scott@gitpyr.UUCP (04/15/87)
Just to get an idea of what you think cheating is, here are several situations
I have seen while a student at Ga. Tech. Please keep in mind that these
situations are somewhat unique and are not supposed to represent typical
student behavior here. Let me know if you think these situations represent
cheating and if so, why.
1) As part of an ISyE (Industrial Engineering) senior design project,
a student is given a task worded "Have a program written that
will do..." The student decided to take this literally and hired
a Comp. Sci. student to write the program. Keep in mind that
the purpose of an ISyE design project is to get the student to
work in a so-called "real world" situation, exercising skills
that should have already been acquired. At the time this
happened, programming was not one of those skills.
2) An engineering student was taking an open book/notes test in a
structures class. A question was given in the following manner:
"Give a solution to the following problem:..."
This student, having throughly read the material, recognized the
problem as one which was given as an example in the book. The
student copied the solution from that example. Incidently, the
instructor gave no credit for the problem initially, however, the
student was able to argue the case and was given credit. Needless
to say, the instructor will never word questions like that again.
3) A sophomore in a data structures course was given the task of
writting a program to compute Huffman codes ( an exercise
in tree building ). The instructor spent several days going over
the algorithms needed to produce Huffman codes, leaving the
details for the project. The student was, however, confused
by the instructor's presentation and decides to track down a
better algorithm in another book. The book had the algorithm
plus some of the actual code...while the student did not
actually copy any of the code in the book, its presence
did influence the student's work. In the comments for the
program, the student gives credit to the author of the book
and acknowledged the fact that the source given in the book
was not copied, but that it did influence the student's work.
4) A Comp. Sci student is given a the following problem in an
algorithms course:
Give an optimal algorithm for sorting a list of
(5 or 7, I don't remember) items.
While Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming." is not a
required text for the course, it is frequently used as
a supplement ...the problem given is an example in Volume 3.
The student didn't even bother to copy the solution but
instead simply made reference to Knuth.
- Scott Holt
--
So this is the earth...big fat hairy deal.
Scott Holt at Ga. Tech.
ARPA: scott@pyr.ocs.gatech.edu BITNET: ccastsh@gitvm1
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