I am the professor to whom Andy Beam was referring in Monday’s column “Honor reviews exam discussion policies”.
The foundation upon which any university stands is the integrity of its academic process. Events stemming from the Spring 2008 semester have forced me to conclude that at the University of Virginia the majority of students have little regard for the integrity of the academic enterprise.
Honor Committee Chairman David Truetzel was absolutely correct when he stated that, “it is an inexcusable honor offense to discuss exam content at all if the professor has explicitly forbidden it.” This we had done. On the cover page of the exam in question was the following: “You may NOT discuss the exam with anyone before [date and ending time of 2nd sitting]. To do so constitutes an Honor Violation.” Another instruction on the cover page read, “No books, notes, or other assistance are allowed.” These points were verbally emphasized at the beginning of the first sitting; the second point was verbally emphasized at the second. As noted in the article the scores on the multiple-choice questions taken verbatim from the midterms were significantly higher for the section taking the final exam at the second sitting, despite the fact that the two sections had scored almost identically on all homework assignments and the three midterm tests. The only viable explanation is that a very large fraction of the students in the second sitting had been forewarned that these questions would appear and acted on that information. A simple statistical analysis showed that an absolute minimum of 47 percent of the students at the second sitting had cheated; a slightly more sophisticated analysis put the minimum at 60 percent. They, of course, compounded the offense by lying when they signed their pledged test papers.
Needless to say, I was shocked by these numbers. The only reason I even looked at the data was that I was told in an E-mail from another student in the second sitting that a large number of students had been poring over the midterm solutions just before the second sitting. According to the article, it was posited during the Honor Committee discussion that this behavior could have arisen because of a first sitting student saying something “innocent” such as “I wish I had reviewed the concepts from the midterm.” This is not defensible as one doesn’t learn concepts from looking over answers to previous multiple-choice questions. Moreover, it is illogical to assume that such a large number of students would both hear and react to the same “innocent” comment in this same way. No, it is clear that these students had been alerted to the fact that these specific questions would be on the exam. What was even more disturbing about the message from the informing student was the fact that the cheating students were doing this in full view of other students, with no apparent concern that they were being observed cheating. It is evident that a vast majority of students, undoubtedly more than the aforementioned 60 percent, willingly accept cheating as either acceptable or not worth acting on. Either way, they were condoning it.
These data do not reveal which students cheated but they do reveal the magnitude of the offense. They do reveal in the clearest way possible the utter disdain with which many, if not most, students regard the Honor System. It also illustrates with mathematical clarity what many faculty members know from their own experience: the Honor System as currently constituted and administered is dysfunctional.
I should also point out that the students at the second sitting represent significantly more than 1 percent of the undergraduate student body. This sample is proportionately much larger than the samples taken by political pollsters who routinely achieve accuracies of better than 2-3 percent in predicting voting. Thus, unless someone can find a reason why the students in this class were especially dishonest, one must conclude that the figure of at least 60 percent is representative of the student body at large.
On a related note, after the first sitting I received an E-mail from a student who said he had overheard several students openly discuss how one had cheated by using his Blackberry (or equivalent) during the exam to access the web-posted solutions to the Midterm tests. He did not know the student who cheated but a search by ITC of the log of those accessing the pages containing the solutions pinpointed the cheater. I sent the student who reported the cheating a “photo lineup” containing, among several others, the person we had identified from the ITC log as the cheater. The reporting student correctly picked him out but declined to pursue the matter through the Honor System citing a lack of confidence in the System to handle a case with racial overtones; the reporting student and the cheater were from different ethnic groups. Students started handing their papers in before 12:00 noon and we had no time stamp on when papers were handed in so we could not prove cheating without the student’s statement so we did not pursue the case. That one student or a few students cheated comes as no surprise. However, the fact that this student felt free to discuss his cheating openly with no concern for who overheard the conversation indicates that students simply don’t take the Honor Code seriously.
The course in question was the first of a two-semester sequence so almost all of the students were in the subsequent class in the Fall 2008 semester. At the beginning of that semester I presented these data to both sections of that course. The material presented can be found at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ben/Honor. When I showed a graphical representation of the data illustrating the magnitude of the cheating but before I had said anything about cheating there were immediate and audible gasps. The students knew in a heartbeat what the data meant. It’s hard to fake or nuance a gasp.
According to the article, the discussion went on to suggest that the issue be addressed by requiring professors to be more explicit and by “educating” students. The data was being glossed over, being treated as if it represent a tiny blip on an otherwise sound System rather than what it is: proof that the assumption of integrity upon which the System is based is flawed. Almost all of the students in the class were at least 18-years-old. They were old enough to vote, to be entrusted with the power of life and death as members of the armed forces, and to be held fully responsible for their actions. Yet at the University, amid much clamor about a “community of trust,” they are not expected to even be honest about following straightforward instructions. Saying that professors should be more explicit than we were suggests that honor has been reduced to a semantic game, a game of trying to twist words to justify what any reasonable person knows is cheating. And, by and large, people’s moral compasses have been set by the age of 18; “education” isn’t going to make much difference at this point.
So what now? It is immoral and illogical that a student body has the power to expel another student for doing what at least 60 percent of that body condones. To promote the University as a “community of trust,” at least as it relates to academic issues, is itself a violation of the Honor Code because it is demonstrably false. It is clear that the whole disciplinary system must be revamped from the ground up. Perhaps this will entail taking disciplinary powers away from students completely. Perhaps they can retain some authority under the supervision of faculty. What is clear is that the present system is utterly untenable.
Professor Norum is a professor in the Department of Physics.
