[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Caught a student cheating (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 9/14/2006 3:57:37 PM EDT
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Class was taking their first major test of the semester and I see a student in back row with some pages stapled together and she's flipping through them and then laying the papers on the seat of the empty chair next to her. I walk over and see lecture outlines covering exactly the same material that's being tested on face up on the chair next to her. I say, "Hmmm, that's interesting" and then I take the outlines. When she turns in the test I say I need to speak to her after class. After class I ask her how she can explain this. Her answer was "It fell out of my notebook and I was just putting it back - and besides, it wasn't even relevant to the test".  Zero on the test. Misconduct report filed with the Dean. MAY be kicked out of the class with an "F". Geez, some people are just sooooooo stupid. |
| how large was the class that was taking the tests? exams here for major courses often have hundreds of students and are held in huge lecture halls, the cheating is sometimes pretty blatant but there usually aren't enough proctors to effectively monitor the students taking the test. |
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No kidding. Didn't she even offer to make up for it with a sexual favor? |
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I would have just taken the student's uncompleted exam at that point, and asked her to leave the room immediately. I do not take kindly to those who participate in academic misconduct. The Chair of my department doesn't either. He has personally seen to the expulsion from the School and the UNiversity of a number of cheaters. I make it very difficult for students to cheat on my exams. I have started to make all the exams two-part. The first part is short-answer, and calculators are not allowed. They turn in that part and get teh second part, which has problems they have to work. This prevents them from having the short answers stored as text in their calculators for use on part 1. Good catch, Mac! |
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At my alma mater, all you needed to know was "A cadet does not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who do." I sat on several honor committe trials, and several cadets took a one way trip off campus. You know you did the right thing, I've read enough of your postings to know you're certain of that. Good job, and welcome to the most recent enrollee in the school of personal responsibility. Probably the most improtant thing you taught her. |
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You think she'll actually face the music? We've got an "honor code". It only applies to those who are not in the favorite sports, and even then rarely. It's the "three strikes and you get three more strikes" system. I tell ya, it really breeds respectable citizens.
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This shit is not taken lightly at our place. |
She's got a zero for the test a report in her file. She won't be withdrawn from the class because I didn't recommend it. |
I'm guessing with a zero on a test, she's probably gotta work her ass off just to get a D? |
Isn't that a significant percentage of her grade...like 25% or more.. She would be wiser to drop the class and take it durring the summer (if it is even offered in summer session). Still, I think she should be given the boot without a refund for such blatant cheating. |
The_Macallan: Most unfortuante. My friend used to be a student at CalTech, Pasadena Calif, they have open book and open notes tests. The profs give the students a test, and they are given a time limit, and my friend would take test in his dorm room in the time limit given by the prof, and turn it in the next in class. My friend goes if you can't do it within the time limit, you're never going to do it because they you more than enough time. |
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Caught a student who had a 35% in a world history class plagerizing his final paper. He handed me a 70 page thesis on the influence of the Babylonian captivity on an ancient Hebrew dialect. When I asked him who wrote it and where he got it, the genius replied, "Ummm, I did." So I asked him again, and he still insisted that it was his work. Half the paper was in Hebrew mind you.. Finally, I asked him how to spell Elokim, Yahweh, and Babylon. He just stared at me. F-ing idiot. |
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How often do you see cheating on papers? The internet seems to encourage, and even make it seem permissible to copy and paste directly from sites and include that information in reports. I see this all the time with researched lab reports that I help students with their grammar and content. I make it clear that the students should never paraphrase too closely, and properly cite when information comes from sources. They should almost never use quotes unless there is a good reason---like refuting what someone wrote and the exact words are necessary. It's also easy, with writing, to tell immediatly when information is not the student's own. The grammar, and usage changes dramatically. It is also easy to find the source of the information. I point these things out as well. Even with my efforts to prevent a report being turned in which cheating has occured, there is usually one student per semester who commits blatant plagiarism like copying another's report from a previous semester and submitting it as his/her own. (I am a laboratory assistant in the Engineering College.) I wonder how our new dean will handle these situations. Our previous dean would only let a letter be placed in the student's department file. The Univerity dean wouldn't hear about it unless there were other incidents. I hope this cheater either is kicked out, or at the very least must repeat the course. |
Nice to see your CoP has your back 
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My first year teaching at the university level I bought Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It, and Prevent It by Gregory H. Cizek. Its written at a popular level, but it relies on academic sources. Like most people I knew a few ways to cheat, but having a long list of techniques (some I never would have thought of) organized into carious categories really helped me focus my anti-cheating efforts. Donald McCabe reviewed it and liked it. McCabe, Donald L. "Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It, and Prevent It (review)" The Journal of Higher Education - Volume 73, Number 2, March/April 2002, pp. 297-298 |
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In my five years of teaching for the Navy I caught about 20-30 students cheating. The best one was a whole class of cheaters who had someone recording the multiple choice exams' answer code from the week ahead of them. They'd then record the code in the technical manuals that they used. I found little hearts, moons, stars, and clovers in one guy's book and spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds in the next. I went and got about ten staff members and we seized all their books, searched their rooms and lockers. They were held up from going home on Christmas vacation break until a few of them confessed who the ring leader was (class petty officer) and who was feeding them material from the weeks ahead of them. They all fried ... tossed out of school and sent to the fleet but that was what happened to each of the cheaters I caught. In combat there are no crib sheets. 
