Duke: No Mercy For CS 201 Cheaters Who Don't Turn Selves In By Wednesday
Soulskill posted 2 days ago | from the just-copy-from-stack-overflow-like-everyone-else dept.
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theodp writes: The Duke Chronicle published an e-mail reportedly sent to hundreds of Duke students who took Computer Science 201 (Data Structures & Algorithms) last spring, giving those who copied solutions to class problems until Nov. 12th to turn themselves in for cheating. "Students who have violated course policies but do not step forward by November 12, 2014," warns the e-mail, "will not be offered faculty-student resolution and will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct for disciplinary processes without any recommendation for leniency." The Chronicle adds that CS Prof Owen Astrachan, co-director of undergraduate studies, admitted that there is a fine line between collaboration and cheating in computer science — online and in person, although Astrachan made it clear in comments that "Students who copied code from the Internet are in violation of the community standard and course policies."
just practicing.. (5, Insightful)
ThatsDrDangerToYou (3480047) | 2 days ago | (#48367973)
Re:just practicing.. (1)
K. S. Kyosuke (729550) | 2 days ago | (#48368005)
Re:just practicing.. (1)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368243)
A for self-identifying their mastery of caching data structures.
B for using the internet as a caching data structure but getting the wrong answer anyway
C for hearing the term 'caching data structure' and being able to describe it.
D for knowing what a cache is.
F for all else.
Or just practicing for an actual job (1, Insightful)
popo (107611) | 2 days ago | (#48368021)
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
Part of being a contemporary coder is making use of available code. Libraries of functions are "other people's code". Languages are other people's code. Etc. it's all about other people's code.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (5, Informative)
gstoddart (321705) | 2 days ago | (#48368085)
Back when I was coding as my primary job, we never copied, we might have drawn inspiration.
We'd look at a tutorial, but we sure as heck wouldn't have looked at, say, code from Linux we planned on cribbing. Whereas if we had the FreeBSD or Apache source code, we just might.
Part of being a contemporary coder is knowing who you're legally allowed to borrow from, and who you're not.
But, part of getting your education involves not cheating. So, if "making use of available code" turns into "plagiarism and not meeting the school's academic policies" ... well, you're pretty much screwed, aren't you?
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (4, Insightful)
popo (107611) | 2 days ago | (#48368111)
I think you're using very negative words for a very normal part of the coding process.
For example, about 20 minutes ago I needed a function to measure password strength. Could I have written it from scratch? Of course. Did I? Hell, no. That would be a needless waste of time. I used the Interwebs and had a choice of 3 or 4 perfectly good functions within about a minute.
That's how coding works today. And if you're not making use of other people's code you're not doing it right.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (3, Insightful)
putaro (235078) | 2 days ago | (#48368149)
The difference being that you could have coded it from scratch - and you don't learn how to do that just by copy/pasting code.
Re: Or just practicing for an actual job (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368503)
How do you know he could have done it if he didn't actually try it at all?
I can claim that I could use GNOME 3 for more than 30 seconds. It's even possible that I could do it. But if I did actually try it, I just would not be able to manage it. I know this because I did try it. I could tolerate GNOME 3 for only about 15 seconds before wanting to vomit.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (5, Insightful)
Jon_S (15368) | 2 days ago | (#48368799)
Exactly. The purpose of the assignment wasn't to get some code to work. It was to learn how to develop an algorithm.
I'm not a CS person, but rather a chemical engineer. When I was in college, we learned, and had to do, all sorts of distillation designs using McCabe-Theil diagrams and other hand and graphical calculations. Would we ever do this at our job? No, there are all sorts of computer programs that figure these things out. However, going through the process of doing the work the hard way, and more importantly redoing the work that other people have already done, makes us understand the principles behind the logic. It also helps for giving insight if and when we want to extend the thinking to some new area.
Talking about how things are reused in one's job is completely missing the mark.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
Barny (103770) | 2 days ago | (#48368151)
Right, but if you were in school, and given the task of writing a program that accepts, stores and evaluates passwords, grabbing such a piece of code would be considered a 'bad thing'.
Saying in your comments that you found a 'method for neatly measuring password strength and reimplemented it' would, however, demonstrate that not only can you find code that you would need but CAN code and implement the solution.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
gstoddart (321705) | 2 days ago | (#48368197)
No, I'm very aware of the fact that you need to know what you legally can and can't do with code you got elsewhere, because it may be copyrighted or otherwise encumbered.
This has been true for at least two decades, and probably more.
If you don't know this, you could get your company or yourself into some pretty deep shit.
I'm not saying don't avail yourself of code which says "use freely". I likes me some use freely. Everybody does.
I am saying that in an academic setting, the rules imposed by the school are different. And in a corporate setting, if you're not aware of the legalities you are probably a liability waiting to happen.
Not knowing this, or completely ignoring it? Well, good luck with that.
That's right. (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368225)
And I found out recently that my company demands that they make a minimum 40% profit on me. So, the less I develop, the less profitable I am. If I can't cut it, they either hire someone better for more money or ship overseas.
Then those developers have to deal with it.
