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UCF Professor Richard Quinn accuses class of cheating

23 points by cantbecool 16y ago

cantbecool 16y ago
I love how this professor is acting like he is taking the high road, but in reality, he himself is a hypocrite. If he had so much 'forensic' evidence, why didn't he just take it to academic affairs? I'm not condoning cheating in anyway, but it's not the students fault that he is creating his exams from a public publishers test bank, which anyone could purchase and distribute. In my opinion the professor is just lazy.
- irinotecan 16y ago
  Because in reality he could have gotten to 99% but never to 100%. There was always the chance that a student genuinely aced the exam on his own accord but would get accused of cheating and expelled anyway. That would be disaster for the prof and the school if the kid turned around and sued them. So instead he opted for a typical prisoner's dilemma to weed out the cheaters. And notice the carrot for that, take an ethics course and all is forgiven. Not, you will fail this class but be thankful you're not expelled.
  - iwr 16y ago
    The cheaters(?) would be visible if they do significantly worse in the second test, compared to the first.
    - sukuriant 16y ago
      That's not entirely accurate. Any number of things can affect a grade on a test. Included in this list is: personal issues, slightly (but sufficiently) different content, ambiguous questions (remember, these new questions were made in 90-something hours).
      - cantbecool 16y ago
        Bimodal distribution exist when an external force has been applied to a data set. Now for a what if. What if the students apply themselves and study, but the class ends up getting around the same distribution of scores?(Where the median is a 90.) The professors theory of cheating is thrown out the window.
kls 16y ago
I had this happen in one of my classes, when I was in school. The whole class was in shock and fear, as the professor asked what we thought she should do. I was the only one that spoke up and said, well if you truly have evidence you should not be presenting it to us you should be presenting it to the authorities and that the whole thing felt like a shake down. It was the only class I got a C in, but I kept my dignity I know confronting a professor like that was grade suicide but man we as people get bullied enough, I was not about to get shook down for a couple students stupidity if it took place at all. If I where in that course at UCF, I would be raising hell about having to retake the test. If they are so 100% sure about the offenders, then why does everyone have to retake the exam, why is everyone being punished. Maybe he does not have the data he claims he does. Until they could prove that they do, I would be standing my ground on not retaking the test because I am innocent until proven guilty and if they did prove it they would prove why I as a non-cheater need not retake the test.
- cantbecool 16y ago
  You were definitely bold to say such a thing to your professor. I probably would have stood right beside you and said the same thing. I'm currently have a problem in a Stat class. My TA is fresh of the boat, and my professor doesn't want to hear it. But anyway, grades are just another arbitrary number, like a credit score. They ultimately mean nothing in the long run. That's just me though. I'd show up with the note signed by God just to aggravate him. The main reason why people get desperate and cheat is because they have to maintain a certain GPA for additional financial aid.
  - warren_s 16y ago
    Grades are for college, but ethics are for life.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  The teacher used statistical analysis - enough to prove that a lot of students did unrealistically well on this test, but not enough to prove that any one student cheated (after all, even a poor student can decide to start studying or get lucky with the questions.)
kunjaan 16y ago
Wait how the hell is that cheating? Shouldn't he be lesser predictable in the exams?
- cantbecool 16y ago
  It isn't. He should win an Oscar for his performance.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I am amazed by the responses this article is getting. It's like the community here approves of the cheating for some reason. I personally think it's neat to see the analysis he did. It's cool to see the way statistics can uncover things with clarity you wouldn't have expected (e.g. the bimodal distribution) The implications are heavy, but I am impressed by his results (the confessions, which are a positive thing). I have been on the non-cheating side of this sort of thing, both as an instructor and as a student, so I know exactly how both the professor and the honest students are feeling. It's a heavy, heavy weight to deal with (you can hear his voice is just shy of cracking- that's real, I've BEEN THERE), and there are no good and no right answers, but it must be addressed.
- ugh 16y ago
  How is using a test bank cheating? Didn’t you use test exams or example exams to prepare for the real test? I know that as a widespread and morally perfectly acceptable preparation method.
  - dangrossman 16y ago
    Many text books have accompanying material for instructors, including, sometimes, exam questions. The publishers will absolutely not make it available to anyone except instructors. This is from the MIT press website, for example: "Instructors with access to the manual must agree not to share the manual’s password, to make any of the solutions publicly accessible, on the Web or otherwise, or to make any of their own solutions publicly available." If a student has access to that material, someone violated that agreement, and the student is in possession of an illegal copy.