Two problems are present. The first is that the governing body itself is bunk. When I was a student the Honor Committee was nothing more than some overly ambitious students looking for a resume builder. They themselves were the prototypical cheater, in my experience. How could the system possibly work as-is, when it’s governing student organization is comprised of individuals who have no ‘honest’ motives to make it work?
Second, professors often use the honor system as an excuse to be lazy. Make two different tests, one for each test session. Don’t post scores. Change things from year to year. (Side note – professors should know by now that every fraternity in Charlottesville has a filing cabinet or two full of old tests for the brothers to share) “Take-home test” is an oxymoron. Use less multiple choice questions. Have your TAs police the students. Make them show their work. Professors consistently used the honor system as an excuse for their tests being easy to cheat.
The system was created because many people do have a natural inclination to cheat. The system isn’t broken because students are less honest than they used to be. It’s broken because it got easier to cheat and that created a culture of cheating. Police it better, and cheating will slow. When the number of possibilities to cheat goes down, so does the number of cheaters. Perhaps then it will appear as an uglier offense to the student body as a whole, and they will pay attention to who they are electing to the Honor Committee.
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TA’s already police for cheating. I asked a room of about 20 TA’s from across the A&S and all of them admitted to catching a cheater, but only a few had reported it.
Even if easy cheating is the blame for the rise in cheaters, the Honor system must still be broken because there aren’t more people being kicked out. Prof. Norum has proven what TA’s already know anecdotally: there is a culture of cheating here. The only other possible explanation is a corrupt or systematically dysfunctional Honor committee that won’t try cases. I believe its the former.
I also agree with Prof. Norum. The system should be rebuilt by the faculty with input from the students. Lets not forget that its not the fault of the faculty or the Honor committee, or the TA’s or whatever, its the fault of the cheaters.
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The claim that the professors being lazy is a cause of cheating ignores the point – the entire idea of the “community of trust” is built on the idea that students are inherently honest. This proves (about as well as any statistical sample can prove) that that simply is not the case. If we need to institute a police state to prevent cheating, that’s not honor by any definition I’ve ever seen.
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Get rid of the single sanction and I guarantee you, all those TAs report the cheaters, reporting rates skyrocket, and students start flunking classes as punishment. Two years of skyrocketed reporting rates, an “if I see you, I’ll turn you in” attitude from professors, which will only happen if there’s no single sanction, and cheating rate plummets. Guarantee it.
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The Honor System isn’t a responsibility of the professors; it’s the responsibility of the students. Students pledge that their test is their own work. The students pledge that they’re not receiving unauthorized aid. The students pledge on their honor. Faulting the professors saying they’re misusing the honor system in order to be lazy about the controls over their test-giving is ridiculous (I agree with DC above). Single sanction or not (I’ve heard of at least 10 people that I know personally who have been reported for cheating and haven’t been expelled. What kind of single sanction is that?? In my mind, we as a community (Professors, students, TA’s, etc.), don’t enforce the single sanction when cheating is ever found. I think if single sanction were ACTUALLY enforced that would cause the rate of cheating to plummet. Its really hard to voluntarily choose to impose such a harsh penalty on someone you may or may not actually know, but isn’t it necessary??
Finally, I think Professor Norum cited a great point in his article. The student who observed the cheating was afraid that the Honor issue would become a racial issue. I think its incredibly sad but, that student was right. If I were in the same situation, I’d definitely think twice about reporting it.
Professor Norum, you’re right. We as students are at fault. I don’t know how the system can be revamped or fixed but something does need to be done whether its the removal of the single sanction clause or not. You, as a professor, don’t deserve to be treated so disrespectfully.
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great piece, professor norum!
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I agree with Bob… People don’t report cheating because the penalty is so harsh, but a lesser penalty (flunking the class) would be just as sufficient a deterrent to cheating.
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Professor, I am interested to see your statistics. Maybe I’m wrong, but I simply don’t see how the assertion can be made that at least 47% of students cheated, and say it with 100 percent certainty. One could set up a confidence interval or significance test, and conclude something like, “we can conclude that their is a 99% that the true percentage of cheating students (the mean) is between 47% and 65%. I’ve never seen statistics that are able to assert something like that with 100% certainty. Nothing in the link that you published showed me anything about significance, which is what I believe the data pertains to. I believe the data indicates there should be a t-test concerning the difference of means. Please provide more statistics, including any significance tests or confidence intervals used.
Four Things:
-Most students discuss problems after tests out of intellectual curiosity. I think trying to restrict that has 3 negatives: IT stifles intellectual curiosity; it puts the emphasis on the end (the grade) rather than the process (learning); and finally, it limits learning from peers.
-You say “However, the fact that this student felt free to discuss his cheating openly with no concern for who overheard the conversation indicates that students simply don’t take the Honor Code seriously.” NO, it indicates that that particular student doesn’t take the Honor Code seriously. One person does not represent the group. This is the same flawed logic that the the “Love is Love” opinion piece used.
-You also say “To promote the University as a “community of trust,” at least as it relates to academic issues, is itself a violation of the Honor Code because it is demonstrably false.” Well, how is that demonstrably false? Isn’t whether or not UVA=”community of trust” an opinion. How can an opinion be demonstrably false? I feel I could argue that the assertion that an opinion (whether or not UVa is a community of trust) can be false is dishonest and could be an honor violation (I would never pursue this, but I say it to make a point, since you seem to nitpicking based on semantics, exactly what you argued against a few paragraphs earlier.