See, it's a bit of a shitty position. The more money you make, the more profitable you must be. Of course, business wants lower salaries for everyone to boost profits.
It's turned into a shitty career because of it.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
jason.sweet (1272826) | 2 days ago | (#48368831)
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368179)
I'd look at the code directly, GPL or not. Then, I'd understand what it was doing, how that fit into what I was doing, and write my own similar code to do the job I want done.
I'd never copy code, regardless of license. That's just senseless duplication. If I needed that exact same functionality, I'd use that exact library and save myself the time it would take to transcribe it and "muck it up" to look like in-house code, never mind the legal issues in doing so. Since I likely need some similar-but-not-the-same functionality, it's not going to ever be a copy/paste job. And the GPL (and copyright law in general, which the GPL and other licenses are founded on) doesn't cover cases where you didn't just outright copy the code. If it's a modified excerpt integrated into something entirely different from the original codebase, it's not addressed at all by the GPL. And I'd bet money that Stallman (Mr. GPL himself) would call you something unspeakable if you tried to assert otherwise in his presence.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
popo (107611) | 2 days ago | (#48368339)
"I'd never copy code".
"I'd use that exact library".
Those are mighty fine hairs to split.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
Qzukk (229616) | 2 days ago | (#48368573)
Those are mighty fine hairs to split.
There is a world of difference between using someone else's code and claiming it as your own and using someone else's code as a library they published and licensed for your use.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
gwolf (26339) | 2 days ago | (#48368793)
Legal issues make clear the splitting point of that hair.
Using that exact library means you include it from your project source and acknowledge it as a complete piece of work. If your work is developed openly, you usually list it as a dependency (and acknowledge the authors — And get the ability to link to updated versions. Free updates, yay!) or hard-include it in your tree (but still acknowledging authorship); if it is developed in a closed model, you can either do it or not, but if $boss comes to ask why every time a frobnicator is quuxed you get shizzles, you can point to an outside-acquired code.
If you just copy-pasted a funciton as yours, there are many negative side effects. Besides, of course, opening yourself to lawsuits and whatnot.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368553)
99% of the time whatever code you are after does not fit your naming/spacing/style/data/structures anyway. On top of that you usually have to adapt it to your local data structures. The most I grab is 1-2 lines. Usually for some new function I am using and someone has an example. There usually is pretty much only one way to do some things when you are playing around with 1 to 2 lines.
Also part of education is getting one. If you are just copying wholesale to just get the grade why did you bother enrolling? As I tell most 'young kids' "you get the first 12 years free the next 4-8 costs you a fortune" My point? You are given a free basic education you pay for quality. Take advantage of it.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
31415926535897 (702314) | 2 days ago | (#48368141)
Of course we all use available code. I would be very disappointed if my colleagues were all writing their own sorting functions when that problem has already been solved a million times.
But that's not what school is about. You need to go through the process of understanding how these algos came to be understood--not so that you can re-implement them in your job--but so that you can do two things:
1. Know which algos will work when you do have a real world problem to solve
2. Use the same process that helped you solve for a known algo when the time comes to solve for an unknown one
Please, use available libraries and stack overflow on the job. But let's not pretend that we're trying to accomplish the same things on the job and in the classroom.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
i kan reed (749298) | 2 days ago | (#48368241)
Yeah, but sometimes you need something that's like a list, but subtly different, and you need to be able to sort by hand(perhaps because sorting is connected to another piece of computation).
If you can't do that, you're not a good programmer.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368153)
It is also about not reinventing the wheel, code reuse in industry is the norm, in fact it is expected unless it could breach the copyright/I.P. of others.
Having said that, being able to write your own might be important when copyright/intellectual property is a corporate concern. Not all workplaces participate in open source, by forcing you to write your own code the university is better preparing you for whatever workplace you may come across.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368273)
Yes. Look for open source code. Copy and Paste. Delete copyright notice.
That's how it works in the real world!
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
Lumpy (12016) | 2 days ago | (#48368303)
Every single one of them that use libraries.
Sorry kids, Library use is copying. Copying is not a bad thing, you save a lot of time by doing it.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (2)
cduffy (652) | 2 days ago | (#48368777)
Shared libraries or static libraries?
Static library use involves copying at the link phase. Shared library use doesn't. Depending on your license, the distinction can be legally significant.
And, well, that's the thing. Those of us who are professionals think about liability... which is why we can actually find a large company willing to buy our startups without doing an absolute freakout (or requesting a huge discount for cost of reimplementations) analyzing the codebase during due diligence.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (2)
jellomizer (103300) | 2 days ago | (#48368317)
I don't think it is a case of regularly. But it happens a few times per month.
But there is a big difference in doing this for your work and doing it for school.
If you are doing this for work, your goal is to get the computer to solve the problem.
For school your goal is to learn how to get the computer to solve problems.
For Example a CS101 student will have a nested for statement that displays a triangle in text.
The point of the exercise isn't about having a triangle to appear. But to teach and impress the ideas of nested loops.
