Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!drn.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-08!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Daniel Morgan Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory,comp.databases.oracle.misc Subject: Re: Attention Experienced Professionals Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 19:02:46 -0700 Organization: Ye 'Ol Disorganized NNTPCache groupie Message-ID: <1097460250.413370@yasure> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <2so8jaF1njtukU1@uni-berlin.de> <18c7b3c2.0410090721.234e5fec@posting.google.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cache-Post-Path: yasure!unknown@oracle.advtechserv.com X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 76 Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.theory:26763 comp.databases.oracle.misc:113308 Alan wrote: > "--CELKO--" wrote in message > news:18c7b3c2.0410090721.234e5fec@posting.google.com... > >>>>This is one of the times of the year when we start getting a lot of >> >>questions from students. There have been several of tehse lately. >>Sometimes they state that they are students, and sometimes they try to >>disuise an assignment as a business problem hoping that someone will >>give them the answer. << >> >>In the US and most other countries, presenting someone else's work as >>your own will get you expelled from college. I suggest that you hunt >>down the school from which the post was made and report it to the head >>of their computer science department. I have gotten at least one kid >>in New Zealand kicked out of college myself. >> >>Another give-away I found is the some professors use my SQL PUZZLES & >>ANSWERS for questions. I can usually recognize these :) If the >>students are going to ask me to answer my own questions, they could at >>least buy the book. >> >>--CELKO-- > > > I was an adjunct at a noted Eastern U.S. University (consitently ranks high > un U.S. News & World Report). I taught three terms before becoming > completely disillusioned with the job due to the amount of cheating among > students. Mind you I was teaching seniors, junors, and grad students. I > could not believe that they got this far and the suddenly started cheating. > This meant that profs were "looking the other way". Why? Maybe student > reviews went into tenure or reserach decisions. I don't know. All I know is > I caught cheaters in every class I taught. Without trying to. The most > memorable example was on a take-home final. Stop laughing. How did I catch > them? It was a DBA type of class, and I had given a business problem that > needed to be analyzed and designed. I asked specific questions. The question > had to do with the "best" naming of data files and tablespaces in Oracle > (using OFA conventions). Basically, "What would you name the datafiles and > tablespaces and why?" One student gave me DDL that created a bunch of tables > that may have ultimately been used in the application. He had answered a > question (incorrectly at that) I didn't ask. A couple of papers later, I > think, "Didn't I _just_ read this?" The student made a very poor attempt at > changing some attribute names, sizes and ordering, but had the same > incorrect answer to an unasked question. UN-BE-lievable... > > Anyway, the punishment was up to me. Anything up to and including getting an > "F" in the class. The incidents go on their "permanent records", and if > there is another instance, they're out. Too lenient, IMO. Anyway, the "joke" > of the whole incident was that both of these students (foreign, BTW, as alll > the cheaters I caught except one happened to be) were both failing the class > anyway. A projection of their grades showed that even if student 1 had > gotten a 100 on the test (not going to happen, of course), he would barely > have eked out a D. The other was flunking no matter what. My options? I > could have been evil, and made them take another test knowing that they > would flunk anyway, or just give them an F in the course. Giving another > test would have made more work for _me_, so I just gave them both an F. > > Oh, I had made it abundantly clear in the first class and on the syllabus > what types of collaboration were allowed and what weren't. I even explained > how to post in newsgroups (identify yourself as a student, show the work > you've done so far, and ask for advice, not answers). The final was given as > "no collaboration". I too give all tests, midterm and final, as take home. And I too allow collaboration. As close to the real-world as possible. Open book, open internet, open brain. Any test given on a piece of paper is worth only as much as the paper on which it is printed. -- Daniel A. Morgan University of Washington damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)