-Lastly, I feel you did a great disservice to your students with your “experiment”. It seems to me that you prioritized the point you were trying to prove over what your students learned at the end of the day. Whether students knew that exact problems from the midterm were going to be on the final or not, either way they didn’t have to have a conceptual understanding of the material. A student (even one who hadn’t spoken to any other students) could have just reviewed (and essentially memorized) all the problems from the midterms and book. This student could have gotten a 100% while not even understanding any of the material. The point of tests is to show what you have learned, not to show how much you’ve studied/memorized. Giving repeat problems shows nothing about what a student has learned. This is the way in which you did them a great disservice.
Finally, I would like to strongly agree RBarber (hopefully that’s Ronde Barber, that would be cool). He makes some strong points, especially the one about honor committee being “nothing more than some overly ambitious students looking for a resume builder”, “comprised of individuals who have no ‘honest’ motives to make it work”. I would like to add that UJC is the same way. These people don’t care about Justice; they care about being involved in an activity.
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Does it matter to anyone – anyone at all – that there are thousands of UVA students who bought fake ID cards so they can drink in corner bars? And many more are served seemingly limitless amounts of alcohol at frat houses – which is likewise against the law? I don’t agree with the drinking age being 21, but amidst all this dishonesty all around us, do these arguments really need to happen?
How about drug misinformation at the Student Health and Teen Center? That’s been going on for years also. The UVA administration does great harm to their own students every day by lying to them about steroids they sell, so why should students feel as if they have to be so honest in return?
Does a drunk frat bot destroying property via the rampant late night vandalism around here somehow not qualify as stealing? How many times a year are those wooden gates on McCormick replaced per month anyway?
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Dear Yup,
I will reply to your comment paragraph by paragraph:
Paragraph 1 – The calculation of 47% was presented on the web site to which the reader was referred. Two points are worth noting. First, if you look at the grade distributions for the two sittings you will see that they have completely different shapes indicating that the underlying probability distributions are different and neither even remotely resembles a normal distribution. As a result, your suggestion that I use a Students t-test or similar metric to test significance of differences is not valid. This will be clear to you if you look at these distributions and then review the derivations, including underlying assumptions, of these tests. The audible and sudden gasps from the mathematically literate students comprising the class when they saw the data gave me more confidence in the results than any statistical test ever could.
Second, you will note that I focused only on the differences between the results from the two sittings to make the case that widespread cheating occurred. Given the evinced propensity to cheat on the part of the students, it is hard to believe that nobody in the
first sitting (in addition the the person with the Blackberry or equivalent) cheated the “old-fashioned way,” peeking for example. Any contribution to the cheating rate from this effect was not included so I feel safe in ascribing a high degree of certainty to the result being a lower limit.
The students were told to not leave any questions unanswered, that there was no penalty for guessing. Starting with the already dubious assumption that no cheating occured on the first day and positing that on that day, on the average, a student got a fraction f correct by knowing the material and guessed on a fraction (1-f), after reducing the number of guessing options from 5 to some number n<5 based on some partial knowledge. For each assumed value of n you can calculate f. Using these numbers you can calculate the probability that the second day's average was the result of chance. By varying n you can change this probability but the highest probability you can get is of the order of one in a trillion trillion! Even if this calculation is only roughly correct, you get the idea: the
difference was real. Whether my assertion was 99% valid or 99.999…% valid is really not critical to the discussion.
Paragraph 2 – Out of fairness to all students we only asked that they not talk about the test for 29 hours. This hardly constitutes a serious infringement on the educational process. And, even if I were to agree (and I do not) that asking students not to talk about a test for 29 hours may not be the best educational policy it would in no way obviate the seriousness of the cheating on the test and lying when pledging.
Paragraph 3 – Wrong! It indicates that this student knew perfectly well that OTHER students, students he didn't even know but could overhear him, didn't take the Honor Code seriously.
Paragraph 4 – The statement was not an opinion, but a data-driven conclusion. The only way to make it not so is to claim that cheating on tests and lying when pledging are consistent with a "community of trust." This would take some serious semantic gymnastics.
Paragraph 5 – First, this was not an experiment. It was an opportunity for students who were serious about learning the material and who really looked over their midterms in order to learn from their mistakes could be rewarded for that effort. Second, these were obviously not the only questions on the final so just getting these correct would still have resulted in a failing grade. Third, the grades on these questions were more tightly bunched than the grades on the other "new" questions. Hence, their contribution to the final grade was somewhat reduced thereby since the grades were curved.
Paragraph 6 – I cannot comment on this assertion as I have no data upon which to base a statement. However, if you truly believe this to be the case then become part of the solution, try to fix it! Get involved. I would very much like to believe we had a student body with the integrity and maturity to run such a system.
I hope this addresses your concerns. The clarity of these results, which your questions gave me an additional opportunity to illustrate, is what I find truly depressing.
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@Archer Christian – I think the fundamental difference between the academic honor code and the law is that a university is established with the aim of educating its student body. Dishonor interferes with that goal, and therefore it is within the jurisdiction of the university to enforce honor. But wasting yourself drinking is more of a personal choice. An individual is perfectly capable of coming to a university and gaining an education, even if they drink four days a week. It may be difficult, but if they feel that drinking deserves that much of their discretionary attention, then so be it. Also, stealing and vandalizing is stealing and vandalizing, I’m sure these students would be castigated by the law if they were caught. Also, I’m pretty sure times per year per month is not a unit of rates.
