Board 8 > Caught some students cheating in my class. What would you do?

(+) Yeah! (+)

CaptainOfCrush posted...

This is the shittiest part of this job, and I barely punished them.

Don't worry. They'll be bragging about it like brohan in a few weeks

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Yeah, open book timed tests are a bit of a trap. What I think works better (though I don't know how feasible it is with the coronavirus situation) is to allow one or two pages of notes (typically there's not more than that that would be useful anyway, and preparing the sheet is typically a useful form of studying).

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SantaRPidgey posted...

Don't worry. They'll be bragging about it like brohan in a few weeks

Possibly but I doubt it. People don't usually brag about getting caught, especially when others almost certainly got away with the same shit.

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I've been through this before at the high school level. My first stint teaching was as a long-term sub, and I gave a test -- not a multiple choice -- where entire swaths of the class gave the exact same bizarre wrong answer, with no justification offered or work shown. Obviously, I noticed. I confronted them, accused the entire class of cheating (which pissed off the couple of honest kids,) and made them retake the test. It was, perhaps, the best solution I could offer, but it didn't really have the results I wanted. Plus, they were all a bunch of arrogant little shits (all-boys school) who insisted they had done nothing wrong even when I waved the evidence in their face. I should have gone to academic affairs, but I wasn't even a full teacher.

Not long after, I got a real teaching job. A few months into the year, something similar happened. I announced to the class they would be retaking the test, but before I did that, I scanned all the tests and lined up, side-by-side, the most egregious and obvious renditions of cheating to show the whole class. I wiped the names away, but the class all knew each other's handwriting. Sometimes it was the same wrong work, copied ver batim, and more often it was someone arriving at a strange wrong answer and the other person only writing that result and nothing else. I concluded with a page from the three exchange students from Korea, who all had the exact same meticulous handwriting, with the exact same characters, in the exact same placement. The one girl, who I swear walked right out of an anime judging from her body proportions, came up to me after the class crying and begging me not to do anything even though I had already announced that I was simply making everyone take the test over.

The problem with explaining how you know is that it takes your ammo away later. On the other hand, without explaining how you know, a lot of kids will defiantly refuse to believe you caught them, and claim any coincidences were total flukes. (Sadly, 50% of people have a below average understanding of statistics.)

Anyway, seeing as this was college, I would have been much harder on them. They need to learn, and ESPECIALLY if they're business majors. In my experience, the people who simply go to college for the sake of going to college and not for the education typically go into business. (Or something floofy like "communications," whatever the hell that represents.) Yet, strangely, business majors often get ahead in the corporate world in ways that people in other majors don't, and many of them think they can just operate by whatever culture surrounds them. I would absolutely make sure they learn a lesson from this.

I'm aware that assigning students a 0 often creates a huge and irrecoverable hole. In primary and secondary ed, there's a prevailing school of thought that giving a 0 as punitive measures for forgetting an assignment is never a good idea. It's probably not even a good idea for cheating on a test. However, I would definitely plaster them to the wall. My solution would have been to give them a 50. That's usually the advised value people in the never-zero crowd suggest, and I think it would have been an apt punishment here. Giving them the class average...I dunno if that's a punishment so much as it's just a failure to reward them.

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azuarc posted...

The one girl, who I swear walked right out of an anime judging from her body proportions

nice

And you're right about business majors. I could have gone in harder, but honestly, even from my limited experience in this line of work (at least within the business school of this university), the cheating seems so rampant that calling them out and punishing them at all seems like way more than any student is used to. The Finance faculty has acknowledged the spike in cheating since we went all-digital, but to my knowledge, no instructors have actually confronted their students and are instead treating the whole semester as a throwaway.

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CaptainOfCrush posted...

azuarc posted... The one girl, who I swear walked right out of an anime judging from her body proportions
nice

I probably didn't need that detail, but she was memorable because the other two were very good students and she was only kinda average, but I think she expected to coast on her cuteness. (It was also a Catholic school, so she was already wearing the skirt.) When she broke down on me at the end of class, I'm pretty sure it was authentic. She didn't seem like the type given to that level of subterfuge, and I could certainly see her being paranoid that she might get sent back to Korea for this. But it's entirely possible she was trying to play me. I know that the one time I saw her not wearing her school uniform was when I attended the class play, and she was there in a dress that showed off even more leg, and she definitely acted coy and cute in an attempt to get me to notice her.

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I think its for the students own good to have a (reasonable) punishment, too; this is a relatively painless way to learn this particular lesson, all things considered.

Im sure theyre all under a ton of stress this semester due to everything thats going on, which is probably amping up the temptation to cheat. The class I taught had homework that was considerably more work than a typical elective class, and several of them told me that they felt they didnt have much of a choice because they couldnt keep up with it. A lot of that was probably because this was possibly their first time experiencing that feeling of forced failure, and hadnt learned that its okay to fail (in the metaphorical sense; we ended up being extremely generous in handing out letter grades).

