Current Events > Princeton TA wrecks cheating students with fake solution online

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https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2020/05/princeton-teaching-assistant-math-department-slader-mat202-academic-integrity-cheating-covid

The article has a strong undergrad-student bias and is definitely not in favor of the TA, but the story itself is great. Cheating shits are salty.

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People call this type of stuff cruel, but I think "fair, next".

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COVxy posted...

People call this type of stuff cruel, but I think "fair, next".

Absolutely.

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what's the point of copying math homework? do you really just not want to pass the class?

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monkmith posted...

what's the point of copying math homework? do you really just not want to pass the class?

Lazy students who just want a grade

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Vivec posted...

Lazy students who just want a grade

well if you copy all your math homework instead of carefully going through it to learn the material, then the grade you get will be an F.

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I would argue that I would use things like Chegg to understand what the answer was and how they got to the answer. If you copy word for word and step by step, then sure, you should probably be caught, but online resources that show the answers and steps are extremely valuable in many cases.

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NightMarishPie posted...

I would argue that I would use things like Chegg to understand what the answer was and how they got to the answer. If you copy word for word and step by step, then sure, you should probably be caught, but online resources that show the answers and steps are extremely valuable in many cases.

sure, but this seems a pretty clear cut instance of straight up copying.

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This already happened at Rutgers. Even better/worse, the professor made a hate thread for himself on Reddit. Unfortunately it seems the original threads got purged.

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Here's a recap

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/gaoo80/rrutgers_has_small_civil_war_when_126_students/

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academic cheating is bad. it breaks curves, damages students doing things legit, and dilutes the values of diplomas.

My following take is based on the assignments being described as homework and not take home tests/quizzes.

Personally though. I've always thought grading homework at all is a scam and a form of busy work. It all should be optional. Homework is just structured and directed studying. How much or how well a student does it should be up to the student -- like all forms of studying. All that should matter is performance on tests, quizzes, and research/term papers. If you're using homework as a way to prepare a student for classroom discussion, sure fine. Grade the student on their ability to participate and contribute. I'm fine with that, but if a student can still be productive in the classroom without doing homework, more power to them.


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Cheating is bad, but people cheat in life all the time. So whatever.

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Get wrecked.

If you don't know the material, message the TA or professor for assistance. If you still don't get it, then do your best on the assignment or exam. If you fail, try again next semester.

Crying about "Oh tuition is too expensive for me to fail" or "It'll hurt my GPA" are all excuses that only show you don't belong in college.

I failed Intro College Algebra once because my stubborn ass didn't wanted to ask for help. Passed with an A the second time, and every class then on until PreCalc I did well (B/Cs) because I went, at every opportunity, to office hours and the learning assistance centers. I didn't have to make that same mistake (failing) with Gen Chem 2.

HiddenRoar posted...

Get wrecked.

If you don't know the material, message the TA or professor for assistance. If you still don't get it, then do your best on the assignment or exam. If you fail, try again next semester.

Crying about "Oh tuition is too expensive for me to fail" or "It'll hurt my GPA" are all excuses that only show you don't belong in college.

I failed Intro College Algebra once because my stubborn ass didn't wanted to ask for help. Passed with an A the second time, and every class then on until PreCalc I did well (B/Cs) because I went, at every opportunity, to office hours and the learning assistance centers. I didn't have to make that same mistake (failing) with Gen Chem 2.

This right here.


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I mean if you are doing any online school work you can cheat since you have the internet at your use. Only in a class room is there any chance of being caught for cheating. Online you should never get caught cheating

furb posted...

Personally though. I've always thought grading homework at all is a scam and a form of busy work. It all should be optional. Homework is just structured and directed studying. How much or how well a student does it should be up to the student -- like all forms of studying. All that should matter is performance on tests, quizzes, and research/term papers. If you're using homework as a way to prepare a student for classroom discussion, sure fine. Grade the student on their ability to participate and contribute. I'm fine with that, but if a student can still be productive in the classroom without doing homework, more power to them.

Ding ding ding.

Its one of many factors for why some students cant do school even if they have the ability.

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All this TA did was create better cheaters, though it sounds like the TA also broke the rules of the site they used to catch the cheaters
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HiddenRoar posted...

Get wrecked.

If you don't know the material, message the TA or professor for assistance. If you still don't get it, then do your best on the assignment or exam. If you fail, try again next semester.

Crying about "Oh tuition is too expensive for me to fail" or "It'll hurt my GPA" are all excuses that only show you don't belong in college.

I failed Intro College Algebra once because my stubborn ass didn't wanted to ask for help. Passed with an A the second time, and every class then on until PreCalc I did well (B/Cs) because I went, at every opportunity, to office hours and the learning assistance centers. I didn't have to make that same mistake (failing) with Gen Chem 2.