Great article Prof. Norum. I’m with you and others, that I really am loathe to see the honor code fall out of existence, but that it reasonably can’t be enforced now. Two possible solutions I can think of are: what VOR said, flunk the cheaters, and what about this – implement a more XXX version of the honor code year by year, i.e. start kicking out students next year, in the class of 2014, and continue for all the rest of the classes after that? That would avoid the problem of just changing course all of a sudden, expelling students for doing what they’d been doing all along. Maybe these two approaches could be combined, and there could be two tiers of offense, i.e. being kicked out for something deemed “a more serious” offense by the honor committee, and only flunking the course for something else? Either that, or flunking on the first offense, or expulsion on the second? I know that undermines the “single-sanction” buzzphrase, but I think it maintains the underlying principle of honor. Honestly though I’m not too well-versed in honor at UVa, I should read up.
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ha wow, ignore the XXX part in the previous post
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Thank you professor for writing this piece. As a former honor committee representative I saw first hand how broken and frustrating this system is. What I learned during my time on the committee was that it isn’t the faculty, elected honor representatives, or the single sanction that are at fault for the state of the current system. It is the simple premise that having a system in place that was designed to strictly deal with honor offenses isn’t going to work in a society where what was once considered dishonorable is now tolerable, or the norm. So how do you fix this problem? I see two options:
1. Restructure the current system to fit the cultural norms of todays society (i.e. remove the single sanction and add a bunch of clarifying language to the bylaws that give a 3 year-old’s perspective on what lying, cheating and stealing are just in case students don’t know the true definition of these terms).
or
2. Scrap the current system and create a new one that strips the students of any leadership or sole decision making responsibilities. An example is a system that is chaired by an Associate or Assistant Dean of Students and has an equal mixture of faculty and elected students to oversee the entire process from investigation through honor hearing or trial. This system could work under a single or multiple sanction mindset.
My vote is and always has been #2. Why? Because I see a similar honor system work seamlessly every single day with no complaints from anyone in the university community. Is this university even nearly as respectable as UVA you ask? I’ll give you a hint. The men’s basketball team from this university was the last visiting team to play in JPJ.
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I doubt more cheating goes on at UVA than it did 100 years ago. (taking into account that it’s much easier to cheat now due to a myriad of reasons)
“(Side note – professors should know by now that every fraternity in Charlottesville has a filing cabinet or two full of old tests for the brothers to share)”—-This is not true. I was somewhat surprised to discover that the house I joined did not have such a cabinet. I am glad it did not though, in retrospect. The temptation would have been hard to avoid during one of many late night cram sessions.
“They were old enough to vote, to be entrusted with the power of life and death as members of the armed forces, and to be held fully responsible for their actions”….Yet they are not able to order a glass of wine with dinner.
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Professor Norum,
After reading this article I saw a glaring hole in your logic. It is clear that you have become completely disillusioned with the honor system we have here at UVa. You advocated taking disciplinary powers away from students completely and giving them to who exactly? If you are correct in saying that a person’s moral compass has been set at the age of 18, then if I follow correctly, 60% of your generation is as prone to cheat as our generation. Right? I would rather see an honor system in the hands of my peers than anyone else. After all, you have just as likely a probability of being a cheater as the kid sitting next to me in class.
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Dear Jon,
The difference is one of motivation. As faculty members we have a vested interested in the integrity of the system as a whole rather than the GPA’s of particular individuals. Having committed to a career in education we have a goal of producing the best educated students we can. This is not accomplished by facilitating cheating or other means of cutting corners. Whether I or other faculty members have the integrity to not cheat on our taxes is a separate issue where our motivations are obviously different. Thus, it is not inconsistent that members of the faculty may be no more honorable than our students, but still be better suited to administering an academic disciplinary system.
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Blaine,
Props for having the guts to come out with this. Really. And to stick with it despite all the backlash you’re going to get/getting.
Ben,
As regards drinking, it’s certainly not the drinking itself that is abhorrent. I would be guilty as charged if so. It is the way so many (not all) UVA students act when they have been drinking, particularly in packs of three or more. You can see and hear them from far away, and most everyone else in this town just says “oh no” because, alas, they are very easy to spot – and hear. Yet these same folks are perfectly reasonable and polite at lunchtime. People at other schools simply don’t act with such hateful arrogance toward everyone around them not exactly like them. I’ve lived in three other college towns. It’s a function of this place, at this time, sorry to say.
But I still say that if the administration itself can be so dishonest with drug info and such, and cover up any bad publicity or news involving UVA – including the Harrington case – then I’m afraid that just encourages students to act dishonorably. There may be this antiquated public facade of honor that they like to tote around, but in reality, it’s more like: “Just try not to get caught. If you do, let us know and we’ll make sure local media doesn’t cover it. We got lawyers and plenty of pull. We got your back.”
And while this applies mostly to criminal activity (there are LOTS of illegal drugs at UVA), you can’t expect that it won’t bleed over into academic dishonesty. For way too many, the privileges in their life have convinced them that they are superior in a eugenics sense. As in, from birth. Why else would they flaunt their unearned wealth the way they do? And that they can and will get away with just about anything. Thus, it’s no surprise to me if indeed 60% are cheating on exams..
So, yeah, I guess I agree with JV’s solution # 2 mentioned above.
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Mr. Norum,
I think that the conclusions you’ve drawn from the data you’ve collected are not entirely supported. You claim that since students from one section of your class scored better than the other section (albeit a reasonably significant percentage), then 65% of students at the University must also be cheaters and an even larger percentage must openly tolerate cheating (therefore invalidating the student-run honor system). Your support for this conclusion is that pollsters can estimate to an accurate level who will win an election based on surveying a small percentage of voters.
I would posit that pollsters conduct a random sampling of voters to determine which way an election will go, instead of looking at one particular county or section. Your data are from ONE class (~400 students) of first year engineers. This group is hardly representative of the University as a whole. To assert so unequivocally that 65% of University students must be cheaters based on a single, non-random sample that differs significantly from the average Community both in terms of demographics and the type of pedagogy administered seems completely irresponsible and misleading. As a scientist you should know that this sort of extrapolation is ridiculous and would not stand up to the sort of scrutiny required of an academic journal submission.
