OT: 83 OSU students accused of cheating via social media app
Ohio State University has accused 83 of its students of cheating by using the GroupMe app to work on classwork together.
The app, which lets users send chats to large groups of people simultaneously, is permitted to be used by the school's rules, but is subject to the same scrutiny as any other form of communication.
Sounds like they started using it as a work-around. No students names have been released, and no football players or other athletes have been implicated in the article.
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/11/13/scandal-rocks-ohio-state-univers…
November 13th, 2017 at 12:14 PM ^
massive picture of Ohio Stadium above the article appears to be somewhat misleading. I mean, we know they don't go there to play school but it doesn't sound like this has anything to do with the football team.
This is a non-story anyway. Everyone cheats, everyone murders.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:37 PM ^
But do they steal from you or me?
November 13th, 2017 at 2:39 PM ^
Reminds me of the story of the osu student who had been at the school for a LONG time...he'd taken every class at least once, most of them twice. The academic department got together and decided that they needed to either graduate him or flunk him out.
So they set up his final "final exam" at the football stadium so that everyone who knew him could attend, which is most everyone considering the time he'd been there.
The academic board sat on one side of the 50 yd line, the student at the other. They proceeded with the ONLY question of the exam:
"What is one....plus one?"
The student pondered the question for a few moments and responded:
"Two."
At which point the entire student body jumped up in excitement, screaming..
"GIVE HIM ANOTHER CHANCE!!!!!"
November 13th, 2017 at 10:07 PM ^
That sounds like Van Wilder
November 13th, 2017 at 12:14 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:18 PM ^
I expected the article to be about them sending messages during exams, but it sounds like it's just graded work outside of class. Is anyone surprised that college kids collaborated on homework? I'm certainly not
November 13th, 2017 at 12:45 PM ^
WTF. Yeah, no one collaborates in the real world to get shit done. We all just work by ourselves in tiny little offices, with no phones and no email and turn in our work to the bosses at the end of the day. /s
November 13th, 2017 at 1:46 PM ^
You too?
November 13th, 2017 at 12:29 PM ^
I think schools know it's super prevalent.
I remember looking up a programming assignment for EECS 482 (or something? The Operating Systems course). Google Code had essentially the same exact program online.
November 13th, 2017 at 6:02 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:14 PM ^
I'm not going to pretend that when we had particularly difficult Maple problems for Physics lab, we didn't get a group of a few people together to try one answer each instead of each of us trying 6 and getting no credit.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:15 PM ^
and i just shuddered thinking back to Maple problems
November 13th, 2017 at 12:37 PM ^
In Calc I remember people sharing the HW problems (WebHW IIRC) on Facebook. Yet, the HW only counted for 5-10% of the class grade.
November 13th, 2017 at 2:19 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 9:29 PM ^
The Buckeyes think BIG.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:16 PM ^
Fully one third of my EECS 280 class got reported to the engineering Honor Council for alledgedly cheating. Apparently everyone's code looked a little too similar for comfort. I wasn't reported myself so I don't know how it turned out for everyone. There's kind of a large grey area between collobrating on work and cheating, I guess.
November 13th, 2017 at 1:20 PM ^
Ah, yes, the notorious autograder I presume?
November 13th, 2017 at 2:21 PM ^
To hell with EECS 280 and especially the autograder.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:19 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:40 PM ^
slowly
November 13th, 2017 at 1:16 PM ^
Pictures or it didn't happen.
November 14th, 2017 at 6:50 AM ^
If possible Hatter! Funniest three word response ever!
November 13th, 2017 at 1:04 PM ^
Same when I went to get my SHRM certification about a year ago. You can't bring in your wallet, phone, watch, car keys, water bottle or even your own pencil and paper. If you want it they provide it for you. All you could have was a wedding or engagement ring.
And it's only going to get worse in the coming years. Cheating is like a virus. We'll think of new ways to block it, but then it will adapt and attack in brand new ways. More or less a never-ending battle.
November 13th, 2017 at 1:40 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 6:12 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:18 PM ^
if the app is allowed per school policy they should use it to it's fullest
November 13th, 2017 at 12:51 PM ^
The app is allowed, but so is email. If someone emailed out all the answers to homework to 82 people, that would be fine? There is an obvious difference between collaborating and copying.
November 13th, 2017 at 1:49 PM ^
is probably outlined in the amount of scrutiny each gets. Its no different then the old trick of putting all the details into your graphing calculator. The platform allowed for it and the teacher let you use it. If they didnt' want you to use it they either handed out school calculators or said none at all.
