Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

But was it really cheating? Some students have pointed out that the professor said repeatedly that he composed the tests himself. Given that, then plausibly, using example tests from other sources would be a legitimate preparation method. (For example, the SAT doesn't penalize people for reviewing lots of practice tests, because it's assumed the actual questions during a real test will be novel.)<p>See:<p><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/21485811928/200-students-admit-to-cheating-exam-bigger-question-is-if-it-was-really-cheating-studying.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/21485811928/200-st...</a><p>Now, it was probably common knowledge from prior semesters that this professor's exams were from the standard test bank. So those reviewing test bank questions may not have had pure motives in their study strategy. But it makes it less cut-and-dried, especially given that the students may have memorized (for example) 5 answers to potential questions for every 1 that happened to appear on the test. At some point, knowing all the answers to all potential questions <i>is</i> knowing the material... or else the whole idea of formulaic tests is bankrupt.

Previous submissions of the same story from various sources. They all have some discussion:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1919562" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1919562</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1922049" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1922049</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1922243" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1922243</a> &#60;- This has the most comments<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1923931" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1923931</a>

What the professor knows:<p>- Some students had an advance copy of the test<p>- The grade distribution indicates cheating<p>What the professor doesn't know:<p>- Who cheated<p>Unless the university has access to a students network traffic proving they had access to the test, there's no way to be sure who cheated. The fact that the professor trudges through threats and vagaries for a full 15 minutes only seems to underscore this.

So, at least where I went to school (Georgia Tech) it is well known and accepted that students have word of basically every question that's ever been asked for any given course. Professors also commonly post previous exams as study guides for courses.<p>Is this not common elsewhere?

You have to think that if the professor really could identify the culprits he'd be limiting the retakes to them.<p>Maybe the real test here is for the students to realize that there is no "forensic analysis" in the world which could identify a cheater with 100% confidence except for the confession he is trying to bully out of them.

The solution, of course, is to have open-book, open-notes tests. Let the students bring any notes, books, etc.; anything but a communication device. The questions need to be novel and challenging enough so that the students who understand the material can walk out in no time; the students who don't, can sit around flipping through their notes.<p>Of course, this approach requires the _professor_ to do a lot more work. (The few times I taught, I used this approach and always got rave or begrudging reviews).<p>So really, I have no sympathy for this professor if he adopted the "security through obscurity" approach (as in, the problem set wouldn't be accessible to students). I don't blame the students for doing what they did; in real life, don't we expect employees to use whatever resources they can to solve problems?

I might have missed something in the video, but if I were an innocent student, the benefit for me in falsely claiming I cheated far outweighs the risk in defending my innocence.<p>The choices as I see them are these, whether you're innocent or not: 1) say that you cheated, and you get to retake the test as though you never took it the first time -- you don't even fail the test! -- but you never get to ask this professor of a lecture with 600 students for a favor. 2) don't admit that you cheated, get caught in some dragnet based on pretty flawed statistical reasoning (or better yet, a witch-hunt), and "not graduate." 3) Best case scenario: You say nothing, don't get accused of anything, and you get the undying loyalty of the professor, though that loyalty fails at the first try, because it doesn't extend to you getting out of a test you by definition shouldn't have to take in the first place.<p>I'm a bit stunned that only 200 students "confessed."

I don't think it is really possible to keep a question bank secret. Some students tend to follow up with those who had taken the course last time, at least in my university. So if the question bank is <i>voluminous</i> <i>enough</i>, why not just make it open ?<p>Whats the worst that can happen, people might go through it and learn all the solutions. Well, let them, that's the purpose of the course anyways. But the question bank cant so small that it does not explore the full diversity of problems. And no one is claiming that all questions will be from the question-bank, throw in a few off question-bank odd-balls each year.<p>But how could they analyze the submissions to figure out (even approximately) who cheated who did not ? Apart from trawling their email and phone calls and wire taps that is....:-) I suspect part of the "forensics" was a bluff.<p>I can only guess that there are a few problems in the set that historically have a low probability of being solved correctly. So whoever solved those can be marked suspicious. But a test will have only a few of those.<p>But it sure sucks to be in a course where the instructor is unaware of the problem that QB is available and you are unwilling to look up the QB. Particularly where the QB was particularly designed for the top percentile.

<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1923931" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1923931</a><p>was posted just yesterday

Your job as a teacher or as a presenter is to extend the available materials, and to provide me with insights that I might not gain from Googling existing materials.<p>Not to prevent me from accessing the available materials.<p>Not to control access to information.<p>If what I am learning from your teachings and from your tests and from other students can be entirely replaced by Googling through test banks, then you're not helping me advance.<p>If a presenter is reading off the slides?<p>If you're not utilizing what is available, whether Google or Khan Academy or iTunes classes or otherwise, you're not helping me make connections. To think. To research.<p>We see similar transitions arising in many human pursuits. In journalism. Booking travel. Financial markets. Programming. Music. And education. And in an earlier era of teaching, simply bringing calculators to a test.<p>Don't make me memorize. Make me think. Make me research.<p>It appears the professor has unwittingly also proved his teaching approach has failed.

Scaring shit out of you since 1981.<p>While it is generally true that good students should not cheat, but using questions from standard question bank was somewhat asking for it :)<p>Nice and simple trick with distribution and disturbances, though.

This is definitely cheating, but there's an important lesson for the professor: if you care about cheating, don't be lazy. Write your own exam questions and change them often.<p>You can tell that this is the most exciting event in this professor's life in the past 20 years. Maybe he should try varying his material.

The students actually were asked to confess if they had seen the sample test before the example or not. They weren't confessing to actual cheating.

This guy seems like a crappy prof to me. He essentially got caught taking the lazy way out and is now acting surprised and trying to blame the students.

