investigation.

It's their private network, they can do what they want with it, but people use it without thinking about it

Also while on the topic of cheating. It all depends on the particular job you're striving for. Some jobs make it impossible to cheat, others make it easy. Whether or not you should cheat while striving for a career path you first have to ask yourself:

Am I going to need to know this after I start working?

Well, you might get away with it, but remember, your mistakes could cost you or someone else a lot of money, maybe even a life.

When I worked as a TA at a university that's ranked around fifth in my field, it was standard operating procedure to write each test from scratch, make everybody take it in the same 75 minute window except for proven excuses, make everybody sit at least 1 seat apart while taking the exam, and make them turn in the questions with their bubble sheet, so the only way they could smuggle questions to the conflit exam is by memorizing them. Also, in the event of a conflict between exam times for two classes, only the class with the larger enrollment had to offer a conflict exam. Electronic devices other than calculators were prohibited and had to be turned off and stowed away. Student ID had to be shown when handing in the bubble sheet to prevent proxy exam-taking. Only one student at a time was allowed to visit the bathroom so that they could not confer in there.

If we wanted to run an even tighter ship we could just have 4 exams of equal weight with some overlap, and drop the lowest exam grade instead of allowing for the existence of conflict exams. That should be easy for honest students to deal with since all the exam times are announced months in advance, on the first day of class.

You can't prevent cheating on an online course the way you can in person. They can just google the answers. If all the questions are original and difficult problem-solving questions and you don't intend to test knowledge, then it could sort of work, maybe. But you still would have no way of preventing them from consulting human beings.

First of all, he should not be recycling his exams that is negligent on his part. Many universities permit students to acquire copies of old exams at the library and student union. On a side note, I too once had some students cheat on one of my exams. And this was after I explicitly told them: if you get stuck I will help you out. The only person that is allowed to help you on this exam is me and all you have to do is ask.

This is why I view major university educations as worthless in and of themselves. Not worthless as far as the piece of paper that gets you a job, but as they apply to actually learning anything important besides rote memorization of a few statistics and trends.

Four-hundred students for one course and he actually says with a straight face that the days of finding new ways to cheat the system are over. Right. And I'd be willing to bet that the mid-term was just another multiple-choice test that is completely meaningless in the long run anyway.

NOTE: If you have to cheat on a multiple-choice test, slide you education back about ten years and hit the restart button. It will be worth it to you in the long-run. Trust me.

i would love for the camera to do a 180 and show a room full of chimps

MycoftHomlz, you are dead on. The University I attended urged all professors to create fresh exams for every midterm or final, good professors did, bad professors didn't, which leads me to the conclusion that this fellow should be more upset with his own idle complacency then he should with his students. What a lazy crybaby.

>> ^siftbot:

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, November 18th, 2010 1:13pm PST - promote requested by kronosposeidon.

I'm just going to copy your comment siftbot because you're sitting next to me and I forgot to study. Don't say anything or I'll beat you up.

>> ^rottenseed:

I, for one, have NEVER cheated in middle school, high school or college. I cheated once in elementary school and that shit scarred me for life...


I cheated on my fiancée and fucked your mom.

I cheated on your mom and fucked your fiancée.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^rottenseed:
I, for one, have NEVER cheated in middle school, high school or college. I cheated once in elementary school and that shit scarred me for life...

I cheated on my fiancée and fucked your mom.

>> ^blankfist:


I cheated on my fiancée and fucked your mom.


How do you cheat on someone with that same person? Or is this some kind of kinky roleplaying?

Now we have YouTube comments! Bwahahaha!

>> ^chtierna:

metan
etan
propan
butan
pentan
hexan
heptan
octan
nonan
decan
Our whole class had to memorize the names (in Swedish) of the first 10 hydrocarbons. If anyone in the class missed a single one, the whole class had to do it again. To this day I remember the names, and to this day I've never used that knowledge. This would have been a good time to cheat.
>> ^deathcow:
I wrote the number of atoms in a mole (or somesuch fixed quantity like that) inside my calculator cover for a chemistry exam. Teacher said we had to remember it, screw that.



