Student Who Released Code From Assignments Accused of Cheating 333
Death Metal sends in a story about Kyle Brady, a computer science major at San Jose State University, who recently ran into trouble over publishing the source code to his programming assignments after their due dates. One of Brady's professors contacted him and threatened to fail him if he did not take down the code. Brady took the matter to the Computer Science Department Chair, who consulted with others and decided that releasing the code was not an ethical violation. Quoting Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing:
"There's a lot of meat on the bones of this story. The most important lesson from it for me is that students want to produce meaningful output from their course-assignments, things that have intrinsic value apart from their usefulness for assessing their progress in the course. Profs — including me, at times — fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students, a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc. But the convenience of profs must be secondary to the pedagogical value of the university experience — especially now, with universities ratcheting up their tuition fees and trying to justify an education that can put students into debt for the majority of their working lives."
I would never have "published" my undergrad code.. (Score:4, Funny)
...as I recall, the campus newspaper charged by the line for classified ads.
Re:Teachers wrong here (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with this approach is the nature of collage assignments.
I vote this the most unwittingly insightful comment ever.
Re:Problem Solved Many Years Ago (Score:5, Funny)
Then I would ask for help from other members of the department and make it a customizable growing project to protect the academic integrity of my school and students.
I'd set it as next year's assignment!
The following year would be "using the university's cheat-detector algorithm, submit the supplied program such that it successfully passes the detector without raising any investigative points".
The year after that, "improve the detector to successfully protect against accepting supplied programs A and B such that they are correctly detected as similar".
Repeat until retirement. (Why did I ever go for a job in the private sector, my talents are obviously wasted here!)
Re:HR screeners without clue (Score:5, Funny)
...especially insufficiently clueful screeners in human resources departments.
This is absolutely true. If that HR wonk doesn't have that "degree requirement" checkbox marked, your resume takes a one-way trip to the trash can. With degree inflation being what it is, you'll need a Phd to work at McDonalds in ten years.
For that eventuality, I'm still working on my thesis titled: "Recidivism in McDonaldland: A Restorative Approach to the Hamburglar Problem".
I'm sorry (Score:1, Funny)
You lost me at "Quoting Cory Doctorow..."
Re:CORY DOCTOROW IS NOT A "PROF." (Score:2, Funny)
But but... He's Cory _DOCTOR_ow! If you've got DOCTOR in your name, you've gotta be a smart, intelligent, and sophisticated individual!
If he put the Dr. at the start, he'd be "Dr. Ow", and what kind of message would that give his readers? I know I feel pain when I read his commentary!
Re:Teachers wrong here (Score:3, Funny)
There is an old saying - "Those who can - do. Those who can't - teach."
Conclusion to be reached from grandparent: Some teachers are idiots.
I find this saying utter bullshit. I grew up among teachers and I hear complaints all the time about either stupid students or students with absolutely no manners.
Conclusion to be reached from parent: Some students are idiots.
Root cause: Some people are idiots.
Congratulations! You're both right.
Re:Problem Solved Many Years Ago (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat until retirement.
Tenure is sufficient :)