Outside of the United States, there are test standards called the GC(S)E "A" and "O" levels which are roughly equivalent to entrance exams for college/senior high respectively. Because these exams have been going on for DECADES, the examining body has basically given up on guarding these questions i.e. they are regarded to be in the "public domain". Enterprising publishers have called these collections of questions the "10 year series", which are exam questions from the previous decade. There is not a single person in this part of the world who does not own a copy when preparing for those exams.

A close relative teaches in a continuing-ed masters program. The first two or three times she taught the class, the grades on the midterm were OK, but reasonably distributed. This fall, they were uniformly excellent. She concluded that the students had copies of her exams from previous semesters, and rewrote the final.<p>As far as I know, it never occurred to her to tell the students off. Of course, these are twenty-somethings and probably a lot less susceptible to brow-beating.

I use to have a professor that actively encouraged us to review old tests, question banks, friends, anything we could get our hands on. Hell his tests were even open book/notes.<p>The tests were genuinely difficult. You could pass by looking at the material because some of the questions were just lecture examples with numbers changed. But to really ace the test you needed understanding of the material.

Im sorry but this is the education system FAILING its students. 1. fear mongering by the prof " FORENSICE ANALYSIS" and "LEGAL ACTION" 2. the SAME test for the last FIVE years? 3. some crap sob story about "what were the last 20 years about" ... how about you being a lazy ass professor?

I'm a 5th year PhD student who is teaching a large (80 student) section of a course, this is the 4th course I've taught. I've also taken plenty of exams as a student, and they are still fresh in mind.<p>I would want to know more information before I decided the students were cheating or not. The instructor refereed to an "exam room", and gave an hour range that the new exam could be taken. So the students are not all taking the exam at the same time, this makes it seem possible that the exam is online. If the exam is online, and the students can take it at home vs take it in a proctored room, that would change what would be cheating. If it were online at home (I don't think so from the video) then reviewing the test bank while taking the exam would be cheating. If not, then having seen a question before the exam may or may not be cheating, depending on HOW you saw the question.<p>If you did not acquire questions in an unethical way, then it's not cheating, it's just studying. As an instructor, I will sometimes put problems from the book onto my exam. If the students worked the problems before because they were studying hard, then good for them! I want my students to study, because it will help them learn. I also provide a sample exam with previous exam questions on it; I write most of my own questions and it's important for students to get used to my style. As a student, I had to take a written exam for my PhD. When I was studying for the exam I asked Professors for help, one of my Professors gave me some of his questions. I worked out every single question. He also submitted one of his existing questions to the exam and I recognized it when I was taking the exam. Cheating? No. I just got lucky (and worked my ass off).<p>If test questions are acquired by malicious means, or knowing that they are going to be on the exam, or are the test bank that is going to be used to make the exam. Then it is cheating. So if students knew that the questions came from a test bank, and downloaded the test bank (I'm sure it's on the web somewhere) to gain an advantage they cheated.<p>Finally, as an instructor. Writing a decent exam is surprisingly hard. My goal with an exam is two-fold, figure out how well the class as a whole is doing, and separate the students into their grade groups. The ideal exam has some problems that even the D students can answer (to separate them from the F's) and some problems (usually just 1 problem) that are a stretch for the A students. And a mix of medium problems for everyone. If you have too many easy problems, the grades will creep up and you won't separate students. If you have too many hard problems, the grades will creep down and you won't separate students. Writing an exam from scratch is very time consuming. I use my private test bank, and try to add 1 or 2 new questions to the bank when I'm writing each exam. I can understand (but don't agree with) an instructor pulling entirely from an existing bank to write an exam.

At my university usually all tests are published by the institutes themself on the iternet. They even advice you to train with the old exams. Some of them are also open book. But every exam is individual and so different (not only numbers changed) that you really have to train all the stuff to get a positive mark. Relying on "secret" question caches or buying questions from a third party is not very smart, lazy and really makes no sense to me. They did´nt cracked the system, they only used it for their belongings.

Students repeat courses, audit courses. Students can be exposed to these canned test questions in this way. Universities push the general learning experience in selling their education product. Those who want to make the student the commodity and control how they learn for better quality control strike me as dyed in the wool bureaucrats.

What a petty man.

This disgusts me, but I totally believe it, as a college student seeing these kinds of numbers do not surprise me at all.<p>Where I go to school though, the test is given at one hour on one day. The whole you have 52 hours to take the test thing. It seems like whoever takes it first could still help others study.

After being so upset with his cheating class, why does the professor offer a large time period to re-take the test? It seems like he is baiting the students to cheat again. Can't he set it during a normal class period where everyone takes it at once?

For most courses the exams don't stray far from what's already been asked before. Competition between universities has made this problem a lot worse. Students choose courses with high pass rates and favorable grade ratios.

The prof's home page states: "Important Note: I have chosen not to participate in any social networking environments." <a href="http://www.bus.ucf.edu/rquinn/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bus.ucf.edu/rquinn/</a>

The entire education system is essentially one big game, from the obscure admissions process to professors sticking to predetermined grading distributions; and these students are simply playing along.

It was probably more work to memorize the test bank than to study the material as normal... It's ironic that those who memorized the test bank probably know the material best.

Here's the video of a part of the first lecture in which he claims he writes the test questions:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJG7aCQtI8E" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJG7aCQtI8E</a><p>Based on that, I think a reasonable student would conclude that even if a publisher's test bank is not supposed to be accessible to students, using that test bank would not constitute cheating. Since the prof wasn't forthright in stating that he would use the publisher's test bank, he has no right to complain that students used it to study.

Those who cheated because they did not know the material will not do as well on the makeup. That is one way of finding out who cheated.

I just wish I could plusvote this one twice.

"The consequences will never be the same!" ;)

Dupe.