Now if you take the code:
For a someone new to the topic. You wouldn't have realized that you needed to reset your string in the correct level of the looping. The real learning isn't about getting the program right, but finding all your mistakes in the process. Just copying the code so you got it done you failed to learn. You just completed the assignment.
Now for professional work you goal is to get the assignment done, and they really don't care if you learned something new or not. So just as long as you got that triangle even if you had a...
they really don't care.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (4, Interesting)
XxtraLarGe (551297) | 2 days ago | (#48368355)
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
The whole point of the course is to try & figure out how data structures and algorithms are implemented. It's as much about problem solving as it is coding. Sure, you could always just use std::vector in your C++ programs for vectors, but do you really understand how they work? What about binary trees and linked lists? That's the type of stuff they're teaching in these classes. Copying code & modifying it for your own purposes is fine for production, but if these students don't understand how the underlying code works, then their chances of successfully using it greatly diminishes.
I see it all the time in my courses. I emphasize to the students that they should only use methods currently covered, so they get a 0 if they go out on stackoverflow and find solutions that give them shortcuts. They fail to use critical thinking skills and gain a deep understanding of how programming works. Most of the time, their ham-fisted copy/paste code doesn't even do what the assignment requires.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368513)
I don't. I might use example code for inspiration, or use an available well-tested library, but I nearly never copy code verbatim. I always want to know how it works so if I need to tweak it (or verify it's not just some garbage) I can.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (2)
UnknownSoldier (67820) | 2 days ago | (#48368619)
Yeah I never copy code. In my mind there is no point. I want to _understand_ how it works -- not just be a code monkey.
I think I can count on one hand all the times I've looked at other people's code to see how some of the finer details of the algorithm work but I'll just write the code from scratch. That, and along with debugging it, helps me to understand its edge cases, the domain it is strong at, and the areas where it is weak.
Your point about library code is conflating the issue.
There is a huge difference between calling someone else's code, and passing their work off as your own .
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (2)
Capt.Albatross (1301561) | 2 days ago | (#48368643)
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
Part of being a contemporary coder is making use of available code. Libraries of functions are "other people's code". Languages are other people's code. Etc. it's all about other people's code.
This defense always comes up when cheating is the issue, and it is always wrong. The purpose of an examination is to determine if an individual understands the subject matter, and no argument how programming is done in practice alters the fact that a cheater has failed to demonstrate that he understands the subject matter (and has, in fact, provided good evidence that he does not.)
Furthermore, one should not be spending the time and money a degree from Duke costs, just to be a cut-and-paste coder - a semester at a community college should be enough, if you can't teach yourself. The purpose of a university education is to develop a thorough understanding of the subject matter in order to become the person who finds solutions to problems, rather than the people who copy them.
Re:Or just practicing for an actual job (1)
tompaulco (629533) | 2 days ago | (#48368811)
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
Standing on the shoulders of others is standard practice, but when you are asked to do something in a class, it is not about learning to utilize resources, it is about learning to do it on your own, so that you can understand what others have done. This is why we teach kids how to add before we let them use a calculator.
When I first learned java, the book had me writing classes which let me implement lists, then linked list, then doubly linked lists. Finally after all of that, it introduced the LinkedList class already present in Java. But now I understand how it works and how to use it efficiently and in the right places.
Furthermore, in the working world, you have the possibility of patents, copyrights, and license limitations. If you are asked to develop an algorithm, they may really need you to develop it from scratch in order to avoid legal issues.
What if they're basketball players? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48367975)
Drat. That's UNC, not Duke.
OK, lacrosse players.
Wait - we hung them already.
Re: What if they're basketball players? (-1)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368011)
Just say it, you mean niggers right?
Re: What if they're basketball players? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368175)
He means the Duke lacrosse players that were falsely accused of rape by a black student from NCCU.
Re:What if they're basketball players? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368305)
Right, because unlike other schools UNC gives their athletes the soft glove treatment. Lulz.
Are your football players smart? Didn't think so.
Re:What if they're basketball players? (2, Informative)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368385)
Right, because unlike other schools UNC gives their athletes the soft glove treatment. Lulz.
Are your football players smart? Didn't think so.
What rock do you live under?
Fake classes, inflated grades: Massive UNC scandal included athletes over 2 decades [startribune.com]
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A scandal involving bogus classes and inflated grades at the University of North Carolina was bigger than previously reported, encompassing about 1,500 athletes who got easy A's and B's over a span of nearly two decades, according to an investigation released Wednesday.
News? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48367983)
How is this news? Surely this is policy in many institutions?
Re:News? (1)
Racemaniac (1099281) | 2 days ago | (#48368043)
It's probably that students are unsure where the line is drawn.
As mentioned in the article if you're working on a programming problem, it's natural these days that you look online when you're stuck on a problem, is this cheating?
Also, there are only so many ways you can solve a problem (certainly small programming problems in courses). How sure are you that your solution isn't too similar to something someone put online somewhere, or another student who thought the same way you did?
Even if you didn't actively cheat, depending on how this would be tested, a student should almost consider "confessing" just to be sure not to get expelled if similar code is found somewhere (and the internet is big...)
