I totally agree with you on this point: it boggles my mind, too. But my students have to supply their own. The school doesn’t provide them for me, and I can’t afford to buy them (with a class of 120 students, I’d have to pay $30 for blue books for each exam. Hell, I’m already paying almost $30 a week for photocopying–pretty soon I’ll have to start paying them to let me teach there!).
What Manatee said. No way am I going to pay for those blue books. They are sold in the campus bookstore and convenience stores, which is where the students buy them.
It wouldn’t even matter if I shuffled them and passed them out again. When people cheat on an in-class writing, they’ve already brought in copies of stuff they printed off the Internet so they can write it into the blue book in class, instead of doing it ahead of time. (Yeah, I know, I should be policing more…but then I figure: why not let them hang themselves if that’s the risk they want to take?)
Manatee: I’m stunned that you have to pay anything at all! Is it just a matter of logistics and the time factor, or are you actually required to pay for your own copies?
Pay $30 for ONE exam. Still have the students buy them and give you Blue Books before each exam, but pass out the stack you already have in reserve (brought in by the students who took the last exam).
Sometimes it’s a matter of logistics (copy orders have to be dropped off a week in advance for the on-campus duplication service to handle them), but mostly we’re just expected to pay: we’re only allowed 100 copies per class. My syllabus alone usually burns that up for each class.
Good stategy, but even at that it’s $30 that I don’t have ($1200/month doesn’t leave too much slack in the budget).
(somebody I don’t remember): The thing that always amazes me is how much planning and effort a cheater will put into commiting the act. If they put that same effort into actually studying the material they would most certainly be able to pass the course.
Too damn right. I think it’s fundamentally a confidence issue: they don’t really believe they’re capable of understanding the subject matter, but they figure that any fool can cheat. Actually, it’s a lot harder to cheat successfully than to simply learn the material, and many fools eventually find that out the hard way.
My favorite cheater story: I was teaching a history of science class which involved some astronomical observation. Students had to record on a sky chart the observation date and time, as well as some of the objects they saw.
Kid, you have obviously not grasped the first thing about the subject matter if you haven’t figured out that the objects visible in the sky at a particular location at a particular date and time are mathematically predictable. The hell, I even directed you all to an on-line planetarium program that will show what objects are visible for a given place and time (although it doesn’t track the weather, heh heh, so I still have a way to test what they could actually have seen, to some extent).
When you hand in a sky chart with a configuration of planets that is ASTRONOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE (like you’ve got Venus in the eastern sky two hours after sunset), I am going to be able to figure out that you did not observe it.
:eek:
I’ll count my blessings once again that we can have print services make stuff with no limits that I know of; and that our copy cards can be recharged (free) repeatedly.
I had a similar experience in year 8 or 9 (I think thats Junior High for most of you) although in my case the stupid prick of an English teacher accused me of plagerism on a poem I had created for myself (was told (paraphrasing “Very good who did you steal it off?”) got a D on it and that was the day I stopped doing work in High School.
Luckily I was able to take classes of my choosing for the most part the next year, and so chose classes that actually interested me (although still didnt do the work in them) and passed 80% of them (failed 3unit Mathematics that i hadnt wanted to do in the first place but got placed in because of scores in previous classes, and Chemistry because the teacher missed teaching about 1/3 of the course)
meant to add, that I now (7 years after graduation) feel stupid for having done that, but at the time I was soo livid I couldnt believe it.
Also, while the day of a new moon and a full moon are both indicated by circles on your twee little DayMinder organizer calendar, the new moon circle is completely black, while the full moon circle is empty. So if you were to, say, fake your observing assignment, you want to be sure that the little circle was empty before declaring that you observed a full moon.
Also, if you’d been paying attention during the lecture and many exercises on the phases of the Moon, you’d have known that it’s impossible to see a full moon in the eastern sky at 8 PM. But, hey, if you’re going to to go to all the trouble of thinking about it, you might as well walk outside for five minutes and look at the fucking sky.
