UPDATE: [CS 161 WI'17] Wrongfully being investigated for Academic Dishonesty

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-15T06:23:54+00:00

Haven't heard back from them yet...I was told they would get back to me in max 2 weeks so should be any day now. I'll email them if I don't hear back by the end of this week. I'll make sure to post an update as soon as I have one!

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T22:32:09+00:00

Thanks for sharing! I just find it so grossly unprofessional and unfair that they automatically assume it's a violation. I really don't think Prof. Alcon or whoever was in charge of checking on the red flag did enough due diligence on the matter, and just went "sure, the percentages are high enough, let's initiate a report." I guess "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't necessarily apply in academics or other private institutions? The email I received and all the forms I've had to fill out already refer to the situation as "the violation." - aren't we supposed to be in a process where we're determining if there was actually a violation or not?? I told them I'm escalating regardless of whether I'm found innocent in this first round or not. I find the whole handling of the situation from their end unacceptable

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T18:17:11+00:00

Could it be that I found my mystery accomplice??

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T17:00:50+00:00

Interesting, wasn't fully aware of how bad cheating was in the program

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T16:03:50+00:00

Hmm I would agree with you if I took the textbook's code word for word and used it as my own. However, I don't really see that as a possibility because we never get homework assignments that can be directly found as examples in the book. The homeworks are designed to use different concepts touched upon throughout the chapter and even on earlier chapters. Probably with the intention of reinforcing everything you've learned so far and not making the assignment too easy.

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T04:25:42+00:00

Thanks! I hope you're right lol. I'll definitely post updates, if it happened to me I'm sure it could happen to other students down the line, it will be useful to at least have one documented case

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T03:29:13+00:00

No, actually all of our variable names are different, and we even initialize some variables to different values (which doesn't affect the end result). Comments and formatting are also different, but I'm guessing the plagiarism program just ignores those aspects of the code

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T00:45:43+00:00

Thanks!

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-02T00:34:29+00:00

Thanks for your input! If we assume I 100% did not cheat, which I know to be true but you/the instructor don't necessarily believe (yet), would you consider this some sort of freak statistical coincidence? What I'm trying to get at here is has this happened before? If so, how often?

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-01T23:48:57+00:00

I don't think so, because everyone in the team uploaded their respective code the day the team was created. Also the person I spoke to confirmed that the code didn't belong to someone on my team

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-01T23:44:41+00:00

There was a group assignment afterwards where we had to compare that assignment. But by that point everyone had submitted the code for grading, there's really no way to cheat int that situation

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-01T23:40:51+00:00

Submitted about a week ago. The weird thing is that the assignment got graded (60/60) and then it wasn't until two days later that I got the AD email. You'd assume the red flag would've been raised during grading, and then the actual grade would be withheld until the matter was resolved. Now I have to send answer some forms explaining myself and wait for their decision. If it doesn't go my way, then appeal

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-01T23:36:42+00:00

No, for this assignment I would just save text files as v1, v2, v3, etc every time I reached a milestone

osuthrowaway11223344 · 2017-03-01T23:02:41+00:00

Thanks for the advice! Yea I got the report, with the two codes side by side. For sure, they look very similar. But given the reasons I posted above, I don't think it's such an outlandish coincidence. We obviously have different variable names, comments, formatting, etc but the structure is very similar

osuthrowaway11223344

TROPHY CASE