Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group 554
Pickens brings news that a student at Ryerson University is facing 147 counts of academic misconduct after helping to run a chemistry study group through Facebook. School officials have declined to comment, but students are claiming that it is simply a valid studying technique in the information age. Quoting:
"Avenir, 18, faces an expulsion hearing Tuesday before the engineering faculty appeals committee. If he loses that appeal, he can take his case to the university's senate. The incident has sent shock waves through student ranks, says Kim Neale, 26, the student union's advocacy co-ordinator, who will represent Avenir at the hearing. 'That's the worst part; it's creating this culture of fear, where if I post a question about physics homework on my friend's wall (a Facebook bulletin board) and ask if anyone has any ideas how to approach this - and my prof sees this, am I cheating?' said Neale, who has used Facebook study groups herself."
I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Funny)
you should not have answered that question (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:you should not have answered that question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:you should not have answered that question (Score:5, Funny)
"Arts & Entertainment question: Please spell fhqwhgads." I'm assuming the questions are horrible for not just the person answering, but the person asking.
I've updated my sig accordingly, however.
Re:you should not have answered that question (Score:5, Funny)
2) I'm dyslexic. I can see the error now that you pointed it out, but I wouldn't notice it for myself ever
3) This is
Re:you should not have answered that question (Score:5, Funny)
1) tough, this is an English language board, if you want to be here learn the language!
2) whiner
3) touche
[/oblig troll response]
1) Seriously though, what is your native tongue b/c I simply assumed a typo. Not too bad at all.
2) so am I. It takes some work, but you can train your brain to double check your most common errors. Mine is appending the last char of one word to the beginning of the next: so thi sis how I'd type if I didn' tcheck more often.
3) touche.
-nB
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thousands of other students will have broken this rule in the past sitting around a library table or a kitchen counter - why did the university let them get away with it?
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, of course, if they kicked out all the students that were using the facebook group, there wouldn't be anybody left on the course and they wouldn't get all that nice money they provide. Much better just to pick one scapegoat to make an example of.
Sounds like a typical US college knee-jerk over-reaction. We can do it so we will... tremble in fear, puny students at the might of THE ADMINISTRATION...!
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if one tries to have a group the size of 100+ students in the library, canteen or anywhere in the premises. I'm sure there is more than enough incentive for the university to get them. Much like what they're doing here. And besides the evidence is as plain as the midday sun (w/o clouds).
147 offences? (Score:2)
Re:147 offences? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously! This looks like something straight out of the RIAA playbook.
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Re:147 offences? (Score:5, Informative)
SPecifically he is charged with academic misconduct (which is able to be punished by expulsion), because the group advertised not just "help" (like hints) but "post answers", and because people presumably handed in those answers it's plagerism (the questions that had answers given were requrired to be handed in and worth 10% of their mark). It's one of those really fine lines that was probably crossed, but it may not have been by him, perhaps just the people who joined the group. In that case they "should" have charged _EVERY_ student in the group with misconduct, clearly this isn't happening.
However, the administration is hampered by the rules which say that they MUST hold an appeals hearing if a professor alledges academic misconduct (it is the professor who reports plagerism, and the professor who submits a recommendation on action to be taken by the administration, in this case, the proff wants him to be expelled)
Article from the student newspaper: http://www.theeyeopener.com/article/3816 [theeyeopener.com]
Full disclosure: I'm a student at Ryerson, but not involved in this at all, and I don't think he should be expelled.
Re:147 offences? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article says that he is charged with "running an online study group on Facebook"; if that is true, then by extension Ryerson should outlaw any form of study group, because it's just as easy to share answers when you're meeting with others in the library or talking about it at a party with an upperclassman who took the class three years ago. If they are charging him with "posting answers on Facebook," or even "soliciting answers on Facebook," that would be more understandably punishable.
As a college prof, I can attest to the fact that catching plagiarism is necessary and one of the few crappy aspects of my job. There is a fine line between someone (tutor, friend, Facebook buddy, etc.) helping the student and giving him/her the answers, but the line is there nonetheless. It's impossible and inappropriate to police the students every minute; I've seen other profs burn themselves out with the paranoia that there are cheaters out there and they must catch every last one of them.
The answer, in my mind, is to make the students want to learn the material: make the lectures interesting and informative, show them why the information is important for them to know in the long-term, give tests which require the assimilation of the material and not just memorization of the answers. If a student in my class is cheating, I take some responsibility for it.
