200 UCF Students Caught Cheating - One-third of Class

[Dante]

Two hundred students, approximately one-third of the class of seniors, were believed to have received advanced copies of the exam. It was the largest cheating scandal in the university's history.

Quinn, who called the scandal "a knife to my heart, calculated exactly who'd cheated, and then gave the entire class a dressing down.

"To say I'm disappointed is beyond comprehension," he said. "Physically ill, absolutely disgusted, disillusioned, trying to figure out what the last 20 years were all about."

- Widespread Cheating Scandal Prompts Florida Professor to Issue Unusual Ultimatum - ABC News

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What interests me is that ABC showed footage of a student saying "everybody cheats" and the student said it would be difficult to find somebody in the testing site on campus that hasn't cheated.

I've never cheated on a test. I guess I never felt the need to. But is the student's view a popular one? Do most people think others cheat on tests so it make it okay for them to cheat?

Should the students be denied graduation? Should they have that second chance to retake the test? what about those who didn't cheat and now have to come from a class that is known to have cheated?

 

[Dante]

The teacher is making all 600 students retake the exam, whether they cheated or not.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

With the cheating that widespread, I'd force a retake too.

As a professor, the policy in my class is if I catch you, I toss your test, give you a zero, and report you to the Dean of Students. The problem comes at that level though. I've been at Universities where the Dean of Students refuses to punish cheating, or levys a very very weak penalty. When I was a TA, there were some pretty wild cheating scams caught and busted. Very few students actually faced expulsion over the issue though.

I can vouch that students do cheat if you do not engage in active proctoring practices. They'll program extensive notes into calculators, use their smart phones to hit the web, take pictures of the test in progress and send them to friends, send ringers to take tests, etc. I know for a fact the local Frats have pretty extensive files on past tests used by professors.

So the long story short (too late ) is that cheating is pretty rampant. For every one we catch I'm sure at least 5 go uncaught.

 

[martybegan]

With the cheating that widespread, I'd force a retake too.

As a professor, the policy in my class is if I catch you, I toss your test, give you a zero, and report you to the Dean of Students. The problem comes at that level though. I've been at Universities where the Dean of Students refuses to punish cheating, or levys a very very weak penalty. When I was a TA, there were some pretty wild cheating scams caught and busted. Very few students actually faced expulsion over the issue though.

I can vouch that students do cheat if you do not engage in active proctoring practices. They'll program extensive notes into calculators, use their smart phones to hit the web, take pictures of the test in progress and send them to friends, send ringers to take tests, etc. I know for a fact the local Frats have pretty extensive files on past tests used by professors.

So the long story short (too late ) is that cheating is pretty rampant. For every one we catch I'm sure at least 5 go uncaught.

its just so easy to get information these days. Back when i was in college one of the physics profs was known for using like a 5 year cycle for his test questions. Students had been saving copies for years, and passing them along to incoming freshmen.

The funny thing is the bastards tests still took 5 hours even when you knew basically what was on it.

Nowadays that info can be scanned and saved for all to see.

 

[Dante]

its just so easy to get information these days. Back when i was in college one of the physics profs was known for using like a 5 year cycle for his test questions. Students had been saving copies for years, and passing them along to incoming freshmen.

The funny thing is the bastards tests still took 5 hours even when you knew basically what was on it.

Nowadays that info can be scanned and saved for all to see.

Yeah, but why cheat? Seriously, it's something I've never done. I had friends who would ask me what an answer was, but I never asked anyone for an answer. It's like cheating at solitaire for me.

 

[Dante]

With the cheating that widespread, I'd force a retake too.

As a professor, the policy in my class is if I catch you, I toss your test, give you a zero, and report you to the Dean of Students. The problem comes at that level though. I've been at Universities where the Dean of Students refuses to punish cheating, or levys a very very weak penalty. When I was a TA, there were some pretty wild cheating scams caught and busted. Very few students actually faced expulsion over the issue though.

I can vouch that students do cheat if you do not engage in active proctoring practices. They'll program extensive notes into calculators, use their smart phones to hit the web, take pictures of the test in progress and send them to friends, send ringers to take tests, etc. I know for a fact the local Frats have pretty extensive files on past tests used by professors.

So the long story short (too late ) is that cheating is pretty rampant. For every one we catch I'm sure at least 5 go uncaught.

pretty sad. no wonder American business leaders are so friggin' stupid.

 

[IanC]

the poblem is similar to taking steroids. if you think everyone else is doing it, cheating is hard to resist.

of course it may just be foolishness like those students that got caught cheating in "Stand and Deliver", even though they were able to pass the retest.

 

[Dante]

the poblem is similar to taking steroids. if you think everyone else is doing it, cheating is hard to resist.

of course it may just be foolishness like those students that got caught cheating in "Stand and Deliver", even though they were able to pass the retest.

I agree. But still, there are some things I don't understand about cheating. I understand why some people do it, I just don't understand why people don't 'beef-up' before tests. Isn't a challenge a personal things?

Why cheat yourself?

