Is this cheating?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Another vote for cheating. If it was a group assignment, then they wouldn’t have been each taking individual tests. I don’t see what difference it makes that it was on a computer instead of on paper. Who cares? “Open book” != “consult your neighbors.” I can see that they might have been honestly confused about it, but if they were not told working as a group was okay, then I think they were wrong to assume it was okay. It’s not generally okay to ask around when taking a test; why would it be in this case? Because it was on a computer? Because it was in a lab instead of a class? Because it was unsupervised? Again, I don’t see those things as justifyiing the belief that the behavior magically becomes okay, when otherwise it wouldn’t be.

But I don’t see why you’re asking since he’s apparently not going to do anything about it anyway. Even if he concludes he did the wrong thing, he’s not going to admit to it – despite the fact that these six may well have taken advantage of other students who didn’t consult each other on the test.

IMO, if he thinks it was cheating, even in retrospect, he should be a man about it and admit it to his professor. Easy for me to say, I know; especially when he may well be getting his friends in serious trouble as well. So I can certainly see that he might believe the wisest course is to be silent. Bht then – again – I don’t know why you’d be asking whether it was or wasn’t cheating. Seems to me you (and he) would be happier not examining too closely his initial conclusion that it wasn’t.

22

Still another vote for cheating. Really it is a no brainer.

[ul][sup]Is there something about this subject that is causing double posts?[/sup][/ul]

23

I was interested in finding out if any other students had done this, and what the policy is in their university, if any; if it had been expressly prohibited or allowed or even mentioned, in this context. I’ve been out of school a long time and my son has been away for 6 years; he says the instructors can’t even require the students to attend class. They are encouraged to form study groups. It never crossed his mind it could be considered cheating until someone mentioned it. None of the students in the group were just going to take the word of another about the correct answers and that’s why the scores varied; someone taking the test alone who knew the material well would have had plenty of time to consult the text. So the only real advantage they had was over the poor students. Humm. In any case, this was the first and last time because he’s lost enough sleep and agonized over it enough.

24

A professor of grown adults–which college students are–shouldn’t be forced to explicitly describe everything that constitutes cheating. A professor should be able to assume that students have a modicum of understanding of what is allowed and what isn’t.

I’ve had students who’ve come to me crying because they swore they didn’t know you couldn’t copy right out of a book or turn in a paper identical to another student’s. They may be telling the truth, but ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse. By the time a typical student reaches college, they should have some common sense.

There ARE such things as group exams, but they are groups usually assembled by the professor. If the professor had intended for students to work together, he would have held the exam in a centralized place so that they could be supervised.

It’s cheating not only because the exam is supposed to be accessing an individual’s knowledge, but also because not every student is going to have six friends in the class to work with. Anyone finding themselves in a situation like your son’s would immediately realize this.

I think the right thing for your son to do is to go to the professor and explain the situation. The prof may be laid back and say, “Oh, that’s no biggie. Just work alone the next time.” Or, he might give your son and his friends different exams (his friends may hate him for it, though). But I can’t see a reasonable professor punishing him for it. Not too many students are noble enough to confess their sins, and he might be very impressed with someone with that kind of honesty.

(If the amount of information exchanged between your son and his friends was limited, though, I wouldn’t make a big deal about it.)

25

I posted this comment in a “collaboration vs cheating” thread a few weeks ago, but I think it still applies here as well.

as always, YMMV.

One professor used to make all of his tests open book and open notes. He also let you pick it up on one day and return it by the end of the next day. Now, you’d think that this kind of system would make it extremely easy to cheat. But it wasn’t like that at all. Because he allowed you to look at the textbooks and whatever notes you had, he made up the questions such that the answer wasn’t a quick look-up type of thing. In fact, you’d often have to pull concepts together from 3 or 4 sections of textbook and/or notes in order to get a handle on the problem. I often spent upwards of an hour on ONE QUESTION, on a 15-question test.

So you know what we did? We’d pick up the test, then 4 or 5 of us would get together in someone’s apartment or dorm lounge that evening, split a couple of pizzas and a 12-pack of beer, and go over the questions on the test over the course of a couple of hours. Basically, trying to figure out WTF the question was asking and a general idea of how to answer it. We’d come up with a few different approaches, and move on to the next question. After this, we’d all retire to our separate quarters and fill out whatever answers we’d come up with, but at this point, each person was entirely on their own. (I should point out that this was a senior-level CS class rather then Programming 101).

Now, some people may consider this cheating, and I can see how they could make that argument. But, in all seriousness, I can honestly say that I studied more, learned more, and remembered more from those test-taking sessions then I did on anything else in college. In fact, I can still remember some of the test questions (and my answers to them) to this day, 3 or 4 years later. And the professor, while unable to endorse this practice, had to know exactly what was going on (or at least wallow in willful ignorance). But he was also smart enough to know that we were doing our own work at the end of the day and to leave it alone.

In a way, it’s not too much different from the high school chemistry teacher who said “You can bring one 8.5x11 page of notes to look at during the test. I don’t care what you write on it, but no more then one page.” Kids (myself included) would think: “Hot damn, I don’t have to study, I just need to create a cheat sheet.” Well, guess what? Creating that ‘cheat sheet’ is studying. I’d spend 3 hours making the ‘cheat sheet’, only to not look at it once during the test itself.

26

We used to do the same thing jweb did for one of my classes. The professor made it known that he only took his questions from old tests, so “all we had to do” was round up several years’ worth of old tests. Of course, we’d spend the evenings in a massive groups going over the questions and working out our exact answer. So several group members would have highly similar answers–usually factions would break off, with 2 or 3 going with one answer and 2 or 3 going with a different answer. So were we all cheating?