And maintaining an active Facebook account [facebook.com] doesn't hurt...
Re:147 offences? (Score:5, Insightful)
With respect to a math and science class, homework isn't meant to be done in isolation, and it certainly isn't meant to be assigned the same ethically rigorous standards of conduct that tests demand. Fundamentally, the purpose of homework is to encourage collaboration, so that the students can collectively supplement the teachings in class. Doing homework together isn't cheating. Getting the answers from someone else for a piece of homework isn't cheating. Finding the questions online and copying the answers verbatim isn't cheating. It isn't even plagurism, because there are a limited number of ways of solving each problem, and there's no expectation that every individual turn in their assignment with a novel solution--well, unless nobody in class knows just what the hell is going on and everybody's trying to BS their way through the problem hoping to get a few lucky points.
On the other hand, the understanding (and purpose) of an exam is that of individual knowledge and achievement. And that's the time to catch the cheaters who copy homework from others verbatim.
Obviously, different standards apply to liberal arts classes, where exams do not usually produce meaningful information, and hence where there actually is an expectation of novelty for assignments. But the arts stand diametrically opposed to math and science, as unlike math and science, there are no "right" or "wrong" results, only defensible and indefensible results.
This chem prof must be one of those jackasses who, while still in school, did all of his work alone and refused to lend assistance to any of his fellow students, especially if there was no tutoring credit. And he's probably justifying his own selfishness by imposing the same standards that he idealized as a student upon his students.
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It's easy to catch the cheaters: if they cheat on homework, they have to cheat to pass on the exams as well.
That's absurd, and completely illogical. What if someone asked you to do, say, 100,000 simple additions (two random numbers from 1 to 1000, say), but all you needed to submit was the answers. You're not allowed to use a calculator or write a script, or get answers from anyone else, of course. It would be very tempting to cheat, wouldn't it? Not because you HAVE to, but because you know you have better things to do than 100,000 simple addition problems.
I never cheated, simply because I never cared en
Re:147 offences? (Score:4, Interesting)
The company I work for has a very specialized engineering software package that we sell to students (with proof of enrollment) at a 99% discount. However, as long as there are universities, there will be software pirates. Some enterprising students decided to install an old version of our software that had been cracked in a university lab. Bad idea. The software tried to call home to register, and failed validation since it was no longer a supported version. Since there are so few users of the software, and I know who every legal user of the software is, I quickly noticed this. I discovered that the IP addresses of the computers trying to register the software were Ryerson lab computers in the school of engineering. After discussing the situation with Ryerson's IT staff, I found out that the students were told that I knew what they did, the school of engineering was notified of what happened, and their department chair was notified about what happened. I was told they all were going to face disciplinary action and that one of them would face expulsion since he committed a crime with university machines. I wasn't going to chase after them legally, I had no desire to; I just didn't want them installing pirated software on university computers. But Ryerson had some of their own punishments that they were going to mete out.
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Re:147 offences? (Score:5, Funny)
Stop e-mailing me! My penis is big enough!!!!!
Re:147 offences? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Interesting)
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The reason is that cheater needs to be caught red-handed.
That doesn't adequately explain it. There were 147 students in that facebook study group. One student was charged with 147 counts of misconduct, one for his own participation and one for each other participant. The case for scapegoating is fairly clear.
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Interesting)
Schools - university or otherwise - exist to guide students through pathways of learning, ideally providing both opportunities to explore alternate pathways, but also advice and counsel as to how to pick those pathways. It isn't about being the exclusive source of information. Teachers in general exist because our world's cluster-model of exchange of information (e.g. Wikipedia) has been documented to quite undeniably rely on the extremely specialized knowledge of a tiny sub-set of the users. Jimmy Wales noted that 50% of the Wikipedia edits comes from 0.7%, and 72% of the articles were written by 1.8% of the users. Without those super-contributors, the rest of Wikipedia's audience would have nearly nothing. Those super-contributors are 'teachers', just using a different medium.
I honestly don't understand the complaint by the school here, if just because the language quoted in the article doesn't seem to prohibit study groups. However, I wouldn't be comfortable making a judgment until I heard at least a few other key facts, e.g. whether the Prof. had specifically advised students not to collaborate. That said, the University's response is interesting in that it appears to view itself as targeting a source of corrosive behavior in the school.