 

[IanC]

the poblem is similar to taking steroids. if you think everyone else is doing it, cheating is hard to resist.

of course it may just be foolishness like those students that got caught cheating in "Stand and Deliver", even though they were able to pass the retest.

I agree. But still, there are some things I don't understand about cheating. I understand why some people do it, I just don't understand why people don't 'beef-up' before tests. Isn't a challenge a personal things?

Why cheat yourself?

I agree. but then I was never on the bubble either. and I remember going to study groups that had copies of previous exams. was that cheating or just a gray area?

 

[syrenn]

I would push for a retesting of everyone.

This is sorta of a hard questions for me. I know i would tell people what was on tests and the right answers. Was that cheating?

Funny story here though. It was 2am and the phone was ringing, it was a wrong number. A minute later they called back. Somehow my phone number was mis posted for someone in the microbiology department of a college i DID NOT ATTEND. They were desperate for some answer on some test coming up. I told them take my number off of the damn list, tell whoever who is putting out the list that they have the wrong number for who ever it is they want...but the answer you need is this.

True story

 

[MikeK]

the problem is similar to taking steroids. if you think everyone else is doing it, cheating is hard to resist.

[...]

Add to that the conspicuous and increasingly corrupt nature of our government. When the overtly criminal practices of the Bush Administration are treated with flagrant impunity what sort of example does that set?

 

[Dr.Traveler]

its just so easy to get information these days. Back when i was in college one of the physics profs was known for using like a 5 year cycle for his test questions. Students had been saving copies for years, and passing them along to incoming freshmen.

The funny thing is the bastards tests still took 5 hours even when you knew basically what was on it.

Nowadays that info can be scanned and saved for all to see.

And I can vouch for the fact that on the teacher side of things, there's a reason you fall into the patterns that students can exploit. I rewrite every year. And in Mathematics, I can easily change the tests by changing numbers and functions.

However, I know that there are students out there that are getting an advantage by getting a hold of my old tests. While the numbers are different, the methodology is the same if the students use some basic analytical reasoning. My old tests show what I consider to be important, and that rarely changes as many of my classes are geared towards very specific goals.

And that's probably the mildest form of cheating I deal with. I sat down one afternoon with the WolframAlpha App for the iPhone and found to my horror that it would do 16 of the 20 questions on my final exam for second semester Calc and a decent number of a colleagues Differential Equations final. The Technology has changed how I teach. Now I ask a lot of story problems. If you can't recognize how to set it up, you can't use computerized algebra programs.

 

[martybegan]

its just so easy to get information these days. Back when i was in college one of the physics profs was known for using like a 5 year cycle for his test questions. Students had been saving copies for years, and passing them along to incoming freshmen.

The funny thing is the bastards tests still took 5 hours even when you knew basically what was on it.

Nowadays that info can be scanned and saved for all to see.

And I can vouch for the fact that on the teacher side of things, there's a reason you fall into the patterns that students can exploit. I rewrite every year. And in Mathematics, I can easily change the tests by changing numbers and functions.

However, I know that there are students out there that are getting an advantage by getting a hold of my old tests. While the numbers are different, the methodology is the same if the students use some basic analytical reasoning. My old tests show what I consider to be important, and that rarely changes as many of my classes are geared towards very specific goals.

And that's probably the mildest form of cheating I deal with. I sat down one afternoon with the WolframAlpha App for the iPhone and found to my horror that it would do 16 of the 20 questions on my final exam for second semester Calc and a decent number of a colleagues Differential Equations final. The Technology has changed how I teach. Now I ask a lot of story problems. If you can't recognize how to set it up, you can't use computerized algebra programs.

To borrow a line from Eddie Izzard, there is Cheating 1 and like Cheating 100, where the app thing is cheating 1, and what we did in school is 100. For the app version it does the work for you. In my version you still had to know how to do the problem as it wasnt exactly the same.

 

[rdbutler]

Whatever happened to taking pride in passing on your own merit, hard work, and mental elbow grease? If the students in question spent as much time on the coursework and exam preparation as in orchestrating a way to obtain and distribute the exam, they probably would have passed anyway.

 

[Revere]

I blame the system for not giving them all the As they clearly are entitled to.

 

[chanel]

Ha ha. Our school has a policy of zero, but no discipline. Teachers are asked to call home, and you wouldn't believe how many parents ask if their kid can retake it. The reason kids don't think it's serious is because the adults don't think it's serious. They make excuses instead of punishing the kid. Students see it merely as a risk or a game which they often win. Cell phones should be banned for this reason alone, but of course no one would ever agree to that.

 

[Dante]

the poblem is similar to taking steroids. if you think everyone else is doing it, cheating is hard to resist.

of course it may just be foolishness like those students that got caught cheating in "Stand and Deliver", even though they were able to pass the retest.

I agree. But still, there are some things I don't understand about cheating. I understand why some people do it, I just don't understand why people don't 'beef-up' before tests. Isn't a challenge a personal things?

Why cheat yourself?

I agree. but then I was never on the bubble either. and I remember going to study groups that had copies of previous exams. was that cheating or just a gray area?

copies of previous exams? prep for the perps.