To assert your conclusions with such certainty seems to this reader an abuse of your professorial largess.
While this particular incident is certainly disturbing, I do not believe that assuming essentially all students cheat is a reasonable or accurate response. Instead, both students and faculty should focus on changing student norms about cheating (particularly discussing exams after their administration) and consider changes to the honor system that would aid in changing those norms. It seems to this reader that the most effective changes would increase the reporting rates of both students and faculty so that students who cheat face a very real possibility of being caught and punished.
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Dear Statistics?,
I stated very clearly my bases for extrapolation, the data and the observation that “unless someone can find a reason why the students in this class were especially dishonest, one must conclude that the figure of at least 60 percent is representative of the student body at large.” You have not provided any basis for your bald accusation that this group of students is more dishonest than the student body at large. You have simply defamed them with no supporting evidence.
When drawing conclusions and making statements based upon them in an academic setting, be it a seminar or publication, the principal requirement is to make the bases of your statements clear so that a listener/reader can question and, if other information is contradictory, can falsify the assumptions or the logic. I did this.
I had no idea that we professors were noted for our largess??
The underlying issue here is not discussing exams after their administration since in all but the largest, multi-section classes it is not an issue. The basic issue is that the some students did not follow instructions as they pledged they would and others received “other assistance” and then pledged that they had not. There is nothing subtle about this dishonesty. It appears that the norm to which you refer is to disregard what one has pledged to do, to disregard the basis of the Honor System.
It is true that increasing reporting of violations would help reduce their incidence of cheating. The late Physics Professor Julian Noble once did a broad study of crime rates across the US, across all socioeconomic groups, under all economic conditions, in large cities and rural areas. What he found was that in all cases the crime rate scaled inversely with the product of the probability of getting caught times the severity of punishment; students of economics will understand this as an “expected cost.” What we have at UVA is a uniformly severe punishment (expulsion) and an extremely low probability of getting caught. Their product is a very low “expected cost” for cheating. Increasing this cost could reduce cheating; food for thought.
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Sean
“It is the way so many (not all) UVA students act when they have been drinking, particularly in packs of three or more. You can see and hear them from far away, and most everyone else in this town just says “oh no” because, alas, they are very easy to spot – and hear.”
Wow. If you think UVa students can be bad, please go to other public universities like Tech, Radford, College Park, West Virginia, Ohio State, PSU, etc.
Not even close. I saw more fights in one weekend at PSU then I saw in 4 years of UVa. The same goes for Radford.
You seem to have a hatred for UVa that is either clouding your judgement or causing you to make statements based on little first hand evidence.
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First I would like to thank Professor Nourum for having the courage and mathamatical know how to prove something that I highly suspected during my four years at UVa. In my own personal experience I witnessed people being caught red-handed for cheating and plagiarising while the case went no where because their accusers were wary of the single sanction. I feel like the question fundamentally boils down to one question–do you actually want to reduce cheating on grounds, or do you want to cling to non-data supported views about the “tradition” of the single sanction? If the answer is the later, you might as well get used to the fact that 60% of the student body will take advantage of your trust given half a chance. If not it is time to re-examine the efficacy of the single sanction. Too bad this will never happen because the people involved with the honor committee have a vested interest in keeping things the way that they are. Indeed, it seems the only time a case is pursued vigourously is when some politico needs to make a point and get their name in the Cav Daily. Anyways keep up the good work Professor Nourum, and let’s hope your message gets through to these frat-helmeted northern virginian luddites eventually. Failing that let’s put the power in the hands of someone who actually has the goal of reducing cheating and stealing on grounds.
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A couple of things-
“the principal requirement is to make the bases of your statements clear so that a listener/reader can question and, if other information is contradictory, can falsify the assumptions or the logic. I did this.”
DEAD DEAD DEAD WRONG!! And you yourself undoubtedly know this. Lack of disproof is nowhere near the same as proof. As such i would demand that you prove to me the nonexistence of purple elephants.
second, yes we all cheat, but being lazy as a professor is a disservice to those who do not cheat, not those who do, and so blaming the community is not an acceptable scapegoat, it is more in fact morally reprehensible.
And third, this is directed toward everyone at UVA. PLEASE do not assert that we have in any way a student run honor system. It is a hand picked group of students chosen by our predecessors who chooses who participates or doesnt in the system. You must tryout to be an honor support officer, and if you arent a support officer, you will never have the chance to win an election to an elected post, and so the small society of douchebags with sticks in there backs continues to make assanine rulings in the falsely taken name of the students of UVA.
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Earnan,
As a Big Ten graduate whose brother attended Tech, I have been out and about at all of the schools you mentions except for Radford and WVU. None of them had anything approaching the arrogance of the spoiled rotten UVA student. Every school has some spoiled rotten students who have never worked who nonetheless enter school in a brand new SUV, unlimited spending money, designer clothes, all the latest electronics, and immediately begin separating themselves from “the peasants.” Indeed, many arrive as decent people and leave as dysfunctional, elitist monsters 4 years later.
It’s just that here, there are indeed so many – that they take over in the dorms and inflict a terrible price socially on all others. And then they bring it out with them when they’re drinking and really get vocal about it. The couple I met from Australia on a round the world trip who had traveled all over the US several times told me when they first met me that they had never seen anything like it. A group of greek kids on a formals night came into a corner bar, and they remarked that it was one of the creepiest things they had ever seen. I had not mentioned any of this to them as we had just met.