To clarify: the school (at least as it appears to me) viewed this study group as corroding the learning experience by both encouraging and facilitating cheating of some sort (i.e. sharing of answers, methods, etc.), and the school took action to prevent this damage. From their perspective, cheaters do not merely hurt themselves (by depriving themselves of education) but in fact hurt others (by distorting the curve, distorting the perceived success of the Prof.'s performance, etc.).
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is approaching cheating. You have a historical record of the questions and eventually direct answers to the homework questions. Remember, these questions generally come from books which are used over and over. So by the third semester these books are going to be pretty well answered on the internet.
What makes this different is that most people work out the problem with their peers and then move on, not keeping the answers out on the table for the next group of students. It's collaborative problem solving, not collaborative problem/answer posting. The real damage can be that no one learns anything other than how to sign-up to Facebook and troll for answers.
Volatile methods should be considered acceptable: IM, IRC, Email (without archives). These promote collaboration without promoting copy/paste.
I personally did very little with collaborative study groups because I found too often I was shelling out answers to people who were just writing stuff down and never returning any value to the group or me personally. As such, I saw no value to my academic career in continuing this practice. I would not advocate anyone seriously invest as this being the only study means, you just don't learn that much, like problem solving.
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is, what works for one person doesn't for another, and vice-versa. I favor the collaborative approach over the solitary. I haven't RTFA, though I should, but suggesting approaches without giving out answers sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ten percent won't help you much. (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, that sort of cheating is easy to do and hard to catch. It goes on all the time without the benefit of the internet.
And it doesn't help its practitioners. Keep in mind that even if you got every answer from the forum and it was always right (not guaranteed if you have no idea how things work or how to sift the right ans
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Informative)
I used to teach a C programming lab class at uni (circa 1992-4), I twice had students hand in printouts of someone else's work, right down to the mandatory name and student id in the comment header! Out of a class of ~40 there really were only a handfull of original works, the rest were original crap or 'derivitave works'.
The 'derivitave works' show that students collaborate, but to some degree that's what is SUPPOSED to happen. No matter how simply you explain pointers in C only about 10-15% will have it sink in on the second presentation, they had already seen it once in the lecture.
I would sometimes question the derivative works that I randomly judged as 'too similar'. The best reason I got was: "We are husband and wife, you want us stop talking about our studies."
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Funny)
And heck, in subsequent semesters I'd have "friends" (mostly loose acquaintances that would use anyone they had to pass) ask me to do their homework in exchange for stuff (money, food, alcohol). If I had time and it looked like fun I'd do it for my own merit to hone my skills. Plus since the only time these people gave me the time of day is when *they* needed something for *their* homework I would have a bit of schadenfreude about the whole situation. I'd do the first few homework assignments (when my real classes had no homework) but then by time the hard stuff came out I "lost interest" and they'd end up failing because they had no concept on how anything actually worked.
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sadly, I've actually watched several students program by changing random letters until it magically works. Of course, this deserves a failing mark (for their own protection!) almost as much as plagiarism.
Then you missed out (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't believe in social learning? try this for a thought experiment: Each one of you has to open a puzzle box of some sort (with a ticket for free sex in it if you prefer). Seeing someone else open that box will give you a clue how to open yours, and that will make the task easier that having to figure it out all by yourself.
As for the punishing prof: he needs to be sued for academic misconduct in denying his students an efficient study method, and for relying on security by obscurity. Perhaps his actual intent to teach was that the rules have to be obeyed no matter what, and you better not cross anyone that has any (percieved) power over you, as they have to right to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Hierachy has to be maintained after all. That would not suprise me in the corporatist USA.
Re:Then you missed out (Score:5, Insightful)
Well give him a break, he is obligated to do that! The article states that Ryerson's academic misconduct policy defines misconduct as:
any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, [...].
So clearly - since learning would give you an academic advantage - it would have to be treated as misconduct. Same for any study method which has the potential to be efficient.
Deliberate Activity (Score:5, Insightful)
Other methods also come to mind
The point is that the "rule" is so vague it can be applied to all methods of of legitimate study and should therefore be considered unenforceable due to its vagueness . I did RTFA and there is a statement that no solutions were "traded" just tips and pointers as to how to solve a problem. The fact that it is on Facebook as opposed to a study hall or anywhere else is irrelevant. What needs to be examined is what was exchanged, was it actually solutions, plagiarized works, advice on how to solve problems in general, study tips, whatever? As always, the devil is in the details and if you want an informed opinion you have to look at them
Even so it is a difficult judgement call since you can be having roadblock and have to post part or all of your solution to get help.