Re:News? (1)
mwvdlee (775178) | 2 days ago | (#48368165)
It's not cheating if you're a professional programmer paid to produce software.
It IS cheating if you're a student who is supposed to be demonstrating their ability to create working code on their own.
Re:News? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368561)
Agreed. And to argue with the grandparent poster, the Internet didn't change this in any way!
There has always been a "natural" tendency to look for answers when stuck. It has always been considered cheating to copy answers verbatim from another source for school exercises, where the whole purpose is for the student to reinvent the wheel. We weren't supposed to find the teachers' answer key to our calculus book, nor copy an encyclopedia entry for our history class, nor slavishly copy a photograph for our painting and composition art class. There were always plenty of methods to "research" an answer, for as long as there has been a library and a real world to consult. There has always been a line to draw between researching some facts or inspiration versus presenting someone else's creative effort as our own.
I'm not sure there has been any shift in cheating due to the Internet. It might just be easier to detect now. In the 90s, I was a teaching assistant for a CS professor who caught mass cheating in our compiler course, and there were a multitude of ways that groups cheated on their group projects: stolen via unattended lab terminals; stolen from busy lab printers; obtained from attendees of previous semesters; cribbed from fraternity "libraries"; etc. I got the impression we caught this scale of cheating because the professor had just developed the technical means to detect it. It had probably been going on in previous years too.
Re:News? (1)
RyuuzakiTetsuya (195424) | 2 days ago | (#48368345)
Yes. When you're talking about solving problems for the first time, you have to do the grunt work and know what you're doing. My CS135 class had the same problem with people cheating on a parsing roman numerals problem.
When you're in a work environment, no one's going to expect you to implement, say, quick sort or whatever algorithm that's non-trivial but basically grunt work, by hand. The work is going to be way more in-depth than just "this solves this specific problem." however, knowing how these things actually work is another thing.
Re:News? (1)
Racemaniac (1099281) | 2 days ago | (#48368525)
Okay, and suppose you took this course and created your own roman numeral reader. How sure are you that they won't find something on the internet that is "too similar"?
I agree it's important they learn to do their own work, but i would be wondering how high the odds are for false positives...
Hello world! (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48367985)
It was me!
Fine Line (1)
mtrachtenberg (67780) | 2 days ago | (#48367993)
Is it a programming exercise? Then actually have human beings who understand the assigned task go over the submitted code with the student, having the student explain it. If the student can explain what is happening to the investigator's satisfaction, fine. If the student copied code and has no clue what it is doing, force them to work for a large company. And please stop calling programming computer science; no one could "copy code" over the internet to demonstrate an understanding of computer science.
Re:Fine Line (1)
Ksevio (865461) | 2 days ago | (#48368065)
Re:Fine Line (1)
DarkOx (621550) | 2 days ago | (#48368211)
Right, seems like it should be possible to identify the cheats with a simple exam, give everyone in the class a pop quiz, with a really similar question.
For the folks that did not cheat they get reward for their honest hard work, they will already have thought through the problem had the opportunity to test their solution etc, and simply need make some trivial change and scribble their solution down on the exam sheet. Easy-A
The cheaters will be busted, outed by their inability demo knowledge that they already are supposed to have displayed before.
Acceptance of Responsibility (1)
artlu (265391) | 2 days ago | (#48368017)
It is an interesting position to be placed in, but it is always better to accept responsibility for one's actions. I had to do it as well as part of my case (http://tminr.com/the-book/) but it led to a better outcome had I not admitted wrongdoing and fought.
I hope all of the parties are able to step-up because, if they do, the end result will be a lot better for them.
Re:Acceptance of Responsibility (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368649)
>better to accept responsibility for one's actions
Bullshit, not in this day and age. Authority is harsh, hard and uncaring. They value their power and how they can yield it far more than fairness or leniency. It's a sad day and age when the honest man suffers more than the liars, but it is where we are ethically.
This isn't really new either. We have the 5th amendment for this very reason.
Oh, and the professors should get disciplined if they are in no way lenient to those naive enough to come forward.
Re:Acceptance of Responsibility (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368661)
It is an interesting position to be placed in, but it is always better to accept responsibility for one's actions. I had to do it as well as part of my case (http://tminr.com/the-book/) but it led to a better outcome had I not admitted wrongdoing and fought.
I hope all of the parties are able to step-up because, if they do, the end result will be a lot better for them.
For someone who has been to federal prison, you sure seem mighty proud of it.
When I got my InfoSci (0)
kilodelta (843627) | 2 days ago | (#48368019)
I think the school in question just has it's head up its ass.
Affected Student Here (2, Funny)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368057)
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
I received one of these emails and will be telling Duke to go fuck itself. I do all of my own assignments and use SourceTree for version control, and can demonstrate the development from scratch of each of my assignments, including handwritten development notes.
I've also hired a lawyer and we are prepared to sue the school instantly if any attempt is made to accuse me of cheating and defame my good character.
Re:Affected Student Here (1)
Kobun (668169) | 2 days ago | (#48368329)
Re:Affected Student Here (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368473)
The point of posting AC is the school doesn't know exactly who cheated and is on a witch hunt. After they've tied him to a burning stake I doubt he'll care if they know whom he is or not.
