Final exam cheaters caught... but really it's about the comments

I have a hard time justifying cheating. But it was a take-home exam. The expectation is that students would use whatever resources that were available to find the answers. I'm not sure that it was the right thing to post wrong answers. On the other hand, the wrong answers he posted were apparently pretty obvious. If anyone had even read them, it should have been obvious.

I had a few take-home exams in college, and we would always get together in small groups and brainstorm to figure out the answers. This was before computers or the internet. I did not consider that cheating, it was group research. And while I can't recall the teachers suggesting we work together, I always felt it was implied.

The important thing is that students retain the information however they attain it. Obviously just looking at an exam posted online and checking off the answers without even reading them isn't going to help with retention.

I've seen some innovative ways to give a final exam. Some teachers give you a copy of their final the 1st day of class. You fill in the blanks as you course progresses and use that as a study guide before taking the actual final at the end.

I went through college on the quarter system, not semesters. Classes were 10 weeks. One professor that I had for several classes in my major would give a test every Friday. The 1st test had 20 questions. The 1st 10 questions were over material he covered Monday-Thursday. The next 10 questions were over the next weeks topics.

On week 2, we got the same 20 questions, but with 10 more over what he would cover the upcoming week. Most of us did poorly on those last 10 questions but seeing them on the test made that information stick as something very important when it was covered the next week.

Each week we would get the same questions we had already tested on plus 10 more. The final exam was 100 questions, and 90 of them we'd already answered. Some multiple times. I think I learned and retained more in that class than any other.

 

Weird. At my university, past exams are all openly available in the university library and in the print shops around the campus. It's all part of basic exam prep

 

Almost everyone who refers to "entrapment" has no idea what it actually is.

Lets say, for example, you get busted for possession of marijuana. The police tell you they will drop the charges if you help them bust someone for distributing LSD. They put a wire on you and tell you where to go get LSD. They then bust in and charge you with possession of LSD. THAT IS ENTRAPMENT. The police have no evidence whatsoever that you would have purchased LSD but for the fact that they coerced you to.

By contrast, if someone is simply standing on the street corner selling LSD, and you buy some, that is not entrapment.

Like the second example answer above, simply posting a fake answer key online is not entrapment. You would never find the answer key unless you were independently decided to cheat.

 

I can agree re the using of sources in general for a take-home exam. Never thought about the collaborating part though I suspect if it's take home that means you take it home and return it after. Not like an open book test in class where at that point you should be expected to work on your own. I was in college when the Internet was just starting to be a thing so my thoughts are a little dated so to say.

I don't think for a second it is entrapment. My counter to that is perhaps the student should have done additional research versus taking that particular thing as gospel

 

Obviously cheating is bad; definitely not advocating for it. My only 0.02 on this story is the students "suspected" of cheating receive the grade they made on the exam, not actually being "convicted" of cheating and receiving 0's or complete failure of the course. Again, definitely not advocating for cheating to be allowed, but unless you can absolutely prove the offense, you can't charge them for it. I understand he made some fancy numbers to arrive at a very well educated calculated guess at who cheated, and he's likely 100% correct, but its just a theory, not actually proof. By all means, bring the hammer down on cheaters, but only if you're gonna fully swing it. This was more like a half swing.

If exams are meant to be closed book/no other resources allowed, they should be administered in such a way. Proctored online exams, web cam monitored, lockdown browsers, etc.

As for the ethics behind the teacher's actions, its probably bad practice. BUT, considering this is philosophy class, he could probably get away with it, if he chose to make the findings available to the students at the end of the course, and use it as a teaching tool. I can't exactly say he's morally wrong for planting fake answers, but its probably also not the best practice. If research is what he's after, there are proper avenues to pursue it, and practices to abide by. If he's just got a bone to pick with cheaters, then he's just being petty and unprofessional. But I also don't care. Learners gotta learn.

 

That sentence in bold could be so useful depending on the class, too, and I agree it could certainly have been implied without knowing what course you were working in. Government, philosophy, ethics, research skills, psychology, any number of subjects could benefit from almost a "peer review" panel where you're put into a situation where you have to write an exam or test based on questioning or learning from others' world views, thought processes, what they think is right or wrong.

I feel like that would be very beneficial in a system now where no one seems to be educated in critical thought. I've taken education in social work, trades, and now I work as often as I can as a professional photographer while I heal from a significant injury. No one in trades were taught a lick of common sense, nor did they have it; similar - no one was taught critical thinking, only technical by-the-book diagnosis, and so they didn't have the ability or worse yet the desire to think critically of what others did/do/say/promote.

I see it all too frequently in blue collar education and even employees still. I understand why it isn't part of the curriculum - we're working with our hands and our technical knowledge on a regular basis. However, I also see the danger in just that.

Not to get too political mind you. I genuinely find it interesting to see a forum based on vehicles where people of all backgrounds get together to discuss ethics of all things. I'd say this thread is one of those hidden gem moments.

 

Well, he is teaching a subject based on theory not statistics!

 

Just a question,

If in a program and forced to take a class that is irrelevant to the goal (knowledge in a chosen field in this case), is it really unethical or wrong to cheat?

