<p>I posted this under University of Maryland - College Park’s thread, but I thought I would post it here as well because we really need some advice.</p>
<p>Not sure what to do - our student has yet to receive a grade for a Fall computer science class. The professor sent an e-mail to the class shortly before Christmas stating that grades were posted. If a student’s grade was not posted, it was because a project was being investigated for “some similarities.” </p>
<p>It was odd, because the project had already been graded and there was no mention of “some similarities” at that time. The professor said it would be another week before he would post the rest of the grades from that class. It appears that about 80% of the class is still waiting for grades for the class. </p>
<p>Our student e-mailed the professor and offered to come in to talk to him and show him all of his work and tests that showed when and where the project failed and what changes he made to the program to make it work, etc. The professor said that was not necessary as he wasn’t making any accusations, he was just looking at the projects more thoroughly. Several other students also contacted the professor and were told he needed 2 weeks to sort through the “similarities.” He has yet to say or explain what he means by “similarities.” They are concerned that he is accusing them of cheating even though he said he hasn’t accused them of anything. These are smart and seemingly good, conscientious students. Further complicating the matter, some of these students “graduated” this past semester so they still don’t know if they actually graduated. Some of them have now missed deadlines to apply to law school because their transcript is missing a grade for the computer science class. Some might lose scholarships as the lack of this grade puts them below full time status. Others are anxious because they have accepted positions with google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Some are applying to and likely to be accepted to Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley. Many of these students are B/K students. Many of them are leaders at the university. These are not students who needed to cheat which is another reason why this is so confusing. </p>
<p>Grades were due by January 2nd. It is now January 15th and still not grade, no accusation, nothing. The students do not know what to do. The parents don’t know how to advise them. Does anyone have any advice as to what the students should do? Should the parents get involved? </p>
<p>Currently, we have another child (a junior) looking at colleges and frankly, UMD is not looking so good.</p>
<p>He could definitely do that. Should students contact the dean of their college or the dean of computer science. These are 2 different deans. The dean of their college knows a handful of these students as they are great students and excellent leaders. I am thinking that’s the one our son should contact, does that sound correct?</p>
<p>Thanks! He’ll contact him tomorrow I’m sure. It’s been a miserable break for him and he wants this resolved prior to the next semester. He just wasn’t sure how and we didn’t know how to advise him.</p>
<p>If he isn’t facing a deadline, then I don’t think he should do anything right now. His initial email sounds appropriate. It is obviously not personal if it is affecting a large portion of the class so he should not be taking it as “an attack.” That is really escalating things beyond the current reality.</p>
<p>As an aside, students cheat who don’t need to. It happens. By all accounts that Harvard bomb threat guy was an excellent student and excellent in that class as well.</p>
<p>mercury1-- He can feel uncomfortable doing nothing or uncomfortable doing something. He might as well take a risk and do something. I suggest he speaks with the Dean in person. At least he will feel like he’s doing something. I don’t see any downside to this at all.</p>
<p>In some classes, a number of computer science students submit the same or similar programs. This is, of course, cheating unless it’s a group project. I find it completely legitimate that the professor is investigating similarity. If your son doesn’t need the grade right now, and he didn’t cheat, he should be OK. </p>
<p>But if two students DID submit noticeably similar programs for other than utterly trivial problems, they cheated. Or perhaps one is an honest student and a cheater got hold of his code. It’s amazing how different two people’s code for the same problem will be.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, I don’t know anything about computer science. Can you explain if it’s possible for 80% (not just 2 students) of the class to have similarities? I honestly don’t know. Also, again, I’m asking because to me, it seems like he would have said something about the similarities when he gave them a grade for the project. Is this not how it works? My son isn’t here right now or I’d ask him. Also, can you tell me what is a reasonable amount of time to expect to get this sorted out? Sorry to bombard you with so many questions, but since you have computer science knowledge, you seem like someone who could tell me with an objective mindset. </p>
<p>As far as needing the grade now, it is necessary so he can try to get on a waitlist for this class again next semester. He can’t get on the waitlist unless he drops a class. I imagine if 80% of the kids need to retake the class, the sooner he gets on the waitlist the better. (Their semester doesn’t start till near the end of this month.) Without it he as well as most of the other kids won’t be able to graduate on time. If I thought he cheated, I’d say then he has to take the consequences. That being said, I saw him working on this very program when he was home for a weekend.</p>
