Friday, February 10, 2006
Cheaters
One of the great annoyances of teachers and professors is dealing with cheaters. Universities take this stuff quite seriously.
(Random aside -- one of my favorite Harvard memories was during the second final exam I took here. The whole proctor system was something I'd never experienced before and didn't really understand. Anyhow, at the end of the exam, the proctor is doing whatever it is they do -- counting blue books and checking names. We are milling about chatting and people start to come into the classroom for whatever was taking place next. The dude flipped out and started screaming about how they were "ruining the integrity of the exam." Startling at the time, but now just high comedy.)
Professors, however, have a tougher decision problem. Reporting the student and dealing with the bureaucracy is annoying (and thus costly), and it is unclear what the benefit to the professor is (this may explain why the university leaves them out of administering final exams). Later, we will discuss who really cares about cheating and what might be done about it. In the meantime, here is an amusing discussion by some faculty based on their experiences. From the comments:
(Random aside -- one of my favorite Harvard memories was during the second final exam I took here. The whole proctor system was something I'd never experienced before and didn't really understand. Anyhow, at the end of the exam, the proctor is doing whatever it is they do -- counting blue books and checking names. We are milling about chatting and people start to come into the classroom for whatever was taking place next. The dude flipped out and started screaming about how they were "ruining the integrity of the exam." Startling at the time, but now just high comedy.)
Professors, however, have a tougher decision problem. Reporting the student and dealing with the bureaucracy is annoying (and thus costly), and it is unclear what the benefit to the professor is (this may explain why the university leaves them out of administering final exams). Later, we will discuss who really cares about cheating and what might be done about it. In the meantime, here is an amusing discussion by some faculty based on their experiences. From the comments:
I caught a student one time, but didn't do anything about it on that test. I always give the same tests (same questions, same order) to the entire class - on the record, this eliminates any effect the order of the questions may have on student performance (off the record, it's easier to grade one set of tests than two). Anyways, it was a multiple choice test. One person had the exact same answers as another, and I knew where they were sitting in the class. On the next exam, I kept the questions in the same order, but changed the order of the answers on one test. Using slate of hand, I dealt my alleged cheater the test with the different ordered answers off the bottom of the stack of tests. He ended up with something like an 18 (and had nearly identical answers to the same person as he did on the first exam), which balanced out the 80 something he received on the other test. Problem solved, and no paperwork, and no hearings.
// posted by BW @ 11:15 AM 
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