Re:Affected Student Here (1)
Kobun (668169) | 2 days ago | (#48368539)
Re:Affected Student Here (1)
bobbied (2522392) | 2 days ago | (#48368543)
So... What are you going to do in the YEARS of time this will take and how are you going to come up with the THOUSANDS of dollars this will cost to "protect your good name?"
If you really go to Duke.... I suggest that if you cheated in CS 102 you turn yourself in...
Aside from that, I think you picked the wrong NC school. Stay away from anything blue in that state and pick the red school. (Howl)
Re:Affected Student Here (1)
jandrese (485) | 2 days ago | (#48368593)
yea no (5, Insightful)
Charliemopps (1157495) | 2 days ago | (#48368059)
Never, ever, testify against yourself. Even in the case of a college, it's foolish.
If they know you did it, they know you did it. Leniency? What a joke. If they had the evidence, they wouldn't be offering a deal.
What's more likely to happen is that you admit it, and in the same email or further interviews you'll confess to other violations that they'll nail you on. Furthermore, in cheating, you are almost guaranteed to have broken state or federal law. By admitting to copying someone else's code you could be confessing to a real crime that could result in time in prison.
If you doubt this, see the video in my Sig. Never admit to wrong doing to a public official or law enforcement. Assume any email you send will immediately be turned over.
Re:yea no - happened in Middle School (4, Interesting)
Havokmon (89874) | 2 days ago | (#48368167)
The brother admitted to it, and was held back. The sister stayed quiet and moved on to high school.
Re:yea no - happened in Middle School (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368299)
It's a terrible thing they're teaching to kids. Honesty after dishonesty -> punishment. Dishonesty after dishonesty -> success.
I guess it's just education for the real world.
Good guys don't succeed.
Re:yea no - happened in Middle School (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368659)
It's a terrible thing they're teaching to kids. Honesty after dishonesty -> punishment. Dishonesty after dishonesty -> success. I guess it's just education for the real world. Good guys don't succeed.
The ones who didn't admit to it and didn't get caught will eventually pay a bigger price. Some people call it Karma, I just call it how things work. The more you cheat in school, the less and less you are prepared for later course work. You will either have to work hard to catch up, or your cheating ways will have to become more and more risky. Most will get caught in school if their habit is to cheat. For those who are able to make it though, cheating will be caught when it is even more destructive, when you have a job and a family to feed and they have to layoff somebody. Guess who hits the street first? The under performer...
If you make it though life w/o being caught, you where either better at politics and didn't do the technical stuff anyway, and/or there will be literally hell to pay.
Re:yea no - happened in Middle School (1)
MMC Monster (602931) | 2 days ago | (#48368833)
I was in an AP Calculus course in high school taught by my school principal. The day after parent-teacher conference, he mentioned that he told a mother that her son was caught cheating in a class and was essentially getting a slap on the wrist (this was a couple decades ago).
The teacher then gave us an anonymous ballot. He wanted to know how many of us cheated on a test or homework assignment in the last year (this was pre-WWW so cheating at home was basically collaborating on homework with others in the same class).
Every single one of us said we did.
FYI: 25 years later I'm doing fine at work and home and sleep soundly at night with the sleep of the just.
Re:yea no - happened in Middle School (4, Funny)
serviscope_minor (664417) | 2 days ago | (#48368703)
The brother admitted to it, and was held back. The sister stayed quiet and moved on to high school.
That's school working as it should: it taught th brother a very, very valuable lesson he'll never forget. The point of school is learning things, right?
Re:yea no (1)
Translation Error (1176675) | 2 days ago | (#48368219)
Re:yea no (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368545)
Or they want to skip the whole Office of Student Conduct adventure - this is akin to a DA offering someone a plea bargain - confess to a lesser charge or we will take you to court where the penalties could be much worse for you. I've taken a course with Astrachan - he's a great guy and wants his students succeed, but he has better things to do with his time than deal with multiple related academic dishonesty hearings, which probably have to be adjudicated separately for privacy reasons.
Re:yea no (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368227)
Wise words. Their tactic is just FUD.
With all this theater are only trying to get those dumb enough to hang themselves and at the same time scare future students.
Re:yea no (2)
cerberusss (660701) | 2 days ago | (#48368349)
Never, ever, testify against yourself. Even in the case of a college, it's foolish.
Why am I here professor? Is it because of the assignment? It's all a big misunderstanding. She invited me over to work on the assignment and perhaps I thought too much of it. But she never clearly said "no", so you naturally understand..
What? No, I didn't copy the answer.
Re:yea no (1)
DigiShaman (671371) | 2 days ago | (#48368535)
In other words, it's seppuku. Restoring a shred of honor back at the cost of your life? Fuck no! Just don't cheat to begin with.
type of assignment (4, Insightful)
bigdavex (155746) | 2 days ago | (#48368061)
I'd like to know what type of assignment this was. If it's small and specific, there might be only a few basic working solutions. That is, the similarity stems from being correct.
If it's a larger project with creative design decisions, then I'm less sympathetic.