Sweden eh? Thanks for producing this guy: http://videosift.com/video/The-Tallest-Man-on-Earth-Tangle-in-This-Trampled-Wheat

/offtopic

Heh, I had a chemistry professor who gave an angry rant to the class because our grades on a particular quiz were too low. Guess we shoulda cheated... but not too much!

I was a computer science major in my 4th year...so I was in a lot of classes with graduate students. They had a few extra things on exams and projects they had to do for their graduate portion of the class. What was hilarious is that most of them were Indian and most of them came in to class with what looked like a xerox copy of each others work with their name signed to it, and this went on all quarter. On the last exam one of them sat next to me and was obviously trying to cheat off my exam, so I spent awhile writing down false answers and making them very easy to read because this whole Indian group of students seemed to ride on each others work and no one called them on it. While I saw undergraduate US citizens being busted for the same thing (I can only assume this was motivated by money and enrollment/scores).

So after I knew I wouldn't have enough time to keep up the false answers, I hurried up and changed all my work hunched over my test so he couldn't read it anymore and finished. Turned it in and told the professor that he was copying off me and the two Indians in front of us were sharing answers with him. I mean you'd have to be blind to not see the guys turn around during the test multiple times.


And on my exit interview for the school I ranked it down and told them that I was pissed that those Indian students were never punished, since them cheating off undergrads makes it appear that undergrads are the ones cheating if you just look at the data and assume graduate students should know the answers. Plus I marked off some things for other stuff. And the dean of my school changed my numbers scores to higher scores because he would question me on something and I'd say "Maybe, but I feel my personal experience warrants that score." He would say something like "But isn't that too harsh, so maybe we should......" and I'd disagree, but he'd still change the score.

It's kind of a shame when you like the subject you study but the people teaching it to you make a mockery of the university by having double standards for the various grads/undergrads and ethnic groups. They still call me up and want alumni donations, and I tell the people calling my story and why I won't ever donate to that university...and why they should transfer out ASAP. Assuming they don't have a heavy Indian accent....

School is stupid. Teach yourself better than school could.

When I was teaching in Sweden we had problems with mostly foreign students cheating. It's possible that everyone was cheating equally much but the Swedish students didn't get caught as often. I got it explained to me that foreign students had a lot of pressure to do well and they always took as many courses as they could simultaneously which inevitably led to them "having" to cheat.

I also had it explained to me that the foreign students were the ones keeping the school afloat since every course they got through and every education they finished brought in money for the school. Some courses were a joke, they made them easy just to keep the throughput high.

The blame can be spread far and wide. Students were lazy etc (I was lazy too sometimes). Planning new courses could be a nightmare. The formula went like this: Out of 100 students applying to a course, only 50 would finish the course (or even show up) and only 25 would get a passing grade. Still you needed lecture rooms and equipment and everything else for the 50+ people. If you made the course too hard and not enough people passed, the school took a hit.

I taught a course in programming that was initially intended for around 30 people, but almost 200 people signed up and over 100 showed up. Panic. I was officially only a teaching assistant but the main teacher didn't really know programming (she was a doctorate and dumped the whole course in my lap) and now suddenly I was lecturing a class of 100+ students, mostly foreign, with little or no computer experience (they dont have the same amount of equipment abroad apparently), most of them studying 150% and studying for re-exams at the same time. I think in the end around 20 students passed (I wrote the exam and the course responsible cleared it without reading it and realizing I'd made it "too hard"). I know it sounds like I'm just making this stuff up. But it really happened. In Sweden (!).

I guess I don't have a moral of the story, I'm just venting Seeing things from the other side I realized what a mess education could be.

>> ^Porksandwich:

I was a computer science major in my 4th year...so I was in a lot of classes with graduate students. They had a few extra things on exams and projects they had to do for their graduate portion of the class. What was hilarious is that most of them were Indian and most of them came in to class with what looked like a xerox copy of each others work with their name signed to it, and this went on all quarter. On the last exam one of them sat next to me and was obviously trying to cheat off my exam, so I spent awhile writing down false answers and making them very easy to read because this whole Indian group of students seemed to ride on each others work and no one called them on it. While I saw undergraduate US citizens being busted for the same thing (I can only assume this was motivated by money and enrollment/scores).
So after I knew I wouldn't have enough time to keep up the false answers, I hurried up and changed all my work hunched over my test so he couldn't read it anymore and finished. Turned it in and told the professor that he was copying off me and the two Indians in front of us were sharing answers with him. I mean you'd have to be blind to not see the guys turn around during the test multiple times.