You might want to make an announcement to the class about cheating too; its quite possible there were others you didnt catch thatll do it again on the final.

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Are you sure they aren't the Phantom Thieves?

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CaptainOfCrush posted...

but to my knowledge, no instructors have actually confronted their students and are instead treating the whole semester as a throwaway.

That's unfortunate. I mean, yes, it is a throwaway. The students I'm tutoring right now are definitely not getting the instruction they need even if I meet with them one hour a week on Zoom. But writing off the class is only going to burn those kids later if the material is a legit prerequisite down the road. Admittedly, a lot of collegiate material is there just because, and maybe your non-econ majors won't need the calculus components of the course, but it's still sad.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

You might want to make an announcement to the class about cheating too; its quite possible there were others you didnt catch thatll do it again on the final.

Already did, and there absolutely were lol

azuarc posted...

The students I'm tutoring right now are definitely not getting the instruction they need even if I meet with them one hour a week on Zoom. But writing off the class is only going to burn those kids later if the material is a legit prerequisite down the road.

Agreed. Everyone's priorities have shifted, and it's not exactly fair that students have all been thrust into online classes (that clearly prioritize different competencies than traditional classes) that they never signed up for. That said, I feel like my university has been quite understanding and generous - they've already announced that this semester, students can opt to switch to a Pass/Fail system for any class, and that a score of D minus or higher would be the equivalent of a Pass. I'm trying to be sympathetic too, but I'm also putting in considerable effort (I'm doing both pre-recorded and live lectures) to make sure I still give them as decent an education as I can.

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yeah, the pass/fail thing i've heard.
basically a giant "we're passing everyone fuck everything."

like if you manage to fail in THIS situation, then either A) something extremely traumatic has happened to you personally, or B) you shouldn't be in school.


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CaptainOfCrush posted...

All three have now come clean. I essentially told them what you told your students, @LordoftheMorons . They're not bad people and they can easily recover, but I needed to punish them so that hopefully they learn something about not continuing this behavior.

It's essentially a math class (finance, but for most of these kids it's close enough) that's mandatory for all business majors, including the marketing and management students who might hate numbers and see it as one of the bitter pills of their academic schedule.

Regarding this class specifically, the numbers just didn't match up to me. This was a 21-question exam. Last semester, it was 20 questions, so I added one question here. Additionally, I changed 3 of the original 20 (in my opinion, I made those 3 only slightly harder). So I changed 3 questions to make them (arguably) a tiny bit harder and added one extra question. The other 17 questions were identical to last semester, where the class average was 75%. In exchange for making the exam very slightly harder and one question longer, I allowed them open book, open notes, open internet (obviously, they still needed to do things on their own).

Leading up to this first online exam, this was the strongest class I had taught based on their earlier averages, so I was looking for reasons as to why their average would be so much lower than last semester, because the open resources struck me as more than adequate compensation for me barely ratcheting the difficulty.

Unless the class collectively stopped caring because of COVID, I think I found my answer: their time management was poor. It makes sense - if you have all your notes there, it's easy to get lost in them and wonder where your last ten minutes went. On an exam like this, you should be maintaining a pace of ~3 minutes per question, so even losing five minutes rummaging through your notes would put you behind schedule. Looking at exam logs, this is what seems to have happened with many students.

I'll stress the issue that time management is critical for the final (I mentioned it to them, though clearly not enough).

Fair enough.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

Don't worry. They'll be bragging about it like brohan in a few weeks

i believe in alternate routes towards success if you cant accept that im sorry to be the one to tell you this but you are a big time nerd

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Drakeryn posted...

This is probably what I'd do anyway, but especially in these times.

Why does everyone keep saying "especially in these times"?

I'm aware we are in an unusual timeline with a pandemic and all but what does that have to do with being more lenient on cheaters?

I say stick it to them but that's just me. If this were kids like 13 and under maybe you do it a little differently but if these are young adults if you let them get away with it now it just reinforces their behavior

My favorite exams were take home open book, but unlimited time. I think I spent 20 hours on one over a single weekend.

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foolm0r0n posted...

My favorite exams were take home open book, but unlimited time. I think I spent 20 hours on one over a single weekend.

The one of those I had during normal times was my least favorite. Nothing hammers how dumb you are like being unable to do well on a test that gives you every opportunity to pass. I was upset when he gave us an extra half-hour for the open-note final because that just meant another thirty minutes of me sitting there stressed that I didn't know how to do anything.
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I mean the whole point of the test is that it's hard enough that you can't use all the notes and time you want and still have trouble. The more concessions you get for a test, the more worried you should be.

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Absolutely, I know why he gave us it in that format. Still demoralizing
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You did the right thing

I had a 24 hour take home test once and must have spent at least 20 hours on it, and I was actually decently prepared. Brutal, but strangely one of my more satisfying college memories

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