Re:type of assignment (1)
Tyr07 (2300912) | 2 days ago | (#48368137)
Watch it turns out to be printing hello world in C and too many people had identical designs :P
Re:type of assignment (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368437)
Check it out: here [duke.edu] .
Also how much similarity triggers things (1)
Sycraft-fu (314770) | 2 days ago | (#48368717)
There are only so many ways someone is likely to design some functions, particularly if the class demands particular formatting. So if having one function that is very similar or the same triggers it, then it is rather bullshit.
I could see this too. Where I work professors are extremely lazy and grade via script. They don't read the programs students hand in because that would be "too much work", never mind that in the arts and humanities professors have to read papers all the time. Then they usually use some kind of automated cheat checker program. Well, said checkers aren't something that just makes sure files are bit identical. They allow for various fudge factor. That means they can match even on things that aren't actually copies of eachother.
The Internet Is The Way We All Do It. (1)
DumbSwede (521261) | 2 days ago | (#48368089)
Duke seems to be in the wrong here. It is to hard to decide exactly what is research and copying in these cases. This isn't just some answer key that was mailed to some inner circle of conspirators. If Duke worries about how the internet will be used in finding solutions, then they need tougher in class testing procedures to show people have mastered the skill set they say they have or the University wants them to have.
In a way, using the internet to get the answer is the way it works in IT these days. I routinely get my solutions for problems at work by going to the internet – I don't memorize every command and algorithm. These kids aren't cheating, they're doing it the current/modern way.
I don't think these kids expected to be involved in The Prisoner's Dilemma, then again, maybe this is some meta-programming test for an optimal solution.
Re:The Internet Is The Way We All Do It. (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368393)
No, because the purpose of the assignment is not to produce functional code in the shortest time (i.e., cheapest labor cost) possible. That would be an objective on the job. The purpose of an assignment is for the students to learn how to write code (or to test if they met the learning objectives for the course). If the students only learn how to copy & paste code from the internets, what will they do when Google says "no results found"? How to they evaluate code they want to reuse to make it does what they want it to do?
Do I expect my accountants to do all math by hand on the job? No, I expect them to use tools to make their work as efficient as possible. But, I fully expect that they have the skills to do it by hand so that they understand what the tools do.
We don't hand preschoolers calculators and say "you don't need to learn how to add, just use this". First you learn the basic skills.
Preschooler You Are In Violation! (1)
DumbSwede (521261) | 2 days ago | (#48368533)
And if a preschooler uses a calculator at home, we don't threaten them and tell them to turn themselves in.
You can't control how assignments are done outside of class, you have to adapt your testing regimen for the modern age.
In other words... (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368091)
...coercing people who may have done nothing wrong into "coming forward", lest we go digging and find that for loop you copied.
If you teach CS and give out questions that can be trivially answered by a Stackoverflow search, you're doing it wrong. Starting even from data structures, we had open-book open-internet take-home exams – the questions were theory-based, required a mix of plain-english and code, and often involved proofs rather than writing yet another binary tree to be graded by a lazy TA running a computer program that someone wrote ten years ago.
Duke students: I don't know how much debt you're taking on to go here, but you're getting ripped off. Come to think of it, the faculty is probably just mad that an actual human has to look at these kids' work now.
Dup (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368093)
This was already posted two days ago. [slashdot.org]
Oops - that was about India, not the USA. My bad. Here, it's open collaboration in a new era leveraging the vast resources of the Internet, not cheating and corruption by morons unable to think for themselves.
They probably already know who cheated (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368181)
They probably already know who cheated in that class and are trying to give them a way of avoiding trouble. A whole block of students probably borrowed a whole block of code from somewhere on the 'net and one of the students didn't think to at least read through the comments and notice that, lo and behold, the author's name is in the comments! Then the professors realize that a couple dozen students came up with the exact same solution to the problem using the exact same logic and the exact same variable names that probably follow an unorthodox shema.
Yeah, that happened in one of my programming classes in college, how did you guess?
Scribd Sucks (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368199)
Anyone got a link to the email that is NOT on scribd? That site is broken in browsers with javascript disabled. Couldn't you have just posted it on pastebin, if it's text-only?
Isn't the real problem professor laziness? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368205)
Isn't the real problem that the professors just pulled their exam questions from the Internet? If they had made their own test questions and homework, there would not have been any ready-made answers on the Internet.
It's been more than 20 years since I did my exams, and there were whole folders with several decades worth of test questions and student-prepared answers (from student union members) that you could work through before exams. And often there were quite _similar_ questions (hard to avoid) in the actual exam, but stuff was not just plug-in. More often than not, there was some crucial detail differing making for an entirely different outcome.
Incidentally, most written exams were "suitcase exams" where you were allowed to bring anything in that you wanted excluding general-purpose computers and communication devices. You would not have had an inkling of a chance if you had spent time searching for particular questions/answers and adapting them to the problem at hand.