Oh, crap. Pod’s credibility slips another notch Western sky. I meant western sky. The full moon is in the eastern sky at 8 PM.
You know, I wish it ws that easy. Maybe in a history class or something like that but a programming class is different. I never cheated but I might have been tempted to purchase a solution to some of my programming problems just so I could see how they approached it. I by the way has the best attendance in my class, struggled through all of the homework and still did not understand how to write the code I needed, It was even an open book open note class. I made a B in C++ somehow someway. I think the teacher graded extremely easy. She also recommended me for a job, go figure. In most of my other classes I had the highest average in the class but I am still thinking I would have been tempted to purchase code in that. I guess that makes me a cheater at heart.
So a question for you… did you go to your teacher to ask for help on the parts you were having trouble with? If not, why not?
That’s the biggest mystery to me for my classes. I tell them over and over that they can ask me questions any time, in office hours or via e-mail. I tell them that I am very good at debugging and can certainly help them understand why they have that nagging error that they cannot figure out. Yet I sit in my office during office hours…
unvisited… unneeded… unloved… ::
::
Seriously – if they would just come to me for help instead of whittle away their time trying to figure out ways to cheat. Life would be so much easier for them.
On the temptation to purchase homework solutions from places like rentacoder.com, I wouldn’t really recommend it – besides the cheating factor, there are other reasons. Read on.
The first case where I found a student trying the rentacoder.com site – fall term a few years ago – I had figured out who it was, and I kept an eye on the listing. I saw that it got to “accepted bid”, and the accepted bid was just $10. The info in the bidder’s profile indicated that it was a student in a foreign country. And I don’t even think grad student – undergrad level, if I recall.
This was one of the last programming assignments in the term, so it was a bit higher in difficulty than the earlier ones. Not hard for an experienced programmer, but at least a couple hours’ work, regardless. I waited to find out what she turned in. I don’t know if she ever got “delivery” from that accepted bidder, but the files she turned in didn’t make any sense. Didn’t appear to have much to do with the assignment, but also didn’t match any coding style from things she had previously turned in.
I didn’t follow up on the “cheating” aspect of it on her, because she was already failing the class on her own merit, and that submission didn’t have anything relevant in it to earn credit for the given assignment. Was sort of a moot point.
The next term, she re-took the class, and I saw her in the TA’s office asking questions and it looked like she was doing her own work. Stopped slacking and put in some effort – that much was obvious from the improved test scores (not great, but passing). She never knew that I knew about the rentacoder.com thing, until the end of spring term, when she managed to pass.
I do a CGI lookup form on the web, to allow students to look up final grades at the end of the term. And I have the capability in my program to add in comments for individual students, showing just for them. Here’s some of what I added in to HER lookup:
"I was glad to see that you were in the TA’s office at the end of the term asking questions and working on homework 7 yourself, rather than attempting the RentaCoder.com route again (yes, I knew about that). As an aside – offering $10 wasn’t going to get you much but a poor coder from a third-world country - and it showed. I certainly wouldn’t have accepted such a job for so little. " (and I told her I would have charged $50/hour… )
"…your exam scores were much more consistent this term, and I can tell that you do have a better understanding of the material than last term – I’m glad to see it.
I certainly hope you realize that the route of honesty is going to gain you much better results in the long run, and you will learn more (and be more valuable in the job market) as well.
Have a good summer. 
"
[Bugs Bunny]
Ain’t I a stinker? 
[/BB]
For non-cheaters, anyway, it can be somewhat intimidating.
Yep I did as often as I could, email, office visits, help during and after class, whatever I could squeeze in, being an older student I work full time. As a supervisor in a warehouse I work looong hours and my off hours are very limited and tend to be at 2am. The biggest problem I had was little time to study. I really like programming but the logic of the overall program in C and C++ gave me fits. Although Mrs. S told me I was doing just fine. teh overall logic escaped me, I could program the parts, but couldn’t get ti all fit together. Not having a good grasp of C really caused problems in C++. Had no problem with VB6.0 though. Iloved both of my programming teachers and took several classes form each. I just wish I could find a job doing this that paid as much as I am already making. They kept recommending me for unpaid internships which would be a great stepping stone but I can’t quit the job that pays the mortgage til I have something equitable.