I concur, succeed or fail on your own merits.

Cheaters should be PUNISHED severely and FOREVER be monitored for cheating at EVERYTHING in life.

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I used Chegg and other websites all the time for my IT degree. A core part of IT is knowing how to use and apply googlefu. Many other degrees center around knowing how to research or how to think about a problem.
Using Chegg for HW, I often found solutions that were missing something, misleading, or completely wrong. If you can't get through that, you deserve to "get caught," IMO, but at the same time classes shouldn't be reliant on HW grades that can just be copy/pasted.

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EricDraven59 posted...

I mean if you are doing any online school work you can cheat since you have the internet at your use. Only in a class room is there any chance of being caught for cheating. Online you should never get caught cheating

Or you can actually just do the work properly.

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monkmith posted...

sure, but this seems a pretty clear cut instance of straight up copying.

for sure. if you dont change your answer at all or put it into your own words, then you shouldn't be upset when you're caught. But if you copy or learn from an online resource, I do not think that should be frowned upon, provided you are using it as a way to learn from it. if you are cheating to cheat, then I don't have sympathy for that. But as someone else mentioned, homework should just be optional anyway.

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furb posted...

Personally though. I've always thought grading homework at all is a scam and a form of busy work. It all should be optional. Homework is just structured and directed studying. How much or how well a student does it should be up to the student -- like all forms of studying. All that should matter is performance on tests, quizzes, and research/term papers. If you're using homework as a way to prepare a student for classroom discussion, sure fine. Grade the student on their ability to participate and contribute. I'm fine with that, but if a student can still be productive in the classroom without doing homework, more power to them.

Homework is a form of long term tests of the students will/discipline to learn, make sure that they're trying to understand the material, and that they have the capability to withstand endless grunt work.

A perfect way of teaching that skill for their jobs in the future.

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voldothegr8 posted...

All this TA did was create better cheaters, though it sounds like the TA also broke the rules of the site they used to catch the cheaters

I'm sure they care a lot about the rules of a site their students are banned from using.

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I think ALL TA's should put more traps for students online.

We should be out there trying to catch more academic cheaters and punish them severely for it.

Zero Tolerance for Academic Cheaters.

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That entire article was one giant fancy way of saying we posted the wrong answer online and people copied it and we caught them cheating. But of course they gotta Princeton it up and make it sound like they were performing brain surgery.

Boombam99 posted...

That entire article was one giant fancy way of saying we posted the wrong answer online and people copied it and we caught them cheating. But of course they gotta Princeton it up and make it sound like they were performing brain surgery.

The people writing the article are not the person who posted it and caught them, or even particularly sympathetic to the TA...

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imagine going to an ive league college only to cheat

CADE FOSTER posted...

imagine going to an ive league college only to cheat

keep in mind, a good chunk of the people there got in because of family connections or bribery.

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Vivec posted...

The people writing the article are not the person who posted it and caught them, or even particularly sympathetic to the TA...

Thats what Im saying. The article was from The Daily Princetonian. They had to make it seem like they were doing something so mind-blowingly advanced that common non-Ivy league peasants couldnt possibly understand.

monkmith posted...

keep in mind, a good chunk of the people there got in because of family connections or bribery.

Even more reason to try to catch more cheaters.

We should be employing this tactic more.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

Homework is a form of long term tests of the students will/discipline to learn, make sure that they're trying to understand the material, and that they have the capability to withstand endless grunt work.

A perfect way of teaching that skill for their jobs in the future.

I still think it's busy work, but I can respect the intllecutal honesty with this take. I just wish professors and teachers put in syllabi that way.

Like
Tests - 50 percent of final grade
Quizzes - 30 percent
Class Participation/Attendance - 10 percent
Grunt Labor - 10 percent

I think it's debatable whether "math class" has a job to teach you toleration to grunt work -- I disagree with that take vehemently. I feel like its job is to teach you math and then test your proficiency in it.

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Cpt_Pineapple posted...

my wife googled a paragraph of a student's essay and found the whole thing posted about two years ago on a forum

LOL

i had a teacher do that once to a student, live in class. pretty sure the guy got expelled.

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Cpt_Pineapple posted...

my wife googled a paragraph of a student's essay and found the whole thing posted about two years ago on a forum

LOL

Lazy cheaters deserve to get caught, at least put a little effort in and change some wording
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Try doing half this shit in an English class lol

NightMarishPie posted...

I would argue that I would use things like Chegg to understand what the answer was and how they got to the answer. If you copy word for word and step by step, then sure, you should probably be caught, but online resources that show the answers and steps are extremely valuable in many cases.