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My university just bought/subscribed to turnitin.com. Its is so great. The students submit their papers electronically, you cut and paste them in the turnitin window and search, and the wesbite returns a list of websites that have some degree of similarity to the sentences and partial sentences of the student work. Its rates each match to the degree of plagiarism. If you click on the redflag for a possible plagairism match, the screen splits to show the website text the student plagiarized and their paper so that the prof can compare the two. My friend at another university showed me and I was very impressed. I can't wait to use it. |
Wandering eyes is most common. Zeros. Another time I caught someone redhanded with a cribnote in her hand during the test. Walked right up behind her while she was looking at her palmed notes and took it right from her hand. Premeditated cheating - CYA. I caught students with notes written on their hand a couple times. Adios. I caught another student with notes written high up on her thigh - she was wearing shorts and would hitch up her shorts leg to read them during the test. Again, premeditated - buh-bye. Another student photocopied their partner's homework assignment, whited-out their name and wrote their name over it. Damn that was a stupid one. I scratched off the white out to reveal the other student's name. Both got the boot. Another student went to the rest room three times during the test. On the fourth time I followed him in after about 30 seconds. Caught him with a notebook he stored in the restroom ahead of time. He got flushed. Another student brought in a scantron sheet with very light notes written on it. I always hand out scantrons that *I* store in my office and noticed this student switch mine with hers. Gone. Then there's the one who change answers after walking up to the front of the class to turn it it - as she walked past other students she stopped and proceeded to give the longest, most bug-eyed stare at another student's test. She almost bent over too take a good look at that other student's test. Then immediately walked up to the front and started erasing a couple answers right before turning it in. Zero. These are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. Yeah, there's been plenty of them. Probably plenty I don't catch too. |
I'm in highschool right now and lemme tell ya, you don't even know the half of whats going on. Haha sorry but its true. You've got the most basics nailed though. Try catching them text messaging eachother stuff, most teachers at my school make us turn in our phones to him/her at the beginning of the test. Because its so easy to text 1-B to a friend with their number stored etc. Also the tap method. On short little quizes that you give out, they might tap there desk with their pen the number of the question then hold up 1,2,3,4 fingers indicationg which letter. Another very easy way to cheat on short 1-10 question quizes if they are multiple choice. Hope I help you catch some people cheating!! Btw my above post was just a joke, I hate cheaters, especially people who cheat on big tests. |
I don't allow cellphones during tests. You take a cellphone out during a test, it's a zero.
Never heard any tapping during tests. Never saw any fingers going up during tests. I'd notice stuff like that. |
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Yeah I said the tapping and fingers is usually used during quizzes. And unless you confiscate cellphones then you don't know for sure whether they are out or not, pretty easy IMO to conceal one and send a text message with a teacher hovering. But you sound like a pro and I wish there were more teachers like you at my school to catch the fags that share all their answers while I work my ass off to get a B and they accumulate an A among themselves.
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In an MBA group project, we had a team member submit her portion to a group paper that was a direct copy from someone else in the class. The instructor caught it because he reviewed the individual contributions to the group paper. Very smart J.D. (business law class). Still saw the bitch at school too. I was the jackass who had to compile the team contributions and she couldn't write her way out of a fucking paper bag. |
As far as the cellphones - nearly impossible to use without being seen. The only thing on the desktop is the test. No books, backpacks, purses, water bottles - nothing. If it were a huge lecture hall, maybe. But these classes are smaller than that. Yeah, I know there's a lot that goes on even when you're watching closely. Sad part is I know some faculty practically sleep during their student's tests. I can only do what I can do. |
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do you also not allow Ipods? lol my junior year (2 years ago) was listening to his Ipod.. but the teacher was just sitting at his desk doing nothing.. so my friend scrolled Through his Ipod got anwsers and wrote em down lol that idiot never noticed... but my senior year we had 1 teacher that couldnt Hear so well my friends would yell questions like "Whats the anwser to 3?" in the back of the room... never noticed |
Amatuers! My med school had a girl working in the copy room making copies of tests and giving the test the night before to select set of minority students. She would seal the test into the test boxes and they wouldnt be opened until the test. But the tests were already compromised. Another student had the answers to a test called into his beeper. Programable calculators are old school. But team cheating was the most entertaining. One smart student who studied would hold his test so the rest of the idiots could copy off the test. Amazing that they didnt think to vary the answers somewhat so the scores wouldnt be exactly the same. 
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haha funny you mention Changing anwsers... in 8th grade I had a Computer class and I didnt want to do the assignment.. so I used a floppy disk and copied a friends.. and gave it to someone else also... well when we ALL messed up the spelling on General Motors.. it didnt help got in some good trouble for that one
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