Students were expected to dig up all the old material they could and prepare themselves with it. The new exams/questions/homeworks were intentionally not doable by copy-and-paste from the old stuff.
oh noes code copiers (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368213)
I guess they'll never be able to work in the real world, thanks for the warning there, Professor. Oh...sorry... I guess I got that backwards. Turns out code copiers rule the world.
Sounds familiar (1)
necro81 (917438) | 2 days ago | (#48368275)
In the end, the charges were dropped [thedartmouth.com] . It would have been a very difficult situation to adjudicate - the behavior of the students, TAs, and professor was bad all around, and some might say that it all cancelled out. Some definitely were cheating (i.e., malicious intent), and others just got caught up in stupid behavior (i.e., ignorant), and it would have been difficult to separate the two.
Ok, I am naive, but... (1)
bradley13 (1118935) | 2 days ago | (#48368291)
...as a student, and now as a teacher, I just don't get it. Why would you cheat?
I see students do this, and sometimes they do manage to weasel through lower level courses, if the instructors weren't paying attention. So they fail out of the program when they hit higher level courses, because they don't understand the basics. They've wasted maybe two years of their lives, plus a lot of money. If they cannot solve the exercises, if they cannot pass the early courses, there is just no point to dragging it out.
Ok, ok, I hear the excuses already: "I just didn't have time", "I was hung over", "my dog's pet goldfish died", whatever...
If they cannot understand the material well enough to do the assignments (or, perhaps, school just isn't their priority), they are in the wrong place. Everyone makes mistakes, and some people just pick the wrong major. Everyone - most especially the student - is better off if they realize this quickly and move on to something that they can actually succeed at.
Re:Ok, I am naive, but... (2)
netsavior (627338) | 2 days ago | (#48368347)
...as a student, and now as a teacher, I just don't get it. Why would you cheat?
because as a society we value credentials, we do not value education.
Re:Ok, I am naive, but... (1)
ErichTheRed (39327) | 2 days ago | (#48368621)
The other problem is that cheaters usually just get an F for the course if they get caught and can continue after retaking it.
Institutions only have so much power. When I was in school, my grades were all over the map, some As, lots of Bs, some Cs. One of the things I realized pretty early on was that as long as I can keep my GPA high enough, there wasn't really much worry about what actual grade I got in the course...so I focused on learning the material thoroughly rather than trying to ace the exams. Most entry level jobs don't care or ask about your college grades. The only times they matter are:
- If you want to go to professional school (law, medical, dental, MBA)
- If you want to go into academia
- If you want to be an investment banker or management consultant
Other than that, students would get a lot more out of school if they focused on learning rather than tests.
Re:Ok, I am naive, but... (1)
joss (1346) | 2 days ago | (#48368697)
When I did a CS degree I cheated hard through first year.
1. I was young and lazy, my main goal was to maximize time I could spend in the pub.
2. There's no point doing something if someone else has already done it
Colleges encourage this themselves (1)
cerberusss (660701) | 2 days ago | (#48368301)
I've seen this at my college as well. CS students graduated without actually having programmed.
Colleges actually encourage this with their way of teaching:
- Massive classes without any real contact with teachers
- Weird focus on working in project groups
Doing everything as a project with small assignments often has one student both leading and finishing the assignment. Other students then get demotivated.
The obvious solution is to do like companies do. Companies like Toptal [toptal.com] vet their applications via Codility [codility.com] . They'll do a Skype session and have you finish a couple of small assignments.
Obviously, this isn't always applicable. But when students hand in their assignment on, say, networking, then the teacher could ask each student for a very minor change in the assignment. And see how he's doing.
Lose the deadline (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368313)
If you have to cheat in CS201 (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368337)
then what are you doing in a CS curriculum? That's like an art student turning in a paint-by-numbers picture. Computer science requires skill, knowledge and creativity. Cheating that early means you lack at least two of those and won't improve either.
This is the way we sue the school (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368353)
sue the school, sue the school...
"I think that we—computer science and Duke—could have handled this a little better than we have," said Owen Astrachan, co-director of undergraduate studies and professor of the practice of computer science. "When mass emails result in a Yik Yak storm, something's not right."
Re:This is the way we sue the school (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368471)
Sounds to me like the professor who made the not-so-wise determination to mass email all students to turn themselves in "or else" was just as guilty of lazy corner-cutting that he's accusing all of his/her $$$$ paying customers...err... students... of being.
I think the only disciplinary action we'll see out of this is a termination and a job posting. To me it sounds like an overbearing out of touch professor who "TOLD YOU" numerous times that you could not include code from the interwebs. Gawdamnit you have to write everything from scratch, like we did in Woz's garage .... what?... WHATEVER!... STEVE'S GARAGE THEN.
Who doesn't copy code? (1)
crmanriq (63162) | 2 days ago | (#48368363)
I've been programming/copying code since 1988.
I started with example code from, jeez, Turbo Pascal 4.0. Find an example. Modify it to fit my needs. I got to learn C on the job about two years later. I had some Microsoft C reference book. Lots of programming examples. Then x86 Assembler. By then I was lifting code out of one section of the project I was working on, and putting it somewhere else.
