Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cca!g-rh
From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: looking for cheating detectors
Message-ID: <31313@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 23 Jul 88 19:53:59 GMT
References: <4513@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <2927@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 33

In article <2927@utastro.UUCP> nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
>In article <4513@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, narten@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas Narten) writes:
>> Moral of the story: it's relatively easy to catch cheaters; the hard
>> part is figuring out what to do with them once they're in your office.

>Indeed.  Try to explain to them that what they did -- take someone else's
>debugged code and use it themselves -- is wrong.  It's what they'll do
>when they grow up, and it isn't called "cheating."  It's called "smart
>programming."

	It all depends.  If they don't have rights to use that code it is
called 'theft'.  If it is proprietary code under license it is called 
'see you in court, buddy'.  The issue in the classroom is that the instructor
has asked for original work, or at least has operated on the assumption that
she has asked for original work.  For a student to present a collaboration
as original work is dishonest.

	As another point, nobody has questioned the ethics of home assignments.
Is it really right for the instructor to say "Here go do this; by the way
do it by yourself without any outside help."  If the objective is to drill
the student in a particular task, so as to acquire a skill by drill, then
yes.  In the particular case of programming one ought to, as Ed says, draw
on outside knowledge.  Indeed, a programmer who insists on doing everything
as original work is a bad programmer.  And one might well argue that an
instructor who insists upon and teaches bad programming practice is a bad
instructor and that, if she does it knowingly, is unethical.

	I'm not very serious about this, but it is something to think about.
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.