It’s time everyone at UVA still attached to this idea that there is some kind of “honor” around here just get over it. May have been true 100 years ago. Maybe even 20. I invite you to ask any non UVA local to give you a description of the majority of UVA students and see if you can even find one that EVER uses the word “honor.” I’m not saying it’s everyone, of course. We’re talking about 20,000 people here. But your denial of the obvious, dominant behavioral vile all around you is indicative of a head in sand approach.
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Hey Sean,
Check this out if you think rowdiness and bad behavior is a problem unique to the University– http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=396.
Also I think you’re in the wrong thread. This is about the prevalence of cheating at UVa. Please go back to the midwest.
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Dear Professor Norum:
Thank you for responding. We’ll agree to disagree on those points.
“What we have at UVA is a uniformly severe punishment (expulsion) and an extremely low probability of getting caught. Their product is a very low “expected cost” for cheating. Increasing this cost could reduce cheating; food for thought.” I believe you have something there. That is the best point you’ve made, and I think you should have made it in your original letter.
I would also have to agree with “I’m not diplomatic”: lack of disproof is not the same as proof.
Further, I would agree it is somewhat lazy to give repeat tests to different sections. My mom teaches community college, and she readily acknowledges that if she gives a repeat test, students will be able to cheat. She acknowledges HUMAN NATURE.
As you said, the “expected cost of cheating” is an important idea. I think the “expected cost of not cheating (honesty)” must all be considered – things like lower GPA, lower grades, and lack of job after graduation. Professor, the cost to the people who didn’t cheat (i.e. speak to anyone about the final having midterm problems), was a lower grade, and this must be acknowledged. As long as the “expected cost of cheating” is less than the “expected cost of not cheating”, people will cheat. Put another way, as long as the benefits of cheating outweigh the “expected cost of cheating”, people will continue to cheat.
Not only must the community focus on increasing the “expected cost of cheating”, but it must also focus on decreasing the “expected cost of not cheating”, which includes things like a lower grade and lower GPA. We must also remember that the more people who cheat, the more the “expected cost of not cheating” goes up.
How does the community decrease the “expected cost of not cheating”? If grades at the end of the day were less important, and the process of learning was more important, there would be less incentive to cheat. As it stands now, the end (the grade) is more important than the means (learning).
Learning has an intrinsic value that has been lost on the UVa community. For most people, being successful and making money is more important than actually increasing their knowledge and intellect. To me, this is the problem. When you have a community that focuses on the end, rather than the means, you can expect people to take shortcuts, and cheat. It’s human nature. UVa needs to find a way to better balance the means and the end. (I think UVa would do some good modeling itself after Thomas Jefferson High School Sci and Tech. That place was very highly competitive in terms of grades. Yet for me, learning never lost its intrinsic value when I was there the way it did when I was at UVa. At TJ, being smart is/was cool. At UVa, being successful is/was cool. Both are good, but the attitudes towards education are vastly different. People at TJ wanted to discuss homework because they were intellectually interested in it, whereas people at UVa wanted to discuss it to make sure they got it right and make sure they got a high grade.)
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Thomas, the honor committee does not decide whether or not the single sanction stays or goes, the students due. Hence the fact that the honor committee voted to put the issue on the spring ballot twice in the last 5 years, but it never got enough votes to remove it. So instead of blaming the “frat-helmeted northern virginian luddites” that sit on the honor committee how about pointing the finger at the 70% of students that don’t vote in the spring elections when this issue appears on the ballot.
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I” invite you to ask any non UVA local to give you a description of the majority of UVA students and see if you can even find one that EVER uses the word “honor.””
No one would. But, military academies aside, what school would invoke someone to use the word “honor” in describing it’s undergrad students? Not any I’m aware of. I’m not claiming UVa students are honorable, I know they are not and that the whole honor system is mostly a joke.
“It’s just that here, there are indeed so many – that they take over in the dorms and inflict a terrible price socially on all others.”
As far as I know, you didn’t go to this school, nor live in its dorm -I’m not sure how you are qualified to make this statement. I lived in new dorms and had a very diverse suite. No one inflicted a terrible price socially on anyone else. My good friends in old dorms had a great time as well, although it may not have been as diverse.
“None of them had anything approaching the arrogance of the spoiled rotten UVA student. Every school has some spoiled rotten students who have never worked who nonetheless enter school in a brand new SUV, unlimited spending money, designer clothes, all the latest electronics, and immediately begin separating themselves from “the peasants.” ”
I will agree with some of what you’re saying here. UVa has a special brand of a-holes that few other public schools have. The southern, or psuedo-southern kids, who probably look down on public school kids from northern virginia or elsewhere (let alone minorities). They, more than any other group, have probably contributed to the stereotype of “arrogant UVa kids.” Since a lot of UVa kids are just dorks and don’t party at all, this group is probably overrepresented at local bars.
But they hardly “inflict a terrible price, socially, on others.”
At the same time, UVa doesn’t have a lot of other types of kids who tend to give students a bad name to locals.
Regardless, in my experience Charlottesville has a much better relationship with it’s students than other college towns I have visited (and one I lived in).
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Dear “Im not diplomatic”,
My statement is correct but I think you just misinterpreted it because your
statement that lack of disproof is not proof is, of course, correct. As I
said, one must make all assumptions and logical steps clear. Then, the reader/listener
can question them. Sometimes, starting assumptions cannot be validated or
invalidated by other data but can be questioned and their merits discussed.
Sometimes, there are other data that can validate or invalidate them, but not
always. Perhaps if I had used “or” rather than “and” to connect the two it
would have been clearer.
