OT: 83 OSU students accused of cheating via social media app

But do they steal from you or me?

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!!!!!"

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

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.

and i just shuddered thinking back to Maple problems

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.

The Buckeyes think BIG.

Ah, yes, the notorious autograder I presume?

slowly

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. 

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.

Every college kid does

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.

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)

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.

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'

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.

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. 

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