Then Unix kernel work on a trusted system. "Oh, look. That same privilege-checking routine is used in about a zillion places throughout the kernel. Why do I need to write something new and different, when we already have a routine that works? Oh yeah, I don't."
Somewhere along the way, Google became a thing. It made coding easier because you could simply search for what you were trying to accomplish. Chances are someone has done something similar. (Thanks guy who wrote FullDuplexSerial, and SPI interface routines for the Parallax Propeller...)
I'm not certain why Duke wants to punish these guys. They are figuring out how to get things done in a timely manner without reinventing the wheel over and over again.
Re:Who doesn't copy code? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368629)
It's CS201 (Computer Science 201) not GS101 (Google Search 101). The students are expected to show their ability to create code, not copy it.
Reverse engineering (1)
stud9920 (236753) | 2 days ago | (#48368665)
Plagarize smart (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368387)
Everyone looks at code done by others. You're a moron or don't value your free time if you don't. the key is to not directly copy/paste. Change variables, how loops work, etc. Change enough to where it's not completely obvious. Then you'll be prepared for the real world.
Re:Plagarize smart (1)
joss (1346) | 2 days ago | (#48368743)
The last program I had to write in first year CS was a plagarism detector. Surprisingly easy.. just do a frequency analysis on keywords and that will get you 90% of the way there. So, I actually did this assignment unlike all the others that I had cheated on...
Is the problem code reuse or question reuse? (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368397)
"Students submitting solutions that so closely match solutions from other students ... [that] are deemed identical or the result of slight modifications to hide a common origin"
Stop using the same effing problems term after term after term! How many effing ways are there to do a merge-sort or to implement a minimum spanning tree?
Because Academic Integrity is Instinctual (1)
meustrus (1588597) | 2 days ago | (#48368453)
[T]here is a fine line between collaboration and cheating in computer science
No Mercy
All introductory CS students are born with an intuitive and always-correct understanding of when they cross the "fine line"! They have all been subject to rigorous academic standards for plagiarism, right? So they all know exactly what is expected of them on day 1 of their life in college!
Is it cheating? In CS classes, yes it is (4, Insightful)
ErichTheRed (39327) | 2 days ago | (#48368491)
The problem isn't necessarily that code was copied directly from the Internet, it was that it was passed off as the students' own work. Coding assignments can only be done so many ways in lower-level CS classes, where the problems have to be small enough to be easily testable. The problem I see is that allowing it encourages the practice among CS grads in later life.
I work in systems integration, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen crap software, even software from vendors, that is horribly inefficient. I think a lot of that software has a fair amount of copy-paste code in it simply because the goal was to get something that compiled and sort of worked.
That brings up another very important point -- the level of abstraction has gotten so high in software development that it's very hard to see what's actually going on behind the scenes. If you're calling some massive database access library to do your data entry from a web form, you really can't tell how bad the SQL that your particular function uses is for the database. (I've seen packaged applications that will tie up the CPU of a server for 30 or more seconds just to make a database change.) If students don't learn at least some of the fundamentals in CS classes, who will design the next generation of lower-level stuff? Code reuse and libraries are good, but you need to know what's appropriate to use. So if you don't have a good grasp of algorithms, data structures, etc., how will you even know whether you're solving a problem correctly?
Same thing goes for my field -- systems admin/integration. If you don't know at least the basics of how TCP works, a few of the application protocols and something about how your OS manages resources, it becomes very hard to troubleshoot anything to any degree.
Beware innocents being "convicted" by colleges... (1)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368557)
Even if you're innocent, many a time I've seen folks who could not have cheated, folks who were taking the class not even for an elective but simply because they wanted to learn, folks who were out of town (in the days of 300 baud modems and 30lb "laptops", who could not physically have cheated, who had no incentive or motivation to cheat, be "convicted" of cheating merely because their work looked "similar" to somebody else's. (Aka convergent evolution or convergent design. The pigeonhole principle. There's only so many ways to solve the problem. Somebody loses.)
Usually the deal was to accept a forced fail in the class or get kicked out of school. And I've seen kids kicked out who tried to fight it!
Seriously, keep quiet and GET A LAWYER!!! Publicity doesn't help. Forget the media. Forget how unfair it is. GET A LAWYER! Lawyers help! A letter from a lawyer may cost you $50 or $100 and that may be all it takes to get things resolved favorably to you. GET A LAWYER!!! You're paying a lot of money for your education. If you're being treated unfairly, ripped off, robbed. GET A LAWYER!!! Watch how fast school administrators backpedal when it's their ass on the line!
You think I'm joking? I've seen it firsthand, and done it myself. I practically blackmailed my dean back in college to let a friend off academic suspension early. Could I have done what I was threatening? Probably not, but he didn't know that and he certainly wasn't going to risk his career when he had a safer way forward. (Dean raised the academic goalposts for my friend. I had her take, and ace, a set of very easy loafing classes. That was the last we ever heard from him.)
You can win this. GET A LAWYER!!!
"News" (0)
Anonymous Coward | 2 days ago | (#48368795)
Really?
Honor (1)
QuietLagoon (813062) | 2 days ago | (#48368839)
.
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, English historian, author, and statesman.