This. I used solutions for Statics and Dynamics homework. Not just to complete for completing sake but to help me understand the concepts and how to solve them

furb posted...

I still think it's busy work, but I can respect the intllecutal honesty with this take. I just wish professors and teachers put in syllabi that way.

Like
Tests - 50 percent of final grade
Quizzes - 30 percent
Class Participation/Attendance - 10 percent
Grunt Labor - 10 percent

I think it's debatable whether "math class" has a job to teach you toleration to grunt work -- I disagree with that take vehemently. I feel like its job is to teach you math and then test your proficiency in it.

If you couldn't understand the purpose of HW, then that's on you. Nobody is obligated to explain it for you. Part of learning about the purpose of HW is to grow and think about it's nature on your own. If you think about it hard enough, you'll come to the same conclusion as I and many others have.

Final Grade Break Down:
Final: 15%
MidTerm: 15%
Projects: 15%
Tests: 15%
Quizzes: 15%
Class Participation: 10%
Attendance: 5%
Home Work: 10%

This is how I think your Final Grade Break Down should be made to make "Gamification" of class harder.

Makes "Slacking Off" to pass MUCH HARDER.

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If you couldn't understand the purpose of HW, then that's on you. Nobody is obligated to explain it for you

Not all homework is created equal. Prefer to grade homework for effort not accuracy.

HiddenRoar posted...

Crying about "Oh tuition is too expensive for me to fail" or "It'll hurt my GPA" are all excuses that only show you don't belong in college.

First of all, society spent decades telling everyone to go to college and that you need a degree to be someone. Any other plan was considered second class. If there wasn't constant societal pressure to the point where people are only now reassessing the value of school education and if it's really worth going into debt slavery thanks to the pandemic, you'd have a point.

Moving on, I disagree with the entrapment. In college, a lot of times you're not learning to understand the material, you're learning to pass the class. When I did my degree, I was constantly overloaded with problem sets upon problem sets, all of which took hours to do, each. There wasn't enough time to sit down to full delve into each topic. I learned what I needed to learn to do the HW and pass the exams and moved on. At the end of it all, it damn near killed my curiosity till I learned the same material on the job but was better able to take it in because I was allowed to fumble, fail, and experiment my way all the all through. College is hands down the WORST environment to learn things; no one gets to the top without failing and college penalizes you for failing.

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didn't know TA stood for TATTLE lmao

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CruelBuffalo posted...

Not all homework is created equal. Prefer to grade homework for effort not accuracy.

I graded for both when I was a TA.

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Sad_Face posted...

First of all, society spent decades telling everyone to go to college and that you need a degree to be someone. Any other plan was considered second class. If there wasn't constant societal pressure to the point where people are only now reassessing the value of school education and if it's really worth going into debt slavery thanks to the pandemic, you'd have a point.

Moving on, I disagree with the entrapment. In college, a lot of times you're not learning to understand the material, you're learning to pass the class. When I did my degree, I was constantly overloaded with problem sets upon problem sets, all of which took hours to do, each. There wasn't enough time to sit down to full delve into each topic. I learned what I needed to learn to do the HW and pass the exams and moved on. At the end of it all, it damn near killed my curiosity till I learned the same material on the job but was better able to take it in because I was allowed to fumble, fail, and experiment my way all the all through. College is hands down the WORST environment to learn things; no one gets to the top without failing and college penalizes you for failing.

this isnt entrapment. If the ta was sending the link to students telling them to cheat it would be. But youre a qanoner and covid truther so lol

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Sad_Face posted...

Moving on, I disagree with the entrapment. In college, a lot of times you're not learning to understand the material, you're learning to pass the class. When I did my degree, I was constantly overloaded with problem sets upon problem sets, all of which took hours to do, each. There wasn't enough time to sit down to full delve into each topic. I learned what I needed to learn to do the HW and pass the exams and moved on. At the end of it all, it damn near killed my curiosity till I learned the same material on the job but was better able to take it in because I was allowed to fumble, fail, and experiment my way all the all through. College is hands down the WORST environment to learn things; no one gets to the top without failing and college penalizes you for failing.

Everything you post is a joke, tbh.

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I know a lot of people cheating on their courses right now. On the one hand, its fair next if you get caught. If you dont like the college format then dont participate. Cheating is a valid form of success if you dont get caught. On the other hand, degrees are overpriced and college education is burdened with myriad issues. Lousy requirement to get a job (the value of which has depreciated with saturation), and you wind up in a situation where people are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to not do their homework because they arent approaching the material from the perspective of intellectual curiosity.