    - ugh 16y ago
      Ok, you are right, it is indeed cheating if students gained access to the test bank illegally.
alexophile 16y ago
I think getting questions from a third party exam bank to write your tests should be just as frowned upon as getting answers from the same bank to complete them. Am I being unrealistic to think that, if this guy's been teaching a course that hasn't changed over the last 5 years, he should be able to write a new midterm each semester?
sfaruque 16y ago
This guy pissed me off enough to write this comment. Classical fear tactics. By offering a level of "immunity" for those who come forward, he's creating fear for those who actually did cheat. Look at what he's offering to those who come forward: "Any permanent record of this will be wiped from your transcripts. There will be no further action taken." Then he goes on to taking a reverse psychological approach by saying: "You want to take a high risk gamble, take it! I challenge you to take it…." What he essentially did was scare the students into believing that his statistical analysis would be enough to expel them from college. Sure, matching previous student batch's midterm results vs. current batch of midterm grades gives an insight. If you further compared that with the students other grades of similar subjects, then it is statistically possible to say that there's an anomaly present. As far as I know (maybe the rules has changed since I went to college), you can't get kicked out of school because the administrators believe that it is statistically possible that you cheated.
philosoraptor 16y ago
Looking at three diff threads on this story, people are assuming a bunch of things to be known that cannot be known from this video, such as: * assuming the test bank is publicly accessible or is supposed to be (the instructor's statement that the publisher has been informed that the test bank is compromised implies it is intended to be private to instructors); * assuming the test bank is accessible through teacher's versions of textbooks (it could be online via authentication); * assuming the access by any student must have been illegitimate (the students could have easily thought it a study guide, and the source could have been someone other than a student--some instructors also can and do reuse questions and reward students for researching and studying them); * assuming the access must have been legitimate; * assuming the staff can prove particular students cheated (yeah.. we just don't know this, especially if we don't know how the test is structured or how the data analysis works); * assuming the staff CAN'T prove particular students cheated (first, you can't assume something impossible just because you can't imagine how it could be possible; second, data analysis is shocking in what it can inform; third, the data analysis can be used just to indicate suspicious tests that the human instructor and TAs then review themselves; (and fourth, yes I did just nest semicolons and parens within other parens and semicolons)); * assuming the student who turned in the copy of the test bank was one of the cheaters or could even make use of it (it's possible they acquired it afterwards and turned it in out of spite or after discovering how widespread it was and that it would greatly disaffect the class results); * assuming students feeling guilt implies guilt of the actual wrongdoing (people can feel bad about actions that aren't wrong, even when they know they aren't wrong); * [I can't even list all the rest of the ones I've read..] Then there are the assumptions that, even if true, aren't relevant, like: * assuming students paid money for it because it's a business school * assuming older generations have superior ethics to the current generation (many would argue on the hypocrisy of older generations accusing others of entitlement); * whether the instructor is lazy or not (this is only relevant to issues of perceived value of the class, instructor, program, and school; not to the issue of academic dishonesty) I have read these and many more from both people criticizing the students and people criticizing the instructor. The point is that people in these threads are assuming the video gives more facts than it does. The only relevant factors I see are how they acquired the test bank and how the instructor communicated the nature of the exam. Neither of these factors are actually that easy to determine from the video. On one hand, the very existence of the test bank isn't something the instructor should feel either has to be divulged, if he has a reasonable expectation that it is supposed to stay private, or explicitly informed to the students that it's off limits. On the other, this is also a possible scenario: that some students reasonably assumed past or public exam material was fair game; encountered the test bank publicly (or acquired it from someone else thinking that they got it legitimately); used it to study; thought, upon seeing the exam contained some of the same questions, that they had studied from the right material; and only realized it afterwards, even as late as when the instructor revealed the extent of the incident, then felt compelled to confess. Is it likely it happened with all the confessors? Probably not. Is it possible and plausible it may have happened with some of them? Certainly. Presumably, all the confessions were in private, some possibly anonymous.