I.E. We know the answer is 4 but every time I add 2 + 2 I get 5, what am I doing wrong?
I also wonder about the "permanence" factor, if the problems all change every year then having "old" solutions available is a study method not a cheat. If the teacher is using the same stuff then they are lazy. The university I went to published the exams, with solutions, for several prior years as an aid to studying, it probably kept the profs honest as well. As far as I can see the decision point isn't what technology is used, its what information ( that's useful data ) was exchanged.
Re:Then you missed out (Score:5, Informative)
Ryerson University is located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
And what's getting this student in trouble is the invitation to the Facebook group where it requests the posting of final full solutions, rather than warning against it. If he had just asked for solution techniques and advice, and stated without ambiguity that posting of final solutions is a no-no, he would have been fine.
RTFA, and also please don't assume that we only have igloos and polar bears up here.
Re:Then you missed out (Score:5, Insightful)
The metastory is the important bit here; as we careen headfirst into the Web 2.0 world and our meatspace lives become increasingly public in the blue nowhere, how are the rules changing? In particular, is the academic world just a little slow in adjusting centuries of tradition to cope with the changing lives of students?
If my university couldn't offer me coursework better than copy-to-pass, I would probably withdraw. In this particular case I think Ryerson is justified because of the technicalities of the wording of the group. This poor shmoe probably never thought to change the greeting message on the group when he took over, so he's basically getting slammed over somebody else's words because he assumed their position when he took over their job of running this group.
Goddamn shame, really.
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides saving the supervisors a load of time during correction, this encourages collaborative behaviour. Good students learn while explaining the subject to their peers. The slower students learn by having in effect a second, more hands-on lecture, by one of their peers. During my own undergraduate years, most of my professors did ask us to work in teams, and I always felt like I was learning much more, while working much more efficiently.
Of course, it is possible for people to "cheat" their way through this. So far, I haven't seen this happen too often, for two reasons: Peer pressure (if you don't contribute to the team, your mates won't want to work with you next term) and actual exam pressure (the final mark consists purely of the exam result, which is of course done by everyone individually). The examples I set are just (and I make that clear at the beginning of term) examples. They are an offer to you to learn something. You can choose not to take this offer up, it's your decision, you're an adult.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I shall answer the question! (Score:4, Interesting)
That kind of passive-aggressive "gotcha" teaching and grading is truly bullshit. Apparently he's got nothing useful to actually say about the field engineering that day.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I *am* a college teacher. I teach a sophomore-level statistics class. On the first day of class I hand everyone a formula card and say, "The point of this class is not to memorize formulas, it's to learn how to use them. You can use this card on all your tests." Done.
Same lesson -- 1 minute flat. Then I also get in a full lecture about organizing data. And I don't have to lie to them about made-up, never-recorded grades.
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Apparently, the University of Western Ontario here in London, Ontario, agrees with you. It was in today's local paper that UWO faculty have started these Facebook study groups themselves. They do include warnings against cheating, which is reasonable, I think, but this is impressive.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2008/03/07/4935451-sun.html [lfpress.ca]
I'd say with the CRTC, and U
Apparently only if you get caught (Score:2)
Re:Apparently only if you get caught (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to keep in mind that that if you post it you are also giving a chance to a social climber from cultures where such social climbing is cherished to report you. Though, based on personal experience they usually report the person who will help you.
I studied in a US university for 2 years. At the end of the second year we had to hand in coursework for a "philosophy of science" course. We were allowed and actively encouraged to discuss our findings. Which we did as a group - me and 3-4 US students. I organised the group and helped others with research on some of the topics like the Xenon paradoxes as they required math knowledge to understand and analyse properly. All of us had an A grade for the class and the coursework. I went home for the summer and was contacted near its end. Apparently two Indian students striving to become fledging proto-Americans got sub-A grades due to us blowing the curve. So to fix their grades they officially complained about me for copying from the American student coursework (in reality none of us copied anything, and it was me helping my mates, not vice versa).
At that point I decided that I have had enough of arseholes and social climbers and I decided to finish my education in Europe. Which I did and I never regretted the decision.
Frankly, I can understand this student. Been there, done that. Decided that the best idea is to tell the University to f*** off and go somewhere where writing defamatory letters onto other students is not a preferred means of academic and personal career advancement.