And on my exit interview for the school I ranked it down and told them that I was pissed that those Indian students were never punished, since them cheating off undergrads makes it appear that undergrads are the ones cheating if you just look at the data and assume graduate students should know the answers. Plus I marked off some things for other stuff. And the dean of my school changed my numbers scores to higher scores because he would question me on something and I'd say "Maybe, but I feel my personal experience warrants that score." He would say something like "But isn't that too harsh, so maybe we should......" and I'd disagree, but he'd still change the score.
It's kind of a shame when you like the subject you study but the people teaching it to you make a mockery of the university by having double standards for the various grads/undergrads and ethnic groups. They still call me up and want alumni donations, and I tell the people calling my story and why I won't ever donate to that university...and why they should transfer out ASAP. Assuming they don't have a heavy Indian accent....

@chtierna

I understand the stresses of it, but a lot of it is brought about by the attitude that you need 99% graduation and 99% job placement. and 99% this and that.

And I know university classes are about learning to think instead of learning subject matter or how to. But if this is the case then cheating is not helping. And allowing cheating is not helping. But their goals are now primarily "making money" instead of education. So that said, I wish they would venture a little and do the 4 year program but allow students who complete the 4 year do 6-12 months of "trade school" type projects where they learn to put their education into practical applications. Even allow businesses to give the school some hardware/money/whatever to let the students finish these projects in this period of time. And allow for people to apply themselves directly to work projects while being able to have access to the school faculty, that way they can find deficiencies in their teaching and fix them plus allow students to find their weaknesses and address them through a little research of their own and application.

It always frustrates me to see how much people embellish on their resumes and their job descriptions when you see what they actually do. But this comes from there being no baseline for comparison, some people get paid less and do much more difficult work but it's presented less........."colorfully" on their resume than the higher paid stuff.


I know they have professors help military bases with teaching programs and such and even consult with businesses. I don't see a problem with businesses working more closely with universities to get some cheap/free work out of it, find some potential hires and make both the school and the business more attractive to current and potential employees.

At least then it could potentially lead to another revenue source for the university that doesn't harm the students by allowing cheaters to ruin the program. Might even convince more undergrads to go into graduate programs if they do the work and find they really like portions of it and want to specialize.

I just graduated recently with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and I have to say that I just WISH this had happened in some of my classes. There were communities in some of my classes that I was never part of that had copies of everything, each semester. All the homework problems out of the textbooks, old exams from previous semesters where the professor just used the same exam year after year, these guys had it all. And no matter how hard I studied, I could never match that kind of advantage. Even more frustrating was that in most cases the classes would be based on "the curve", and these people threw that off. I never actually stooped to cheating, but there were certainly times I wished I had been.

@Porksandwich

Definitely. Whatever happend to apprenticeship? Me, as a programmer, I would have loved the chance to get involved in a real company as a part of my education and have some guidance from someone working inside the industry. Give the company a bit of money for the effort, in exchange the students get real-world experience and can build a net of contacts and the companies can pick out talents. Mix the work with studies in theory, maybe the companies would even pick up new processes and advancements from the academic world through the students.

>> ^Porksandwich:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/chtierna" title="member since September 25th, 2008" class="profilelink">chtierna
I understand the stresses of it, but a lot of it is brought about by the attitude that you need 99% graduation and 99% job placement. and 99% this and that.
And I know university classes are about learning to think instead of learning subject matter or how to. But if this is the case then cheating is not helping. And allowing cheating is not helping. But their goals are now primarily "making money" instead of education. So that said, I wish they would venture a little and do the 4 year program but allow students who complete the 4 year do 6-12 months of "trade school" type projects where they learn to put their education into practical applications. Even allow businesses to give the school some hardware/money/whatever to let the students finish these projects in this period of time. And allow for people to apply themselves directly to work projects while being able to have access to the school faculty, that way they can find deficiencies in their teaching and fix them plus allow students to find their weaknesses and address them through a little research of their own and application.
It always frustrates me to see how much people embellish on their resumes and their job descriptions when you see what they actually do. But this comes from there being no baseline for comparison, some people get paid less and do much more difficult work but it's presented less........."colorfully" on their resume than the higher paid stuff.

