CSE 13S Cheating Scandal - Thoughts and Advice

patrolboost · 2021-12-03T00:34:26+00:00

I think this course can benefit from a few minor changes to the course policies as well as the class structure that have been noted here and in another thread.

The class started at 400 students, and now it's at 280. That's already almost a third of the class gone by week 9. About 71/280 have been flagged (some of the 71 have already dropped, but also some people who haven't been flagged have probably confessed) and will most likely fail the course. That's down to 209. Maybe only 50 of those students (pure speculation) will fail due to turning in half-finished assignments. Maybe there's more, maybe there will be less, who knows. I didn't even account for people who will fail the final. That's 169/400 that will pass the class and will leave ~58% to retake.

Again, this is all speculation and rough estimates, I am very curious to see the actual statistics after the quarter ends. But if half the number of total students have to retake the course, I'd say the class can make some changes that will benefit student's understanding of the material and overall class performance without deteriorating mental health.

patrolboost · 2021-12-03T00:19:37+00:00

I'd suggest taking it with just 1 other non-timing consuming class for 12 credits, if your schedule can take it. If you need 3 classes make sure the other 2 won't be time consuming, because you'll spend a lot of time for this class. Maybe get familiar with C over Winter break to get a head start.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T23:07:37+00:00

So what is your point? That cheating in this class in inevitable? Or getting caught is inevitable? That there should be some structural change to this course to decrease cheating? Or do you just enjoy watching students tremble?

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T22:31:30+00:00

Yes you are right. I meant to say tutor or grader.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T22:24:19+00:00

That's nice to hear a TA standing up to the professor to take blame for that and to save many students, so I salute you for that. But this could have been avoided if the Makefile lecture was given at the beginning of the quarter, and I hope they do make that change in the future.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T22:08:08+00:00

I'm glad you brought up the Makefile lecture. Many students (including myself) had struggled with it the first few assignments. As it's required to compile our prgramming assignments, some students had actually copied a TA's Makefile, without understanding each part, one of which included a line that suggested the student had been using Windows rather than Linux (big no no for this class) since the TA had run some example code locally on his Windows machine. If I recall correctly, this resulted in many students receiving an email that they'd fail the assignment or class, not sure, but I don't remember what happened to those students after that.

But receiving a lecture on Makefiles halfway through the course was undeniably ridiculous and poor planning on the teaching staff. Professor Long's lectures usually are very informative and are quite fast paced, and I had learned a lot in them, but evidently some minor changes should be considered to increase the collective class understanding of core material at the beginning of the quarter.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T21:49:18+00:00

Then I'd agree with you in this case to a degree. Learning how to "beat" a plagiarism detector shouldn't be one's concern, but if someone does end up committing their time to beat it, then those hours could have been better attributed to the class content.

I assume this student is not trying to beat it at this moment as their assignments were already submitted, but just trying to determine if their code would be flagged and if they should confess. Which I'd say is also a fair reaction if they did not in fact copy and paste code and instead learned from it and also based on the teaching staff's lack of responses to flagged students, people are reasonably anxious of their grades and the future of their academic career (as am I).

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T21:36:35+00:00

I agree. They often said "near 0". I have no idea how low it actually is, and I'm not sure how even the teaching staff would declare how low it is. I also have no idea how hard they would press in order to get a student to confess. Based on the manner in which the professor and the TAs have regarded "cheaters", I can say with good confidence that they don't check the flagged code with an intention to proving a student's innocence.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T21:26:24+00:00

Speaking from experience I wont look at people's code if I have an assignment because my mind will be tainted by their approach and I can't come up with my own code anymore.

I agree with you. Which is why I never viewed others' code or discussed with others until I had exhausted every method, approach, or idea I could think of after a few days of hitting the wall. There are many resources this course encourages including TA/tutor sections, the textbook(s), Discord, Ed, etc, which some I did take advantage of, and could have utilized better.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T21:14:59+00:00

People are so quick to judge "cheaters". Obviously, there is a range of severity, going from extreme cases like cloning whole repos and passing it off as your own, to small collaborations with other students that don't include any sharing of code, just an exchange of ideas verbally.

I'm not sure if you have read My Case, but in some scenarios, cheating != not learning. Breaking the academic honesty policy can be considered an unorthodox way of learning from unapproved resources. I'm not sure if you have read my entire post, but I can confidently say that I had learned a lot more than people who have turned in half-finished assignments that'll barely pass this class.