Re:Apparently only if you get caught (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the post grad careers options are also correspondingly better in the US then they are in the UK where I live (certainly in the academic field). That means more people want that option, so competition again increases. You can't have that without having barstards taking advantage of the system.
Things aren't always better here in the UK for students though. You often find that to get the best projects (or more importantly, project supervisors) as an undergrad, you can't just sit in line, you have to stand out. That means getting the good grades. Same goes for phd places. Unless you really stand out, you won't have nearly as much chance of being able to pick and choose. That's too much pressure for some, and they resort to cheating or underhand behavior.
I had several phd offers, and could take my time selecting the one I wanted. I had to work like a slave for years to make sure I got those offers though. Had I not done this I probably would have been stuck on the pile of applicants at some other university, which is not a good negotiation position. I know others cheated to try and get the same results as I and some friends were obtaining through sweat, tears, and a lack of beer. It's too tempting not to for some. Unfortunately people who serially cheat also find final exams cripplingly hard, so it sort of balances out.
Re:Apparently only if you get caught (Score:4, Interesting)
Put yourself into a proto-American's place. Suppose that you get a B because you suck and you lose your scholarship or it is reduced. Most of them have no means to top up the scholarship and weather the storm so they have to go back which is a stain on the reputation of the family. They will have people talking to their parents "Your precious Shriram is so f*** daft that he got kicked out of University" (name is real by the way). This also stands in the way of their dream to become proto-Americans, get a green card, a passport and remain in the country.
So a eliminating anomalies in the curve by a complaint here or complain there is absolutely not beyond them. I am definitely not surprised if the person who ratted on this student had this in mind (somebody pointed the prof to the group in the first place). In fact I have seen it and been on the receiving side one time too many to the point where I simply said "F*** it, F*** you all, I am leaving".
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a little too close for comfort (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe too close, but maybe it doesn't matter (Score:2)
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Had that happened on the course I taught I'd have removed the assignment and replaced it with a test the students had to sit. The people who set it up would have been in hot water. I'd press for punishment too, perhaps removal of lab rights, or a max C on the course, but nothing harsher.
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Cheating is a fail. Plain and simple. If you want high school treatment, well they should have stayed there.
However in this case it is impossible to tell if someone viewed the answers. So a spot test sounds like the best approach. I will use that next time I have this problem. Thanks!
WHy would you use Facebook? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Why use Google or read books/datasheets/tfm, when you can just post your question and expect a ready-to-use answer some time later ? (If the latter doesn't occur, jump up and down, pout and insult the members of the discussion forum)
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Diffrence between this and 'normal' study groups. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think the method in my madness is a mad method
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Expulsion might seem like overkill, but it is the punishment in cases of plagiarism and copying for an assessment. It's up the school's discretion whether or not to reprimand, suspend or expel. If they student wants to make an appeal he can do so with the Dean or the head of school.
However I don't know how far that will get him. As far as the school is concerned he collected and disseminated answers to an assignment to 146 people. If he had printed out answers and shared them around the school would probabl
The guy cheated (Score:5, Insightful)
That's all there is too it. They weren't talking about Chemistry in general, but they were answering questions and sharing the answers on an assignment worth 10% of their final grade. It was against the school's rules (Which they accepted when they joined the school) and they broke them, Facebook or no Facebook.
I don't quite understand why the media goes into a frenzy every time Facebook or YouTube is mentioned. Kids at my old highschool swapped answers on a free forum they quickly registered and ended up getting caught and punished. Is this any different? No, yet the media and non-techie readers get into a frenzy every time social networking is mentioned.
This is slightly off topic but what the hell is with that info box in the article? "OTHER CASES: Expulsions for internet misuse". It implies that students were expelled simply because they accessed the internet or social networking websites. But that's not the case. They were expelled because the school either has the right to expel at their own discretion (eg. The gay guy who was expelled John Brown Christian College) or they broke other school rules such as harassing and physically abusing school officials. The fact that it happened on the internet is redundant, the outcome would have been the same if polaroid pictures of the incidents were found or if someone was dobbed in.