I know they have professors help military bases with teaching programs and such and even consult with businesses. I don't see a problem with businesses working more closely with universities to get some cheap/free work out of it, find some potential hires and make both the school and the business more attractive to current and potential employees.
At least then it could potentially lead to another revenue source for the university that doesn't harm the students by allowing cheaters to ruin the program. Might even convince more undergrads to go into graduate programs if they do the work and find they really like portions of it and want to specialize.

Wasn't there any way you could tip the teachers off as to what was happening?

>> ^ShakyJake:

I just graduated recently with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and I have to say that I just WISH this had happened in some of my classes. There were communities in some of my classes that I was never part of that had copies of everything, each semester. All the homework problems out of the textbooks, old exams from previous semesters where the professor just used the same exam year after year, these guys had it all. And no matter how hard I studied, I could never match that kind of advantage. Even more frustrating was that in most cases the classes would be based on "the curve", and these people threw that off. I never actually stooped to cheating, but there were certainly times I wished I had been.

How do I reach these kiiids?

@chtierna

I would imagine he was in the same situation I was in. It was more convenient to let it happen for the school, for the people cheating, for the teachers and the only people hurt were the ones who didn't participate and got punished for it with lower scores than the cheaters. If the house of cards ever did come down, it'd probably result in all the higher ups being replaced and all the profs being re-assessed. I can safely say it ran all the way up to the Dean in my school of study within the university. Otherwise he wouldn't have been changing my evaluation scores like I was agreeing with his point of view.....right in front of me. I mean who else do you complain to if you can't complain to the dean? And is it going to result in something that means the last 4 years of time and money investment aren't worth complete shit at the end? It's a slowly spiraling situation with most of the state funded universities I suspect, they expect certain numbers of passing students/etc and they do what it takes or ignore whatever it takes to get those numbers and a nice padding on top of it.

This is where businesses go "That new batch of hires we just got really suck compared to the ones we hired 10 years ago, maybe we should make sure they have 5-10 years experience from now on." And we end up in this cycle where you need a degree, high marks, and 5-10 years experience to land an entry level job or a whole load of luck and a big dose of bending the truth (making shit up) on your resume.

I have to say I got stuck there, the company I co-oped for didn't offer me a job when I finished even though they had said repeatedly they'd have something and never indicated dissatisfaction with my work. Plus I didn't see how my experience at that particular job could apply to others because they didn't want co-ops being involved in the core code due to patents/theft/whatever, so I was left with hands on testing, GUI work, and hardware tests if the software was throwing up on it for some reason. And I didn't feel it was right to embellish my resume because it'd cause me a lot of grief if someone wanted me and I couldn't produce at their expectations.

And then the dotcom bubble burst, man that was an awesome time. People with 15 and 20 years experience taking the entry level positions in my area for the next 3-4 years. I never recovered from it, I worked where I could keep a job and work off paying my loans. And now it's even worse, job market is still declining in my area..across the board.

I will say this, there was a teacher at my university who literally didn't show up for class half a quarter. Never returned assignments or tests until the end of the quarter. No one knew if they were doing anything satisfactory. At the end most of the students were screwed, they petitioned and they all got a passing grade in the class due to this. But that means they potentially learned nothing. This teacher went on later to teach the same class...that I was in. He was horrible, I skipped his class....I mean he literally acted like he was on something. And he drove a car with no top in the winter...it snowed into his car. This guy was still working there when I graduated. And he spoke understandable English...I had lecturers that were using words I didn't understand because their accent was so heavy. Finally after class I'd get to ask someone else if they understood the words I didnt, and they ask me some words they didn't understands...and we deciphered the code. This happened more and more as I progressed toward my degree, more heavy accents. At some point you gotta laugh at how crazy it was just trying to take a class you're paying a hefty sum of cash for.