November 13th, 2017 at 2:37 PM ^
I don't understand your argument here. Are you saying if the Professor said you were allowed to use a graphing calculator but you couldn't use it for any details or notes, that using it for details and notes would be okay?
This is similar to being allowed to have one sheet of paper with equations written on it in an exam and then you use that piece of paper to instead write the answers of the exam. You're using an allowed tool (paper / GroupMe app) to do a disallowed activity (write answers / copy answers).
November 13th, 2017 at 12:19 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:21 PM ^
Every college kid does
November 13th, 2017 at 12:20 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 2:48 PM ^
I assumed at first that there was at least a single OSU student that knew the material which would have surprised me. I was ready to give props to that one student and encourage them to transfer to a better school. However when you think about it more, you'd assume the reason they got caught was because it was a shit performance from at least one OSU student that resulted in unifomly shitty answers from the rest of the group. That makes more sense. A lot more.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:21 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:28 PM ^
Double comments usually caused by hitting the Save button more than once. No way to delete comments, people usually use the extra comment as an opoprtunity to say My Bad or add some snark (always go with Snark)
November 13th, 2017 at 12:34 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 1:56 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 12:21 PM ^
A lot of us in the same ME classes got together regularly to do assignments. Not sure how this is a big deal.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:28 PM ^
Totally. I remember one of our Aero professors specifically telling us to not even try doing the homework on our own - we wouldn't be able to complete it. Told us to work together in a group and figure it out together. Even if you were dragged along by your classmates with the homework, you still had to perform on the exams. Most of your grade was determined by exams, so it didn't really matter if you copied answers for homework.
November 13th, 2017 at 1:27 PM ^
The people that didn't put in the effort to think through the homework problems usually got what was coming to them on the midterm and final.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:33 PM ^
It was the same for me in ME. I'd say during some office hours there were 20 of us there all working out the toughest assignments.
But I'd say at 83 people, you clearly don't know everyone else in the group. I'd bet they got busted because this 83 person GroupMe chat wasn't people working together in the library, it was probably a repository for answers or something very close to it which would be an abuse of the idea of 'collaborating'
November 13th, 2017 at 12:31 PM ^
If he/she says assignments are to be worked independently, then no sharing / collaboration allowed. If they encourage you to work together, then go ahead. It's about following the rules set forth and the Honor Code. And no, everybody does not cheat.
November 13th, 2017 at 1:40 PM ^
It's probably very dependent on the local social norms. As an undergrad our honor code required the faculty to leave the room during exams; cheating was self-regulated by the students, successfully. A lot of our exams were take-homes, sometimes closed book, sometimes with time limits, and people did not cheat. It simply wasn't done, part of the ethos of the place. Blue book essays or problems would trail off mid-sentence because the two hours was up.
Then I got to grad school and was shocked to discover that as a TA I was expected to proctor exams. And more shocked when I had to stare down people who were quite obviously trying to copy answers. Some of my fellow TAs were as surprised by the cheating as I was; more of them were surprised by my surprise.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:59 PM ^
I don't know the facts, but when you've got 83 people being charged, it sounds less like a couple buddies getting together to work on homework and more like an entire section of a class committing to just dishing out answers to the masses.
I don't think there's anything wrong with people working together on assignments or projects as long as it's not specifically forbidden by the professor. Where the issue comes in is a few people completing the assignment and then just handing out the answers to everyone so no one actually has to put in the work.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:24 PM ^
Me and my 4-6 closest engineering buddies always worked on homework and prepping for exams together which I'd say is typical just about anywhere. Seems like 83 is just a stupid number where at that point it drifted far past collaboration and went into a repository for answers
November 13th, 2017 at 12:26 PM ^
If you aren't cheating in college you aren't trying
November 13th, 2017 at 12:28 PM ^
the academic rankings of all the big ten schools..
heard OSU made great gains, was now 3rd or 4th highest?
#1 NW
#2 Mich
....
November 13th, 2017 at 12:51 PM ^
Here are the US News and World Report 2017 Rankings of Big Ten schools
#11 Northwestern
#28 Michigan
#46 Wisconsin
#52 TIED Penn State and Illinois
#54 Ohio State
#56 Purdue
#61 Maryland
#69 TIE Rutgers and Minnesota
#78 Iowa
#81 Michigan State
#90 Indiana
#124 Nebraska
November 13th, 2017 at 1:35 PM ^
..very surprised about MSU and IU..
did not see them coming in that low...