I doubt I would ever purchase an answer anyway since the way the instructor wants it done and the way someone else would do it wouldn’t be the same and a working program is only part of the grade.
We had people who just refused to do the work and then expected to have everything explained to them later. One student on my intro class missed several classes because he had gout and was taking pain meds, when he did come to class he snored through most of it. He asked me after class to help him with a problem and while talking about I realized he had not even done any of the homework and was expecting me to teach it all to him. I told him he needed to come to class and at the very least do the homework, he told me he couldn’t come to class because he was in pain. I laughed at him since I was in class on crutches with a broken ankle. He used this excuse through several classesas to why he couldn’t do any of his work. I refused in one class work on a project with him and in another made him the project leader when I couldn’t get out of it. (I ended up doing the project by myself anyway)
I have learning disablities myself but it never occured to me to go to the Help Center. I just made sure to do the things I knew I needed to do to compensate for my problems. I only tell anyone about my issues when it becomes a problem, ie my boss knows about why my handwriting is so bad.
I am just appalled altoghther at being back in lower level classes anyway, the attitude toward school and teachers was amazing to me. Total disregard for the teacher and subject and for the government paying for the classes, so these folks were free to blow off everything time and time again. I just wish I could afford to keep going past these entry level classes.
adhemar
(who by the way has worked on an MS in marketing til the money ran out there too.)
Ouch! Nothing like putting your grade, possibly your future, in the hands of random student X.
A side anecdote about asking teachers for help; not all teachers are willing.
When I took a lighting class, I was having trouble with some concepts. The sylabus said, “Hours by appointment”, so about 2 weeks before the mid-term, I said to the instructor, “I’m having some problems with (concept x and y), can I make an appointment to talk with you about them?”
His response? “If I had more time outside of class, I’d be using it to get more jobs.”
What a dick. Anyway, the upshot was that he was a terrible teacher, and was definately just there for the paycheck. Luckilly, I never had to take anything from him ever again, and got a ‘B’ in the class, which I grew to hate.
True. Although if a student truly wants to learn, they really need to get past that fear.
The bigger fear that I usually see (on the student’s part) is the fear to actually speak up in class, especially if it involves asking about something they aren’t understanding in the lecture. I try to encourage it, but I understand that many are afraid to speak up and feel like they are the only one “not getting it” (not usually the truth, but a valid fear).
That’s why office hours are nice. If they come see me, there are no fellow classmates around, and therefore there should be less worry over “looking stupid” in front of their peers.
They should never worry (although I’m sure they do) because they don’t know as much as their teacher – that’s why he/she is the teacher!
Yes, that’s definitely a poor attitude by probably a poor teacher doing a poor job.
I do expect students to be reasonable about the time they request, because I have to be available for many students, and with planning and grading, I cannot be in my office with open door policy all day every day. But I think any college teacher should schedule several “official” office hours, held each week – a time that they are always available for students to come by. And then other appointments by request. (I think a reasonable requirement is to ask the student to make the request with at least 1 day’s notice).
It’s also quite easy (and sometimes faster) for me to assist a student via e-mail – in my programming courses, if they send me the actual code that they are having trouble with, I can test it myself and get back to them via e-mail.
If he’s going to avoid answering student questions at all, he needs to go find that other job and stop being a teacher.
All of this is very, very shocking news to me. Not the fact that there are cheaters in the world (hell, who doesn’t know that), but the fact that hardly anybody’s heard of students bringing their own blue books to class. I had an exam on Tuesday that required that I bring my own blue book to class, and there was no precautionary measure taken on the professor’s part to ensure that nobody came in with stuff already written in. In fact, that’s how all of my blue book tests have been; BYO blue book, take test, and leave. No precautions at all. And all this time I thought this was the norm…