>> ^chtierna:

Wasn't there any way you could tip the teachers off as to what was happening?
>> ^ShakyJake:
I just graduated recently with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and I have to say that I just WISH this had happened in some of my classes. There were communities in some of my classes that I was never part of that had copies of everything, each semester. All the homework problems out of the textbooks, old exams from previous semesters where the professor just used the same exam year after year, these guys had it all. And no matter how hard I studied, I could never match that kind of advantage. Even more frustrating was that in most cases the classes would be based on "the curve", and these people threw that off. I never actually stooped to cheating, but there were certainly times I wished I had been.

I don't see this as that big of a deal.
They didn't know what questions would be on the exam, so they had to memorize all of them.
When they memorized all of the questions and their answers, would you not agree that they 'learned' the material?

I'd wager that the kids who 'cheated' on the first exam, will be better prepared for the 2nd (because of how they 'cheated'), and will actually do better on the test than the kids who didn't 'cheat' the 1st time.

Depends, some profs allow you to bring sheets of paper in for tests, some allow you to use your book....etc. If they could bring the test questions and answers in for "helpful" material then it just becomes matching question to question and copying the answer over or selecting the correct multiple choice option.

Even if they couldn't bring the question and answers with them, if they ask essay questions. To explain why you would make the selection you would...no one who just memorized questions is going to be able to answer those reliably. My favorite professor in university was a very young guy, maybe 6 years older than the average student age at the time. He would ask essay questions and look for specific phrasing and words to evaluate your answer...so you were using meaningful terminology and used it in a way that showed you understood the meaning of the word in that context.

He said this test will be multiple choice, but if I were him I'd throw in a half dozen essay questions and make them worth 50% of the exam. Just because those bastards cheated to such a degree, anyone who actually studied would probably prefer cutting out half the multiple choice and finishing early to answer a couple short medium difficulty essay questions...it's easier to get them mostly right if you have the general idea. Versus being completely wrong if you check the wrong box.


>> ^Norrass:

I don't see this as that big of a deal.
They didn't know what questions would be on the exam, so they had to memorize all of them.
When they memorized all of the questions and their answers, would you not agree that they 'learned' the material?
I'd wager that the kids who 'cheated' on the first exam, will be better prepared for the 2nd (because of how they 'cheated'), and will actually do better on the test than the kids who didn't 'cheat' the 1st time.

Well plaid my frend. Well plaid.

>> ^Yogi:

Never saw the point of cheating...because everyone else was stupidest thay me.

Wow, that is some lax punishment for cheating. On the plus side those students now have incentive to pay more attention in stats the next time they cheat, in order to maintain the normal distribution.

Sounds to me like this guy is bluffing! He doesn't really know who the 200 people are. He cannot prove it; there is always coincidence! He is just bluffing and scaring these little punks to come out!

So, wait a minute.. Is the professor simply using the testbank of questions, rather than writing his own exam? That sounds a bit fishy, to me. Maybe it's the not students who are cheating, but the professor, who is, in fact, stealing test questions from the publisher, rather than recreating his own test.

If nothing else, it's a glaring double-standard.

Teachers may know more, but I think the textbooks have teacher's versions of those same textbooks. I saw one back in high school...it's a larger more 3-ring binder looking than book looking version of it. I didn't get to look at it, but I asked and supposedly the book has extra questions covering subject material so teacher's can use them as homework assignments and test questions...presumably because the publisher can prove that material was actually covered in the book and if they were studying that book they should be able to answer it.

I imagine it's one reason the uniform textbooks are so popular in high schools and universities, less work for teachers. Poor teachers will still be poor with or without the teacher's book, I had a pre-calc teacher that pretty much read and copied straight from her version of the book during our homework "checks". I don't think she actually knew how to solve the problems, and she destroyed my desire to even work simple math problems in a single year...since you couldn't ask her anything without her just reading from the book. Thanks teach, it's not like I could have done that!

>> ^Trancecoach:

So, wait a minute.. Is the professor simply using the testbank of questions, rather than writing his own exam? That sounds a bit fishy, to me. Maybe it's the not students who are cheating, but the professor, who is, in fact, stealing test questions from the publisher, rather than recreating his own test.
If nothing else, it's a glaring double-standard.