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All 300 computer science students at ANU penalised due to widespread cheating

13 points by adrian_mrd 6y ago

pedalpete 6y ago
I'd think they could be a bit more creative here and make an assignment to discover the fraudsters. It's real life experience, where they have a stake in the outcome, and possibly an interesting and fun exercise.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  What's interesting to me is that someone obviously found the ads looking for someone to complete the assignment and reported the cheaters. Should have played the long con and given them the "answers" and then once it was turned in they would have known who did it.
hn_asker 6y ago
I really don't believe in the academic system we have now. It feels like an elitist club. Grades are only a snapshot of your current understanding of something. Given enough time and interest, anyone can earn high marks. If I was in this class, I'd only care if I was able to learn what I came there to learn. I have friends who go through hell being on their anti-psych meds and anti-depressants because of uni. I wish the culture in university was more empathetic to their needs.
- NoPicklez 6y ago
  Just curious, what alternatives do you suggest to enable Universities to measure the capabilities of their students? Afterall, you can't allow a student doctor to graduate and practice if they don't sufficiently know what they're doing (extreme case). Perhaps only allowing for a pass or fail grade maybe?
  - hn_asker 6y ago
    I'm a fan of IBL style courses. I don't know if it scales well but it isn't obvious to me that it can't. If a student can teach better than the teacher, then that should be good enough. The point of higher education is to create independent critical thinkers. IBL is particularly good at this in STEM courses by my personal experience. It's a narrow perspective admittedly. I suspect this is how education was really done before all this non-sense about grades. Elite schools select for the the best teachers anyway. Plus, knowing that students can eventually produce other students makes it easier for researchers to focus on their specialty. They may even come to the students for help. I'm not a big fan of time and deadlines either. Being quick and clever is great but you can do just fine being a conventional thinker that is persistent and diligent. The point is to refactor the academic system to be robust enough to adjust to a person's life. Right now it is a rigid system traumatizing the people it's supposed to serve.
dooglius 6y ago
clickbait, the decision by the professor was overridden by the university as it says at the end
aaron695 6y ago
I always liked the science fictions stories where they'd make people training to be elite fail as part of their learning. So they'd be prepared for the real world. I guess this is why it's called science fiction (And one lecturer is not ANU, ANU are of course reversing this. And lecturer's are also humans, unless they have done this year in year out I don't think this mistake is something to judge the entire university system on, or them as a person, and this assignment seems like one of those dumb assignments that don't have to count and are more about forcing students to actually learn the materials earlier than the week before exams)

13 points by adrian_mrd 6y ago

I'd think they could be a bit more creative here and make an assignment to discover the fraudsters. It's real life experience, where they have a stake in the outcome, and possibly an interesting and fun exercise.

randycupertino 6y ago
What's interesting to me is that someone obviously found the ads looking for someone to complete the assignment and reported the cheaters. Should have played the long con and given them the "answers" and then once it was turned in they would have known who did it.

hn_asker 6y ago

I really don't believe in the academic system we have now. It feels like an elitist club. Grades are only a snapshot of your current understanding of something. Given enough time and interest, anyone can earn high marks. If I was in this class, I'd only care if I was able to learn what I came there to learn. I have friends who go through hell being on their anti-psych meds and anti-depressants because of uni. I wish the culture in university was more empathetic to their needs.

NoPicklez 6y ago
Just curious, what alternatives do you suggest to enable Universities to measure the capabilities of their students? Afterall, you can't allow a student doctor to graduate and practice if they don't sufficiently know what they're doing (extreme case). Perhaps only allowing for a pass or fail grade maybe?
- hn_asker 6y ago
  I'm a fan of IBL style courses. I don't know if it scales well but it isn't obvious to me that it can't. If a student can teach better than the teacher, then that should be good enough. The point of higher education is to create independent critical thinkers. IBL is particularly good at this in STEM courses by my personal experience. It's a narrow perspective admittedly. I suspect this is how education was really done before all this non-sense about grades. Elite schools select for the the best teachers anyway. Plus, knowing that students can eventually produce other students makes it easier for researchers to focus on their specialty. They may even come to the students for help. I'm not a big fan of time and deadlines either. Being quick and clever is great but you can do just fine being a conventional thinker that is persistent and diligent. The point is to refactor the academic system to be robust enough to adjust to a person's life. Right now it is a rigid system traumatizing the people it's supposed to serve.

dooglius 6y ago

clickbait, the decision by the professor was overridden by the university as it says at the end

aaron695 6y ago

I always liked the science fictions stories where they'd make people training to be elite fail as part of their learning. So they'd be prepared for the real world. I guess this is why it's called science fiction (And one lecturer is not ANU, ANU are of course reversing this. And lecturer's are also humans, unless they have done this year in year out I don't think this mistake is something to judge the entire university system on, or them as a person, and this assignment seems like one of those dumb assignments that don't have to count and are more about forcing students to actually learn the materials earlier than the week before exams)