Not an assignment worth 10%... (Score:2)
Indeed, this is a failure in policy. (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem here is that the policy sucks. It's like college classes with an attendance policy - if students are not showing up, and attending the class is worthwhile, they're either brilliant and will pass the exams anyway, or they are not brilliant, and will fail the exams because they did not avail themselves of the opportunities presented by class. In those circumstances, an attendance policy is not necessary. So when a class HAS an attendance policy anyway, then you know that attending class is probably a waste of your time, because if it wasn't, the professor wouldn't need to hold your grade hostage to get you to show up and listen to them drivel 3 hours a week.
Same goes with homework. If people want to copy each other's homework, who cares - they'll fail the exam anyway. And if they copy homework and don't fail the exam, then the problem is that the homework was a waste of their time, and you shouldn't be blaming the students for not wanting to waste their time, especially when they're paying for an education, not the assignment of useless busy work.
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It's like college classes with an attendance policy - if students are not showing up, and attending the class is worthwhile, they're either brilliant and will pass the exams anyway, or they are not brilliant, and will fail the exams because they did not avail themselves of the opportunities presented by class. In those circumstances, an attendance policy is not necessary
Sounds to me like the professor is training their students for the real world -- you know, that terrible thing that happens when college
Re:Indeed, this is a failure in policy. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Part of the adult world is following the orders of your superiors (where appropriate), and learning
Re:Indeed, this is a failure in policy. (Score:4, Insightful)
He sent me another message asking if I thought attendance should be mandatory, and my response was that I wouldn't have been able to get the highest score in the course if I didn't understand the material, and that I thought mandatory attendance only held back people that don't take much from the lectures. He agreed with that logic, and didn't change the course. I think that professors that require mandatory attendance either aren't self starters that are capable of teaching themselves course material without guidance, or are conceited enough to believe that it isn't possible to learn the material without their expert tutelage.
In the real world, I work as a consultant, and I bill almost all of my work with fixed rate firm quotes. I have control over how, when, and what work gets done, and because I'm getting paid the same regardless of the amount of time it takes, I am seriously motivated to get things done as efficiently as possible. Not attending lectures that were unnecessary when I could teach myself the material in less time helped develop this real world skill.
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But in real life, you choose your employer freely. And you can get a manager/job/become-self-employed that doesn't waste your time. I know because I have a job like that. If I'm not actually billing a client (in which case I would be at the client's job site) and don't need to use the copier/fax-machine/office supplies, and don't need to see my manager, then I stay home.
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Re:The guy cheated (Score:5, Insightful)
actually, it seems more like 147 guys cheated, so why aren't they expelling the other 146 guys?
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There's a difference between people posting answers up for people to copy and paste verbatim, and people providing help for others to solve problems themselves.
If you're submitting a piece of work that's worth anything to your mark, and you copy the work of another student verbatim, that's cheating, there's no doubt about that.
But that's not what is happening here. As TFA says, Each student is given different questions:
Each student in the course received slightly different questions to prevent cheati
Umbrage at self plagiarism (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the two professors was rather lazy, so at some point during the course he ended up being given the same assignment he had already completed the first time around: twenty pages of dense pencil-work for which he had received a grade of 95% We're talking a major math school that often beats MIT/Harvard at the Putnam. This was not a trivial accomplishment.
One night, I want to go out for beers or something, but he tells me "I can't". I go "Why not?" "I have to copy out my twenty page diffy-Q assignement." I go "What do you mean, you have to copy out your own assignment?" He tells me the situation. I suggest "Why don't you just cross off the professor from the first time around and put the name of the new professor there, you already got 95% and it was your own work".
Obviously, he wanted to go for beers, because he took my foolish advice. His prof (a woman, let's call her Dolores) gave him a ZERO for his efforts. A ZERO for handing his own work (again), when she herself was too lazy to come up with her own assignment. He had to protest, and got his grade back, but it involved a lot of stress. Dolores seemed like a normal enough person in real life, if a bit stressed most of the time.
These days, if you write up your assignment using one of the math software packages, you could simply reprint your own work, and the prof. would have nothing to complain about. Dolores must have thought it was an insult to her authority, that he wouldn't have been so glib with a male professor. Or something. It actually beats me she was thinking at all. It's not like he had 70% the first time and clear scope for improvement, either. His first pass had two points deducted for what amounted to transcription errors, the kinds of small mistakes any person with a brain worth having will make in the middle of twenty pages of dense pencil-work.
This ban on "collaboration" in completing homework assignments has never been real. Students actually learn better when they share the process. I find the best situation is where the assignment is too difficult for any one person independently, and students are forced to group together and learn from each other.