<p>I don’t know the details of your son’s assignments. It is possible that the professor looked at results, and documentation, and didn’t pay much attention to actual code until, perhaps, it was called to his attention. He may have student graders, or for some other reason he didn’t notice cheating initially.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, some students cheat. And if cheating was called to the professor’s attention, he is right to investigate. And, yes, it’s not unknown to have 80% of students cheating in a particular class. I hope your son is innocent and is speedily cleared-- and I hope that real cheaters are caught and punished.</p>
<p>I’m skeptical that this net will catch non-cheaters. If students cheated, they would normally take a working program and change it a little bit-- change the variable names, for example-- which would require some time playing with the program. So having spent time working on a program is not in itself dispositive. If you saw your son spending an hour or two on a program, he might be finishing up his own work, or he might be modifying someone else’s program. If you saw him spend fifteen hours, that would be more of a reason to believe it was his own work.</p>
<p>Back in the dark ages we had a computer room attendant that was notorious for stealing peoples’ printouts of code and cheating off them. The end result was his work was ALMOST right most of the time as people tend to notice if their final run did not print (back then we turned in printouts). </p>
<p>But today things are different. Maybe if the prof. provided a common framework (i.e. stubs) and the students had to just code the stubs then everyone’s code could look quite similar. If the assignment was simple enough as others said, the same situation. But 80% similar, not in a million years.</p>
<p>If students were cheating this would be going on the entire semester, not one assignment. Also there are plenty of services that check for plagiarized code - heck we had a program checker 30 years ago… The 80% could also be if the assignment was offered in a previous year and a solution was saved in someone’s archive. In our school a specific nation’s student association had coding assignment archives that were mindblowing, like every assignment ever for the last 10 years sorted by class… All on - sorry - magnetic tape. So, if something like that existed now and leaked, it’s not difficult to see how it happened.</p>
<p>Demand NOT a quick resolution but to be kept informed of what’s going on. I was a TA in comp sci once (dark moment of my career) and saw cheating, but not to this magnitude.</p>
<p>I TAed some Coursera courses. I regret to say that not only did some sets of dishonest students hand in identical assignments, but many students defended plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. They didn’t see anything wrong with cheating.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>Me: You took the first paragraph of your assignment from Wikipedia.
Cheater: I don’t speak English very well and Wikipedia expressed it better than I could.</p>
<p>Thank you cardinal fang and turbo. Your explanations help give me some insight as to why it may not have been noticed at the time he graded the project. To be honest, I am not sure how long he worked on this program. I do know he did schoolwork the entire weekend with a short break to see some friends on Sat. evening. Whether or not it was ALL on this project I don’t honestly know. I also know that when he got the program to finally work, he talked about what he did to get his problems resolved with my husband, who was a comp. sci. major. (At that point, I tuned out as they were speaking a foreign language to me.) Regardless this is just plain heartbreaking. Heartbreaking if the kids did cheat - and heartbreaking if they didn’t cheat and are accused of doing so. I think he is planning on seeing if he hears anything this morning and if not, he’ll call the dean to schedule an appointment (which I hope and pray doesn’t take too long). He does have all of his documentation and notes detailing what he did as he worked on the program, so perhaps if he brings that to the appointment that could help shed some light. One last question, is there a reason that the professor didn’t want to look at his documentation and notes? Again, I’m not asking to be sarcastic, I just don’t understand how programming works. It seems to me that if a student/students brought that to him this could confirm or eliminate any questions regarding academic dishonesty.</p>
<p>This does seem like a long time to have some sort of decision. To be frank, I would be on the phone with my kid. I know this is not what a lot of CC parents would do, but I know other adults pay more attention when a parent is present.</p>
<p>When D1 started her full time job, HR required her to send in her final transcript, but there was no specific deadline. I don’t remember if it had to be before she started.</p>
<p>@turbo, I just talked to my son as I didn’t know what you meant by “stubs.” He said that was the way the professor did distribute the code. Also, I wanted to clarify that it’s not that 80% of the code is similar - it’s 80% of the class is being investigated.</p>
<p>There is something really wrong going on in that department. I taught as an adjunct for ten years and no one missed a deadline for turning in grades. The department dean would have been all over us.</p>
<p>It is possible that your son did everything right and didn’t cheat, while others somehow copied off of his work. That would naturally make the professor suspicious, as he wouldn’t know who did the real work and who copied.</p>
<p>But yeah, the dean should be brought into this so this can be resolved quickly.</p>