Your statement “we all cheat” is very disheartening. Even I don’t want to
believe that. To state that faculty are lazy if they don’t take all sorts of
precautions to prevent or minimize cheating is incorrect. Doing so would be
to suborn a fraud, namely that we live in a “community of trust.” And, I see
no problem with blaming the cheating on the cheaters.
I have no data upon which to base a comment on your third point but I clearly
do share your skepticism about the effectiveness and fairness of the system.
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Professor Norum, kudos to you for blowing the lid on this thing.
Sure, perhaps you should mix up your test questions. But that doesn’t obviate the fact that a large swath of that section cheated on their exam. Honor violations probably aren’t the rule at UVA – they didn’t seem to be when I was there – but every few years, a huge case of cheating crops up anyway (anyone from 2001 would remember Lou Bloomfield’s big physics class incident). Virginia students are like those at any other great school, after all, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves that our Honor System is all that special. I love the idea of the single sanction, and wish everyone had the guts to report violations when they see them, but it’s glaringly obvious that it just doesn’t work.
And by the way, everyone, I know it’s tempting to wax all philosophical about whether UVA students are all d-bags (they’re not), whether “kids today” are ethically rotten (they’re not either) and about the rectitude of the single sanction. But try to stay focused on the task at hand.
Blair
CLAS ’04
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Prof. Norum,
“Doing so would be to suborn a fraud, namely that we live in a “community of trust.””
Part of what made my Virginia experience special was that I did live in a community of trust. I carried that forward into my life and found great rewards in dealing honestly with others. It is very sad and disheartening to see that student attitudes have changed.
John Ritter
SEAS ’78
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“To state that faculty are lazy if they don’t take all sorts of
precautions to prevent or minimize cheating is incorrect.”
So, after your ‘shocking’ discovery, have you continued to give out the same questions to different sections of the exam that meet on different days?
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JV-
The Honor Committee did NOT vote to put single sanction on the ballot, they have constantly refused to do so. It was put on through the very difficult process by students independent of Honor.
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Dear Yup,
Giving the same exam year after year would constitute laziness but giving the same exam on successive days would provide a fair and normalized measure of the performance of students in the two sections, were it not for the cheating. If the Honor Code had any meaning to students, then they could be better assured of a fair grade regardless of which section they attended.
See my comment to “Im not diplomatic” re” proof.
It is “human nature” to want to cut corners; it is character/honor that makes one take the high road, and isn’t that the issue here?
As far as the emphasis on grades and GPA, that is not something the faculty can control so is the basis for a separate discussion, albeit an important one. Yes, the pressure to obtain a high GPA does add pressure on a student to cheat. But, it is often said that true character is only revealed under pressure so perhaps that’s what we’re seeing here.
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Dear Earnan,
I am not at the moment teaching a large class but if I were I would not.
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Thank you Bob, I stand corrected. I just remember voting on whether or not to put it on the spring ballot when I was on the committee and figured that was the process (I had graduated long before it arrived on the ballot again).
Regardless, the number of votes to remove it has yet to be reached. So there is no need to blame the committee when the students have had opportunities to vote against it. There just isn’t enough student support to remove it.
Thanks for correcting me.
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JV-
Something to consider. In 1979 (I think, it was between 1976 and 1981, but I think 1979), a proposal to change the single sanction received 56% of the vote, but 16% of the ballots cast mysteriously disappered. So it’s entirely possible the student body has voted to change it before… It certainly got majorities regularly in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s. The recent sanction reform movement never even came close to the momentum of their predecessors.
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The people who are trying to change the system are constantly put down by the honor committee. I’m not sure many of you remember, but the referendum last year was almost not on the ballot because of a technicality (aka the honor committee tried to change the rules at the last minute). JV/Bob: While the students did not provide enough of a majority for change, the honor committee and its supporters (fellow d-bags) spread lies about what the proposal would do. Ironic, huh? What’s more ironic is that the majority of the committee doesn’t follow it’s own rules. From confidentiality issues (from which I know first hand) to down right violation of the honor code…its disgusting. Thank you, Professor for bringing this to light.
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The Committee allowed the referendum on the ballot. It was a question of Constitutional interpretation – as I remember it – and they chose the interpretation favoring student self governance and choice. I can’t find anything dishonest there, can you?
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The dishonesty came when they advertised the referendum as allowing kids to be kicked out of school for “stealing pop-tarts”.
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Professor:
Questions
- do you have any qualms about using ITC to investigate your students web activity?
- How many times have you availed yourself of this service of remote spying on students?
- What are the standards of probable cause that you believe should govern these administrative investigations of the student body?
- Can we get an ethnic breakdown of the students that you have investigated with the help of ITC snoops? How many of them were black? How many of them were white?
- Do you think there is anything worrisome about the discretion that professors presumably have to order remote investigations of students’ computer activities with the help of ITC auditors?
- Do you think the tipsters who tip you off about their peers (and thus presumably provide you with the probable cause you claim to order investigations) should be allowed to remain anonymous?
- What problems might there be about allowing these anonymous tipsters?
- Do you give a flying f*$& about due process?
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Dear NUNYA,
Answers:
- When I received a credible tip of a violation I requested assistance. Only after receiving with legal counsel did ITC provide the information. I have no qualms whatsoever about this process.
- This was the first and only time that I have received information that would prompt it.
- They are neither mine nor the ITC staff’s to determine. That is why counsel was sought. Recall that this episode occurred after the first day, before I analyzed the second day’s results and while I still believed that a majority of students would not cheat. At that time I believed that such an observation from a UVA student should be accepted at face value.