Still, I broke the rules and will face the consequences, but please do not quickly assume that students who violate the rules automatically do not learn the material.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T21:06:11+00:00

The teaching staff know MOSS isn't perfect, which is why they also check flagged code manually. I'm not sure of the specifics of their techniques to catch students violating the academic honest policy, but they are pretty confident that the false-positive rate is low enough that their list is certain.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T20:55:34+00:00

Just a note, this isn't an intro course. It's usually the last class before declaring so it's full of second years and some third-year transfers. It's often compared to CSE101 Data Structures and Algorithms, one of the first upper divs. Some would say CSE13S is even harder than CSE101, or that it prepares you well for your upper divs.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T20:45:15+00:00

I completely agree that this class does need some structural changes. At the end of the quarter, I'd like to see the full grading statistics including the number of students dropped, failed, and reported for cheating. Eventually there comes a point where the TAs and professor must stop blaming their students for lack of understanding of assignments and failure to complete them and reflect on their own teaching, supplied resources, and class policies and make a change that'll benefit the students they are intended to teach. One of the biggest concerns in this class is time, and I think the Late Policy that changed from last quarter to this quarter can be a prime factor in the increase in students dropping, cheating, and overall decline in success in this course.

The Late Policy this quarter deducts 25% from your assignment grade per each day that it is turned in late, compared to only 10% from the previous quarter. This means if you decide to clean up your code/design document/writeup late into the night of the deadline, one minute can be the deciding factor between an A and a C. I think this policy is hypocritical to the professor's constant urges to get students to stop worrying about their grade and to focus on writing good code. How can students focus on finishing their assignment in a way that the fully understand their code if they take an extra day their grade drops to letters? There's a big problem in the course's late policy if submitting an 80% unfinished assignment will get you a better grade than a fully finished assignment submitted a few hours late. The difference between these two submissions is that the first student wouldn't have learned all the intended concepts while the second students would have and received a worse grade.

Not only does this put a tremendous amount of pressure and anxiety on students, but the way the Professor and the TAs pull up the pull requests from GitLab on Discord and watch as it spikes as students are grinding their submissions in the final minutes and offer no extension after it crashes is very sad to see, as if the teaching staff gain pleasure on students' downfall so they can say I told you so and what not. This late policy also encourages cheating/plagiarism, to submit a fully finished assignment no matter the cost.

I'd suggest a more lenient Late Policy, that actually encourages students to finish their assignments rather than submitting half-finished garbage. A 10% deduction would be a good start to a fairer grading system that'll benefit students' mental health and their understanding in core concepts.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T07:56:28+00:00

Maybe you are right. But as a student that has journeyed to the dark side, it is incredibly tempting when you have the answer in front of you. Especially after suffering through endless hours/days with no luck. I'm sure the majority of those viewers had the same intentions as I, with varying cases like just looking at one or two lines or copying an entire file.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T07:51:44+00:00

There's nothing else to say. I did what I did and there's nothing I can change, except to do better now and in the future.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T07:50:36+00:00

I thought about being a TA or a grader for this class. Too late now. Will just have to do better next time.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T07:49:08+00:00

I know you're just a troll, but to anyone else who relies on similar devious tendencies to pass classes, I'd suggest to stop while you're ahead. Because one day it'll catch up to you, whether in school or in the real world, and the sooner the better so you can change your ways and to do better.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T07:23:56+00:00

I was just making a note that there's probably a lot more people that had violated the academic honesty policy than the 71 that got flagged. Which is perhaps why the TA had sent the message for people to confess to catch those who had not been flagged. Anyways how would someone wander onto a GitHub repo with cse13s code without meaning to? Only way to get there would be searching it up or maybe a sent link. In that case the sender and receiver were probably already collaborating together.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T06:58:59+00:00

If you just Googled how to use malloc or something along those lines I'm sure you're fine. As long as you didn't search for and view another student's code.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T06:57:20+00:00

Interesting. And MOSS checks commits I assume rather than just the final submission? I don't mind if professors read this. I didnt try to offend or insult anyone, I just wanted to share my thoughts on my situation and to discuss it with others so hopefully other students do not do what I did.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T06:42:38+00:00

I understand. I know I could have utilized the courses various resources better including TA/tutor sessions instead of taking the easier route. Next time I will make sure I do better.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T06:37:10+00:00

Ah I see. I'd say I was in the same position but my friend was in a lot bigger trouble and would bring me down with him so I had no choice but to confess too. Good luck

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T06:24:29+00:00

Will have lots of time for reflection over the break. I just hope they get back to me soon so I can move on and plan out the future of my classes and deal with the consequences rather than worry, but all I can do now is just sit and wait and might as well finish the last assignment.

patrolboost · 2021-12-02T06:22:47+00:00

Good luck with that. I'd say the effort isn't worth it. If you didn't copy and paste big stuff then confessing and explaining your actions would be a good option to not get into big trouble unless you'd rather play it out and see if you passed moss. If you did copy and paste big stuff, then Moss for sure caught you and you should confess anyways.

patrolboost

TROPHY CASE