27

I’d tend to assume anything not specifically allowed is considered not-allowed. ``Open-book’’ means having books and such around is allowed. It does not say that consulting with friends is allowed. I dunno, though. In your son’s case, if they don’t go to the prof now, they definitely should clarify in the future what is allowed and not.

We had some finals at university where we were given 20 questions a week ahead of time, and encouraged to group-study them. Then 5 of those questions would show up on a standard supervised exam situation. I can’t remember if we were allowed to bring notes in. I do remember that sometimes ``picking 5 of the 20 questions’’ seemed to involve removing 3/4 of the paragraph breaks, so instead of 20 short simple questions we had 5 long convoluted ones with 4 parts each…

28

Actually, a lot of my professors made the open book tests even more difficult-you had to know where to look stuff up, you had to know how to explain it, etc.

29

Oh yeah and I forgot to mention they could of made it alot worse for other students.

If the professor used a curve which most do and they scored in the top that would throw the curve off. Seeings how if he studied that hard on the test, struggled, consulted others…

Obviously those that followed instructions for the test correctly definetly got the short end here.

He should take responsibility I think to lessen the blow of the other students.

30

If the test is being taken out of class, the professor HAS to realize that he’s essentially making it a group effort. It’s implied, I think.

I had a professor look at me like “Duh” when I asked if we could work together on a take-home test.

31

I strongly disagree with this. What about the fact that it takes place in the computer lab, or in the students’ homes, means it automatically becomes a group effort? He isn’t making it a group effort, they have taken it upon themselves to make it a group effort when they don’t know if that’s okay or not. These reasoning floors me: “Surely the professor knew they’d do this, so therefore it must have been okay to do this.” It’s circular, post-event rationalizing: It couldn’t be cheating because the prof should have known we’d do it, and if he knew we’d do it, then it couldn’t be cheating.

And the harsh truth is that if the students really thought it was okay, they wouldn’t be so fearful about coming clear about it. The fact that they’re not willing to take that risk indicates to me that they’re pretty certain it wasn’t okay.

32

I know what you mean, and that’s what I thought at the time too, but then I got the “Duh” look when I asked.

33

In one computer class that I took, before each exam the instructor gave us a list of questions to study. There was a group of 5 or 6 of us who would got together in the student lounge to corroborate our answers to each question. Then when we took the exam, we were on our own in the calssroom but with the shared knowledge of the group. And many times we disagreed. After taking the test, the instructor would go over each question and give not just the correct answers but the how and why of each correct answer.

I can see the argument for coming forward, and also the argument for not coming forward. IANAI and IANAP; it probably depends on the instructor or professor anyway.

34

I’m currently a university student, and I’ve taken several open-book/take-home exams. But the professors have always specified if you’re allowed to collaborate with others. If they hadn’t, I probably would have asked for clarification beforehand, but I think it could go either way. Some friends of mine have had take-home exams where collaboration is ok - usually each student needs to write a separate paper or fill out a separate exam, but they can study/work together. Other professors never allow any kind of collaboration.

I think the best thing to do would be to approach the prof and explain the situation. Hopefully the prof will then know to clarify the test conditions when he teaches classes in the future. It’s a tough situation, given that you’re not just telling the prof about what you did - it also involves your friends. Maybe there’s some way he could ask the prof anonymously? Leave a note at their office or something?

I can related to some of the “quasi-cheating” examples given above.

I’ve had several professors where “all you had to do” was go over their old exams. One professor had an bank of exam questions, and when I looked over about 10 old exams, about 25% of the questions were the same from exam to exam. Every question was on at least two of the tests. So “all I had to do” was go over all the questions and find the answers when I was studying. I completed the 100 question multiple choice final exam in less than 15 minutes. I barely needed to read the questions. I didn’t cheat - but it almost felt like it.

I’ve also had open-book tests where I made immensely detailed “cheat sheets.” Or classes where I made tons and tons of flashcards. I barely studied them after I finished making them. Making them was my studying. It’s an excellent study technique.

35

I took one class (Greek History up to 300BC) in the same class section as my sister. We studied together for all of the exams - and we apparently did a very thourough job of it. We were pretty surprised when we got our midterms (in-class exams) back. We had answered different essay questions, but on the rest of the test (multiple choice, true/false and fill-in-the-blank) both of us put the same answer for every single question.

Most of them we got right, because we studied a lot and we’re both good students. But out of the six or seven answers we got wrong, we both put exactly the same wrong answer. Because we’d studied together, when I didn’t know the answer, she didn’t know it either. And if we’d studied the wrong thing or made a mistake, we both made the same mistake. Even very specific answers - like both of us putting Cleisthenes as founding democracy in 510BC, instead of 505BC.

It was pretty funny. Good thing we wrote the test on opposite sides of the large room and the prof knew there was no way we could have cheated. She thought it was hilarious.

36

I have one class where the instructor does online, open-book exams. She made it clear at the beginning of the semester that these were to be done individually and collaboration netted an F for that exam.

That said, I’d tell your son to talk to the instructor to make sure the prof’s expectations are crystal-clear.

Oh, and:

Welcome to academia!

Robin

37

I take my classes online, and for the most part all of our tests are open-book. At the beginning of each class we are required to sign a statement saying that we certify all the work we do is our own, that we are not getting any outside help and we will cite any sources or references used, etc.

Did your son have to sign anything like that before taking the course? I would assume that unless specifically endorsed by the prof, working together is cheating.