- As stated above this is the only time when I have had a basis for such a search and I will say nothing more about the results.
- That is a legal question for which ITC very properly sought legal counsel before pursuing.
- Not if the name of the person he or she is accusing is released. You will note that I have not, nor will I, release the name of the identified student since the accuser declined to pursue the case.
- None in particular as long as their tips are pursued within the bounds of the governing rules/laws.
- Very much (see above) which is why I have proceeded as carefully as I have. You will note that this discussion was initiated by an exam held almost two years ago. The large time gap was due to my attempts to determine the most proper channels through which to address this issue and my attempts to address it through those channels.
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thanks for your forthright answers
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I wonder if there is something specific about huge physics lectures that induce more cheating, given this data and the 2001 Bloomfield scandal. That might make the stats less apt for abstraction, but that doesn’t change the fact that people did cheat. I got AP credit for physics so I don’t know much about the course, but maybe there is something about the way that the course is being taught that produces extra cheating. Again that wouldn’t excuse the students, but may be something to consider.
I totally agree that if you think the system is messed up you should fix it. Get involved and Speak out! That’s why I joined Studco.
The single-sanction needs to go. It feels like the death penalty. Do I trust the students on Honor with my life? Ermmm, no. I also don’t think I would bring a case before Honor unless I personally disliked the defendant and that is no way to have a system be designed – promoting or permitting bias. That said, the proposals to replace it last year were very poorly worded and would make things worse though I agree with them in sentiment.
As an engineer, I hear a lot about people smoking pot, but never about cheating. I wish my grades were better but I have never cheated.
Keep us honest, Blaine! (btw your name is awesome)
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Dear Professor,
What do you believe is the proper course of action (if any) for an uninvolved University student upon reading your piece? I have read both the article and ensuing comments/responses and am curious how you would recommend average students to respond. You have identified a problem, an uncomfortable statistic… but in your opinion what is a disillusioned, non-cheating student to do?
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Dear FirstYear,
My first bit of advice would be to follow that of Polonius, “To thine own self be true.” Don’t cheat. Don’t lower your standards. You’ll sleep better, learn more, and in the long run be better off. The fact that this is the ethically correct thing to do is a bonus.
Second, some years ago the late Professor of Physics Julian Noble did a nation-wide study of what affects crime rates. When all was said and done he found that the crime rate was inversely proportional to the product of the probability of getting caught and punished times the severity of punishment. Students of economics will recognize this as the “expected cost” of crime: the higher the cost, the lower the crime rate. At UVA, the punishment is
severe but the probability of getting punished is almost zero. Hence, the product is small and the cheating rate VERY high (this essentially repeats my comment of March 2). So, unless the faculty/administration takes disciplinary action out of the hands of the students I would recommend that you try to make the student run system as effective as possible. You could do this by joining a group such as the “Campaign to Save Honor” whose goal is to improve the system, in effect to make the “expected cost” of cheating higher.
Third, if possible when you observe cheating inform the class instructor. Honor System aside, instructors reserve the right to assign grades in courses based on their best judgment of a student’s mastery of the material. If cheating can be established to the instructor’s satisfaction, then he/she can give a reduced or failing grade in the course since the basis for the student’s claim of mastery is at least weakened.
I hope this helps. And always remember WWII General Joe Stillwell’s advice, “Illegitimi non carborundum.”
Cheers,
Blaine Norum
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I have wondered about the prevalence of cheating in large science/math classes vs. the rest of the university as well. I think that it is just the mathamatically inclined professors that notice outlying patterns at a greater frequency. I wonder if Benford’s law could be applied to the test scored to detect cheating. I wonder if anyone has the stomach for analyzing a lot of data only to find that cheating is extremely widespread. My bet is that this will just blow over and we’ll be back to business as usual next year. Too bad because this could have been a catalyst for real and meaningful change.
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Dear Gomer,
I expect you would win your bet. Students like the Honor Code/System 1) because they can cheat almost with impunity and 2) because coming from a school with such a system (implicitly implying that they themselves are honorable) looks good on a resume. The University likes it because it is good for advertising and recruitment. Integrity? What’s that have to do with anything important?
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Get over it. Cheating is rampant at UVA and the Honor Committee are just self-interested individuals who seek to destroy their peers’ lives (e.g. Mary Siegel who herself did not bring up charges against her sorority sister for stealing an ipod, but charged a former student for “lying” about writing a paper for a class in which Siegel was only a facilitator). Single sanction needs to go and the so-called “community of trust” is great for advertisement but nevertheless is an illusion.
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Sadly, I think the problem is much worse than you think. The Honor System is indeed a joke and really only condones cheating because the students know that even if caught, it is so difficult to get a charge through the system, it will almost never happen, so of course they cheat.
To illustrate my point about the problem being worse: I went to Ohio University. In 2007 I think it was, a student ran a survey of the student population. Of those that answered (about 1000 if I recall), 84% of the undergrads admitted to cheating, over 50% of the grad students admitted to cheating. Even more telling is, when asked what they considered cheating, what they said was NOT cheating was revealing. The majority said the plagiarism was not cheating, nor was doing homework in groups that had been assigned as individual. Many of them said that copying from another student’s exam in class was not really cheating. This came from those that admitted to cheating. This is far, far worse than your situation, unfortunately, so be heartened, it could be worse.
The really unfortunate aspect of all this? When the administration released the report to the press. That 84% had mysteriously dropped to 40%, which they claimed was below national average. Probably not coincidentally, both the student and faculty governments had voted a lack of confidence in the administration about this time.
This is a national problem that seriously needs to be dealt with at all levels. The acceptance of cheating has gotten way out of hand.
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