 

I suppose that would depend on why you would be taking a course that is irrelevant. I feel that most everything is relevant in one way or another to the end-goal of a certificate, diploma, or degree; maybe minutely so, but I would ask is there actual justification to cheat? Is being "forced to take a class irrelevant to a goal" something the chosen person feels or is it useful but you can't see when or why it would be useful at the point of taking it?

It could easily be brought back to the age old saying "why did I take algebra in highschool when I've never had to (expletive) use it?". There are so many ways people use algebra, albeit basic, in every day life. Commuting time, cooking, health/exercise/over all well-being, and shopping for groceries, household goods, mostly things that are sold in larger quantity that you can buy separately. I use a basic calculation, but never think of what I'm doing, and more specifically the "X" factor as the use of algebraic formula.

I use it for work of course, too, from imaging, to editing, to printing, through to sales and sales channels and monthly reporting. I never thought I'd use algebra as a photographer. Yet the more I know, the more I learn, and as I continue to advance in my career, it becomes blindingly obvious.

 

I wish that I had been more serious in high school. I squeaked by and as I have advanced, I have regretted the squeaking.

 

I can just imagine the cartoon of a rat pleading entrapment. I applaud the profs creativity in his method of “testing” both the character of his students presenting a very engaging lesson in ethics.

 

Good luck with chatGPT. There are "chatGPT detectors" but they are worthless and will give false positives to just about anything. On top of that, you can ask it for an answer, then say "here is a couple pages of something else I wrote, can you answer the question again, but make it in my style of writing?"

 

I'll hit on a couple of points with my POV. Take home exams do have rules, kinda-sorta. The expectation is that a take-home can be open book, open reference, and it can be collaborative. However, the key central concept is that the student is expected to verify that their reference material is authoritative and accurate. And to broaden the scope a bit, I understood that last tiny sentence to be the entire point of college. College isn't about knowledge retention, but rather it is supposed to be teaching you on how to locate or create the knowledge you need. It is supposed to teach you that the world is full of shit and you must cross-check your references lest ye be full of shit too.


Going back to posting false exams on a cheating site, I see that as a good lesson on the central core concept of college. The reference material that the students sourced was not accurate. The students failed not because they used a cheating method on a take home, but because they failed to verify their reference source. It was no different than when we tried to reference Wikipedia, way, way back in the young myspace days of the internet. Fail, for not cross-checking against a reputed peer-reviewed paper.


That should have been the thing that needed to be said out loud.

 

I can’t imagine a more appropriate place to ponder one’s ethics. Integrity isn’t something you wear like a tie or carry in a book bag.

It’s the difference between knowing temptations exist and actively placing them as bait. Cheating is about the student, entrapment is about catching them. We use bait to catch fish, the better the bait, the more fish you catch. It’s probably not a good idea to make the entrapment so tempting it catches students that would otherwise not take the bait. The goal isn’t to catch as many fish as possible but teach as many as possible how to swim on their own.

 

In this case it is still unethical to cheat. You agree to attend the college and you agree to their program when doing so, as such you agree to their rules which include cheating. You are not "forced" to take the class, you can always not attend the college itself. That choice is very unattractive but it exists.

On the other side of things, such classes often times provide some of the highest education value from a "whole person" perspective. Working with engineers and literal rocket scientists I can tell who learns from everything, and who learns only in a very narrow area. This is especially true as you mature in your career and get into managing others, collaborating across teams, or building relationships with other sections/teams/companies. I have some of the smartest folks on my team who I cannot trust to do more than the assigned task.

 

Not to drag this into a political discussion but one state here in the US open announced that they will not teach "higher order thinking" (critical thinking) because it undermines the parents in the household. This is the populace we are building.

To your point, I often times I see folks where the effort or work of thinking something through is not something they can or will do. I fear the technology we place in our lives and hands is making that worse, not better. Immediate access to whatever I want through my phone/computer has seemed to cause much of this and I fear the day where everyone has a (biased) chatGPT on their handheld and can "get the answer to anything" in seconds.


Back to critical thinking, what I find most interesting is often times those that yell "critical thinking" the loudest are the ones least likely to be able to do so. You see this frequently where folks who say something the most are the ones least likely to have/do it.

 

Do you have a link to that first part—"one state here in the US open announced that they will not teach "higher order thinking" (critical thinking) because it undermines the parents in the household."? I'm in higher ed and this is the first I've heard of such a statement. Of course teaching problem solving (first step towards building critical thinking skills) has been lacking in K-12 for decades.

 

I think the teacher's approach would be seen differently (by me at least) if he had just planted the BS in the first place; rather, I see this as a counter-strike as it came to his attention answers were planted on the same site he planted upon.

 

Chemistry teacher used to post all his past tests with answers to his canvas board. A great way to study for stuff that never made it to the real exam. Not sure why teachers do that. If it is all about learning why trick the students?

 

I wrote a romantic poem for my wife in a birthday card.
She said ChatGPT wrote it.
She was right!
What could I say, she can detect anything!