23 points by cantbecool 16y ago

I love how this professor is acting like he is taking the high road, but in reality, he himself is a hypocrite. If he had so much 'forensic' evidence, why didn't he just take it to academic affairs? I'm not condoning cheating in anyway, but it's not the students fault that he is creating his exams from a public publishers test bank, which anyone could purchase and distribute. In my opinion the professor is just lazy.

irinotecan 16y ago
Because in reality he could have gotten to 99% but never to 100%. There was always the chance that a student genuinely aced the exam on his own accord but would get accused of cheating and expelled anyway. That would be disaster for the prof and the school if the kid turned around and sued them. So instead he opted for a typical prisoner's dilemma to weed out the cheaters. And notice the carrot for that, take an ethics course and all is forgiven. Not, you will fail this class but be thankful you're not expelled.
- iwr 16y ago
  The cheaters(?) would be visible if they do significantly worse in the second test, compared to the first.
  - sukuriant 16y ago
    That's not entirely accurate. Any number of things can affect a grade on a test. Included in this list is: personal issues, slightly (but sufficiently) different content, ambiguous questions (remember, these new questions were made in 90-something hours).
    - cantbecool 16y ago
      Bimodal distribution exist when an external force has been applied to a data set. Now for a what if. What if the students apply themselves and study, but the class ends up getting around the same distribution of scores?(Where the median is a 90.) The professors theory of cheating is thrown out the window.

kls 16y ago

I had this happen in one of my classes, when I was in school. The whole class was in shock and fear, as the professor asked what we thought she should do. I was the only one that spoke up and said, well if you truly have evidence you should not be presenting it to us you should be presenting it to the authorities and that the whole thing felt like a shake down. It was the only class I got a C in, but I kept my dignity I know confronting a professor like that was grade suicide but man we as people get bullied enough, I was not about to get shook down for a couple students stupidity if it took place at all. If I where in that course at UCF, I would be raising hell about having to retake the test. If they are so 100% sure about the offenders, then why does everyone have to retake the exam, why is everyone being punished. Maybe he does not have the data he claims he does. Until they could prove that they do, I would be standing my ground on not retaking the test because I am innocent until proven guilty and if they did prove it they would prove why I as a non-cheater need not retake the test.

cantbecool 16y ago
You were definitely bold to say such a thing to your professor. I probably would have stood right beside you and said the same thing. I'm currently have a problem in a Stat class. My TA is fresh of the boat, and my professor doesn't want to hear it. But anyway, grades are just another arbitrary number, like a credit score. They ultimately mean nothing in the long run. That's just me though. I'd show up with the note signed by God just to aggravate him. The main reason why people get desperate and cheat is because they have to maintain a certain GPA for additional financial aid.
- warren_s 16y ago
  Grades are for college, but ethics are for life.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
The teacher used statistical analysis - enough to prove that a lot of students did unrealistically well on this test, but not enough to prove that any one student cheated (after all, even a poor student can decide to start studying or get lucky with the questions.)

kunjaan 16y ago

Wait how the hell is that cheating? Shouldn't he be lesser predictable in the exams?

cantbecool 16y ago
It isn't. He should win an Oscar for his performance.

sliverstorm 16y ago

I am amazed by the responses this article is getting. It's like the community here approves of the cheating for some reason. I personally think it's neat to see the analysis he did. It's cool to see the way statistics can uncover things with clarity you wouldn't have expected (e.g. the bimodal distribution) The implications are heavy, but I am impressed by his results (the confessions, which are a positive thing). I have been on the non-cheating side of this sort of thing, both as an instructor and as a student, so I know exactly how both the professor and the honest students are feeling. It's a heavy, heavy weight to deal with (you can hear his voice is just shy of cracking- that's real, I've BEEN THERE), and there are no good and no right answers, but it must be addressed.