"The Paper Chase" is effectively a documentary on this schooling approach. At the end of the day, though, you need to write up the answers in your own words or you'll be screwed on exam day, whatever credit you got on the assignments in the meantime.
It does sound like this site crossed the line more than most approaches to shared learning. But I wouldn't be too quick to side with the institution either, as universities can often be remarkably dumb institutions.
Some people say this prepares you for real life. There's the problem. It prepares you to *accept* the crap that goes on far too easily, so instead of having fewer PHBs we end up with more. I miss the days when universities existed to aim high.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
At the school where I did my undergraduate work, we had an academic honor code that explicitly forbade reusing your own work without proper citation. It was considered plagiarism. We never got recycled homeworks like your example, so it really was quite reasonable. An honor code that is strongly respected and enforced can actually create
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
By doing what he did - crossing out the prev professor's name, he's actually calling her out on it. Which not surprisingly she didn't take very well.
As for the marks, I don't see why he should get a zero at all. She might give him a different
No, the truth about collaboration comes out (Score:5, Interesting)
And that's the crux of why you want to collaborate. Problems aren't entirely obvious to solve and involve subtleties outside of the context which most students would typically approach. It frustrated me personally to no end to have this type of nonsense foisted on me over and over again, particularly as these subtleties get more and more obscure. In my electromagnetics class, which is mostly vector calculus anyway, I happened to get it but lots of my friends didn't, and I helped them learn the tricks. Similarly, in my complex variable calculus class, I struggled with a bad prof while friends in another section would be able to help me out because their prof constantly gave them an "approach methodology". I dropped out of my RF electronics class because the prof from old Mother Russia was a known hard-ass who eventually was formally reprimanded and endangered his own tenure for failing almost half of a section of Electronics I. None of them would've had a hope in passing without collaboration.
Ultimately, when I taught a 100-person section of an electronics lab and marked assignments and lab reports, I made sure that the students knew what was going on. As long as they weren't ad-verbatim copies, I let it go. Even scribing solutions can help you do well if you understand the workings of the problem as opposed to blind copying. But I warned all of my students on the ultimate lesson I learned in the whole situation: whether or not you copy an assignment, you will be dead in the water come exam time or in your career if you don't fundamentally understand the basics of the material. And that's the ultimate lesson in school, the reason why your profs don't chase you down like they do in grade school and the reason that people who copy without learning almost always get weeded out during exam time, and the reason why assignments are only 10% of the grade!
The only question here is whether this student is really guilty of 147 counts of academic misconduct, as opposed to the other 147-some individuals. Why aren't they in here too? I'd have serious legal questions regarding the equal application of regulations and wouldn't be surprised if this ends up in a real court. The university regulation itself is insanely vague, and my experience with discipline officers is that they are very rigid and determined to justify their position by being hard-asses. These people are hardly administering justice; they're just out to screw one kids entire academic career because it was more systematically organized than the undercurrent that's been doing the same thing for years.
One last thing, boys and girls: make sure when you collaborate that you don't use any personally-identifiable information in your group. Use anonymous networks like Tor to access sites, and don't use your own name. That way, all the court orders in the world won't help these academic clowns with fangs sharpen them on your carcass.
Re:The guy cheated (Score:5, Insightful)
It was against the school's rules (Which they accepted when they joined the school) and they broke them, Facebook or no Facebook.
Why is there always some dick ready to step up and blame the victim? In his eyes, and I'd say the eyes of anyone who doesn't have their head crammed up their academic buttocks, he wasn't breaking the rules. He wasn't cheating, he was studying. Even if they were posting the answers that doesn't help them on the test. Either you know the material or you don't.
any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage...
A little broad there, don't you think? Studying is a deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, that would fall under this definition. If you expect people to obey the rules, the rules have to be clear and reasonable. You think he specifically agreed not to post any homework questions to any online forum? Probably not. So the school gets to pull some strange interpretation out of their butt and make that the standard. We can't define the rules for you but we know a violation when we see one.
Now there's a great example for a teaching institution to set.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And why is there always some idiot who wants to defend behavior that is obviously prohibited?
Regardless of the exam, homework in this case was worth
definition of idiocy (Score:5, Funny)
Ryerson's academic misconduct policy, which is being updated, defines it as "any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage"
Great, no more turning up for class then!
