All Posts Tagged With: "exam cheating"
Exam allegedly stolen at USask
Biology exam postponed after copy taken “without authorization”
In an email to students in the Biology 224 class, in which hundreds of students are enrolled, the department explained that they have “strong evidence” of a breach of security after a copy of the lab exam was taken “without authorization.” The department also said it was not sure how many copies of the exam had been circulated, if any had made it into students’ hands at all. “This is completely out of our hands and the most appropriate course of action is to cancel the lab exam,” read the email, according to The Sheaf.
The department told students it was considering either rescheduling the exam or simply excluding the final from the lab portion of the course.
Cheaters beware: Big Brother is watching
The University of Central Florida videotapes test-takers to combat cheating
Students of the University of Central Florida better be clever if they hope to fool the system and cheat on exams. The school — which the New York Times describes as “the frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating” — features a testing centre where students are videotaped while writing exams. If something suspicious is spotted, the camera zooms in on the student and a computer system records what part of the exam she is currently working on. (The exams are all taken on computers.)
If monitoring isn’t enough to creep out the civil libertarian in you, associate dean Taylor Ellis’ ominous pledge to track cheaters down may raise hairs on your arms: “I will never stop it completely, but I’ll find out about it,” he promises would-be fraudsters.
I believe him. Ellis has banned chewing gum during exams as it could cover up the sound of text messaging or other covert operations. All scrap paper is date-stamped and collected at the end of the exam. If you must wear a cap, it must be on backwards so you can’t hide notes under the brim. And the computers are recessed into desks to prevent students from secretly photographing the screens (although, admittedly, I have no idea how that would help).
In recent surveys, some 61 per cent of 14,000 American students asked admitted to cheating on tests or assignments, according to the New York Times. Yet Ellis claims there have only been 14 suspected cheaters of 64,000 exams taken at last semester at Central Florida, which says to me that he’s either incredibly successful or incredibly unsuccessful.
Like any particularly nasty virus, students adapt fast, and a plethora of websites to help students cheat and share homework are cropping up as fast as Turnitin.com can update its algorithms. On Course Hero, students can share notes, past exams and homework assignments. On Cramster science and engineering students can find solutions for homework assignments from 77 textbooks.
UWindsor investigating cheating allegations
1,100 first-year psychology students to re-write midterm
The University of Windsor is probing allegations of cheating that could see 1,100 students being forced to re-write a midterm. The university will not confirm specifics, including what course the alleged cheating took place. However, the Windsor Star reported that the course is called Psychology as a Social Science, a first year class taught by a professor Kenneth Cramer.
The textbook used for the class came with a CD that included multiple choice questions. Evidently, the questions were distributed to students before the exam. Cramer sent an email to his students on Thursday informing them that the midterm will have to be re-written. “The University Academic Integrity Office is currently investigating this matter. As a result, the mid-term results (perhaps only the textbook questions) are deemed invalid and must be tested again in good time. I should have more information from the Integrity Office by early next week so we can find the best way to address this. I cannot have you review your mid-terms, since these are to be turned over to the Integrity Office,” he wrote.
According to the Star, a preliminary investigation revealed that “some students scored near perfect on the textbook questions, yet failed the lecture questions.” A student told the paper that the same textbook is used at the University of Calgary and that this may have been the source of the breach.
Home-town graduation for class of cheaters
Cheaters may not win, but they don’t necessarily lose either
This is a pick-up from RYS (one of my favorite sites) of a story from The Columbus Dispatch. This story is equal parts heartwarming tale of small town folks doing good for their kids and stomach churning example of what’s wrong with education today.
The short version is this. At a small town high school a good half the graduating class was either guilty of cheating on their final tests or else complicit in the widespread cheating. Some enterprising hacker managed to get a hold of the tests and they got passed around. Seems like there might be another interesting story in the background here (a lot of “hacking” just means that some administrator had a criminally stupid password) but this story isn’t about the theft. It’s about the decision on the part of the high school to cancel graduation. With so much of the class implicated in academic misconduct I guess it just seemed like the thing to do. I agree with the decision.
Apparently parents disagreed. So they held their own graduation. Everyone pulled together in that movie-of-the-week sort of way to show the kids just how special they are – cheaters and all. Except the hacker, that is. And really, as far as I’m concerned, he’s the only one who demonstrated any particular ability in the midst of this mess. But like I said that’s another story.
The real issue here (as the good folks at RYS surely appreciate) is that you can’t go around rewarding kids for cheating. Even those that didn’t cheat (and I admit, they got the roughest deal here) were treated to ringside tickets to exactly the last lesson they should be learning prior to any post-secondary adventures that may be in their futures. And that lesson is that cheaters may not win but they don’t really lose either. They may be embarrassed for a bit and have to endure some scolding, but at the end of the day things will work out and all will be forgiven.
I’ll spare you all my iteration of the consequences of academic misconduct at the university level but suffice it to say that the consequences are serious indeed. Students at Centerburg High School may be happy they had their special graduation after all but much like students everywhere they don’t necessarily realize what they most need to learn. One missed ceremony is the cheapest price I can imagine to drive home the seriousness of this issue. If that lesson could have saved even one student from dealing with this down the road that would have been worth it. But there you go. Parents may not appreciate what lessons their kids need to learn either.
Props to the administration at Centerburg High. It’s nice to know that someone is still taking a principled stand.