ugh 16y ago
How is using a test bank cheating? Didn’t you use test exams or example exams to prepare for the real test? I know that as a widespread and morally perfectly acceptable preparation method.
- dangrossman 16y ago
  Many text books have accompanying material for instructors, including, sometimes, exam questions. The publishers will absolutely not make it available to anyone except instructors. This is from the MIT press website, for example: "Instructors with access to the manual must agree not to share the manual’s password, to make any of the solutions publicly accessible, on the Web or otherwise, or to make any of their own solutions publicly available." If a student has access to that material, someone violated that agreement, and the student is in possession of an illegal copy.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Ok, you are right, it is indeed cheating if students gained access to the test bank illegally.

alexophile 16y ago

I think getting questions from a third party exam bank to write your tests should be just as frowned upon as getting answers from the same bank to complete them. Am I being unrealistic to think that, if this guy's been teaching a course that hasn't changed over the last 5 years, he should be able to write a new midterm each semester?

sfaruque 16y ago

This guy pissed me off enough to write this comment. Classical fear tactics. By offering a level of "immunity" for those who come forward, he's creating fear for those who actually did cheat. Look at what he's offering to those who come forward: "Any permanent record of this will be wiped from your transcripts. There will be no further action taken." Then he goes on to taking a reverse psychological approach by saying: "You want to take a high risk gamble, take it! I challenge you to take it…." What he essentially did was scare the students into believing that his statistical analysis would be enough to expel them from college. Sure, matching previous student batch's midterm results vs. current batch of midterm grades gives an insight. If you further compared that with the students other grades of similar subjects, then it is statistically possible to say that there's an anomaly present. As far as I know (maybe the rules has changed since I went to college), you can't get kicked out of school because the administrators believe that it is statistically possible that you cheated.

philosoraptor 16y ago

Looking at three diff threads on this story, people are assuming a bunch of things to be known that cannot be known from this video, such as: * assuming the test bank is publicly accessible or is supposed to be (the instructor's statement that the publisher has been informed that the test bank is compromised implies it is intended to be private to instructors); * assuming the test bank is accessible through teacher's versions of textbooks (it could be online via authentication); * assuming the access by any student must have been illegitimate (the students could have easily thought it a study guide, and the source could have been someone other than a student--some instructors also can and do reuse questions and reward students for researching and studying them); * assuming the access must have been legitimate; * assuming the staff can prove particular students cheated (yeah.. we just don't know this, especially if we don't know how the test is structured or how the data analysis works); * assuming the staff CAN'T prove particular students cheated (first, you can't assume something impossible just because you can't imagine how it could be possible; second, data analysis is shocking in what it can inform; third, the data analysis can be used just to indicate suspicious tests that the human instructor and TAs then review themselves; (and fourth, yes I did just nest semicolons and parens within other parens and semicolons)); * assuming the student who turned in the copy of the test bank was one of the cheaters or could even make use of it (it's possible they acquired it afterwards and turned it in out of spite or after discovering how widespread it was and that it would greatly disaffect the class results); * assuming students feeling guilt implies guilt of the actual wrongdoing (people can feel bad about actions that aren't wrong, even when they know they aren't wrong); * [I can't even list all the rest of the ones I've read..] Then there are the assumptions that, even if true, aren't relevant, like: * assuming students paid money for it because it's a business school * assuming older generations have superior ethics to the current generation (many would argue on the hypocrisy of older generations accusing others of entitlement); * whether the instructor is lazy or not (this is only relevant to issues of perceived value of the class, instructor, program, and school; not to the issue of academic dishonesty) I have read these and many more from both people criticizing the students and people criticizing the instructor. The point is that people in these threads are assuming the video gives more facts than it does. The only relevant factors I see are how they acquired the test bank and how the instructor communicated the nature of the exam. Neither of these factors are actually that easy to determine from the video. On one hand, the very existence of the test bank isn't something the instructor should feel either has to be divulged, if he has a reasonable expectation that it is supposed to stay private, or explicitly informed to the students that it's off limits. On the other, this is also a possible scenario: that some students reasonably assumed past or public exam material was fair game; encountered the test bank publicly (or acquired it from someone else thinking that they got it legitimately); used it to study; thought, upon seeing the exam contained some of the same questions, that they had studied from the right material; and only realized it afterwards, even as late as when the instructor revealed the extent of the incident, then felt compelled to confess. Is it likely it happened with all the confessors? Probably not. Is it possible and plausible it may have happened with some of them? Certainly. Presumably, all the confessions were in private, some possibly anonymous.