Re:definition of idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
The study method of the future (Score:2, Insightful)
The rules are not for themselves! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care about homework and exercises, someone who cheats will flunk their exams aswell and if he won't, then who cares whether he did the exercises properly or not because apparently he understands the subject!
It's good practice (Score:2)
Now, how's this different from a face-to-face study session? The most obvious way is that there are potentially "leechers" in this situation who benefit from the exchange without contributing anything of v
Re:It's good practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Says who?
If this is true, then let the students copy all the homework they want. They'll fail the exams anyway.
And if it's not true, then let the students copy all the homework they want, because it is not their fault their professor sucks and wants to use their grade to force them to do homework that isn't teaching them anything.
Don't cheat on exams. Don't turn in papers you didn't write. But problem sets should be optional.
When I was in school, we'd get together in groups of 2-15 to do problem sets. Some kids figured most of it out and taught the other kids until they knew what was up too, and some other kids just showed up and leeched answers. The leechers failed the exams. This is no different than doing it on Facebook except Facebook is more efficient. The people who learn the material will pass and those who don't will fail.
It's not cheating until the people who don't learn the material start passing.
Broken grading method (Score:5, Interesting)
If 10% of the marks can be gained in unsupervised work then some will seek help - this he deems cheating. To not expect some students to do this shows little insight into human behaviour.
There have been recent rumblings in the UK of exam-counting homework where parents have helped their kids to produce work that was above what the kid could have done themselves. Is this really a fair way of conducting exams ? If the students really learn through the help then there is nothing wrong, but if they do not then they achieve grades that they do not deserve.
What is needed is a proper evauation of teaching and grading methods. Perhaps each bit of course work should be followed by a viva that would let the professor learn if the student really understood what they had written, that however is probably more work than the professor is willing to do.
Homework != Exam (Score:5, Insightful)
An exam tests your ability to solve problems under controlled conditions, without outside assistance. Homework is an exercise, and even if your grade depends on the homework, what is graded is essentially effort and diligence (like grading attendance). If you are assigned homework that requires you not to research or ask for assistance, why the hell did the teacher not make this a test, so the terminology remains clear? Isn't that like prohibiting people from sharing lecture notes, since getting information from a lecture you didn't attend would be "cheating"?
Seriously, does anyone not research online for homework, even if they do recall the subject matter, simply to verify that they understood it? And compare their homework with other students to check for errors? Obviously, copying homework is stupid as you fail to learn anything, but discussing and explaining homework problems is not copying; it is education. That other little thing schools are supposed to do, besides their main purpose of evaluating performance.
Not all schools see this as cheating. (Score:4, Interesting)
Stupid Professors (Score:5, Insightful)
Professors, this note is for you: the goal is to get academic knowledge into the brain of your students--not to teach life's tough lessons. Let life do that and stop being so full of yourselves. If you want to make sure they are learning what you should be teaching them, give them tests. If they fail, re-evaluate how you teach. Your job is not to be a moralist, moralizer, philosopher (obvious exceptions noted), parent, policeman, or judge.
Again: knowledge => student brain. Focus on that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Questions with answers (Score:5, Interesting)
Copying is NOT collaboration (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not. Copying the answer is cheating, period.
However, I believe the course administrators did something wrong too to give too much weight to something that is so prone to copying.
IMHO homework should count for no more than 15% of the total course performance, and there should be rules that if you fail the final, you'll fail the course no matter how well you did the assignments.
Re:The way the world really works (Score:5, Insightful)
In my engineering school, they believe this very strongly and in virtually all in-major classes homework is REQUIRED to be done in groups.
I hate it.
I already have dozens of engineering books picked up from used bookstores all over the state in my home, I know how to Google, and I've got friends I can ask the random question to. I'm also married and don't really like losing odd evenings and weekends to on-campus meetings with folks who can usually just stroll over from their dorm rooms and some of whom just wait on me to produce "the answer". Finally, many of these students are from all over the world and apparently it's quite acceptable in their cultures to do absolutely EVERYTHING together, including xerox their answers before handing them in.
Only one of my classes had a compromise: group work was OK but not required. I enjoyed that one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll tell you what's going to happen: nobody is going to care where the former student gets solutions and ideas. Individual problem-solving is characteristic of school and pretty much nowhere else. There is no business value in it. Heck, there's little academic value: once you're past taking the classes you're in research, and that's a collaborative environment.
As long as the students learn the material, they're just breaking ar