I hated school because I just wanted to learn computer programming and they wasted four semesters teaching me things I already learned as a kid. Turns out, theres a ton of resources out there that enable focused study at your own pace. There are also tutors you can hire for a fraction of the cost of going to college and getting stuck in a complex subject with a grad student for a teacher who barely speaks English.

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Sad_Face posted...

First of all, society spent decades telling everyone to go to college and that you need a degree to be someone. Any other plan was considered second class. If there wasn't constant societal pressure to the point where people are only now reassessing the value of school education and if it's really worth going into debt slavery thanks to the pandemic, you'd have a point.

At the end of the day, you're your own Boss. You have the right to say "NO, College isn't for me". And go straight into the work force. There were also Trade Schools for those who wanted to specialize in certain fields.

Moving on, I disagree with the entrapment. In college, a lot of times you're not learning to understand the material, you're learning to pass the class.

I went to class to learn about the subject, not just pass the class

When I did my degree, I was constantly overloaded with problem sets upon problem sets, all of which took hours to do, each. There wasn't enough time to sit down to full delve into each topic.

You took too many courses simultaneously, you should lighten up your schedule.

I learned what I needed to learn to do the HW and pass the exams and moved on. At the end of it all, it damn near killed my curiosity till I learned the same material on the job but was better able to take it in because I was allowed to fumble, fail, and experiment my way all the all through.

You're supposed to fumble, fail, and experiment in college before you get to the job.

College is hands down the WORST environment to learn things; no one gets to the top without failing and college penalizes you for failing.

That's kind of the point, fail faster, learn quicker, then make the right decisions so you can pass.

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If you can get away with it then cheat. There's literally no reason not to. Nobody in a field requires you to memorize mundane bullshit. If you don't know the answer you go out and try to find it by any means. It's up to that person to have the knowledge to syphon out the crap from actual good information. I learned a long time ago modern college is not about learning, it's more about how resourceful you are.

Having tests and quizzes to determine knowledge is so outdated and frankly useless in actually building knowledge in a subject. Throughout my college career the only things I found that I actually learned from were through my engineering projects. I still remember the math that I had to use to solve a specific problem and can go out and do the same thing over right now.

Ask me about the stuff I learned in my chemistry, physics, calculus class. I wouldn't be able to tell you the specifics just some surface level knowledge that could easily be found because that's all I learned. I only learned what was needed to pass and that required just learning how to solve a problem. I never knew why I was using whatever I was using to solve the problem I just knew how to solve it and that was good enough.

In this case, the students should have looked over the problem just to see if the answers made sense. At least, that's what I would have done. It's ultimately there fault for not being able to recognize the issues with the problem.


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furb posted...

Personally though. I've always thought grading homework at all is a scam and a form of busy work. It all should be optional. Homework is just structured and directed studying. How much or how well a student does it should be up to the student -- like all forms of studying. All that should matter is performance on tests, quizzes, and research/term papers. If you're using homework as a way to prepare a student for classroom discussion, sure fine. Grade the student on their ability to participate and contribute. I'm fine with that, but if a student can still be productive in the classroom without doing homework, more power to them.

That. I used Chegg for most of my 9 years at college, not constantly, but as a resource when I'm stuck. For a large majority of my classes the homework was a tiny percentage of the final grade. It was actually impossible to pass most classes if you copied 100% of the homework but didn't understand the material, as you'd get destroyed on tests. I've had a lot of classes where your entire grade was based on 4 tests, and we had optional ungraded homework. They did not care if you did the homework in group, straight copied other peoples work, or used online resources, because if you didn't understand the material then you fail. When you only have 4 tests, failing 1 of them puts you in a very bad situation. And on those tests there are only 3 problems, so if you do bad on 1 problem on 1 test you might fail the entire class, this specific teacher had a not so good reputation around campus.

It's perfectly fine to copy from sites like Chegg as long as you understand everything (or almost everything) about the problems before turning it in. Even when homework was graded, it was always at maximum 20% of the grade, usually around 10% though. So if you get a perfect grade on all the homeworks but don't actually understand the words and numbers you copied, you're not passing the class. If you're actually trying to understand the material, even after copying there is still a lot of time looking through textbooks and emailing/sitting with teachers, so it's not a free ride to a diploma. A lot of those Chegg answers are bad, poorly written, skipping steps, just plain wrong, or using a different method that you didn't learn. I'd even say a majority of answers I've found were just unusable, but they often had something to help me out such as a formula I missed or an assumption I didn't think of.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

At the end of the day, you're your own Boss. You have the right to say "NO, College isn't for me". And go straight into the work force. There were also Trade Schools for those who wanted to specialize in certain fields.

The people targeted are kids right out of HS. The most ignorant, overwhelmed, and malleable of all adults, with zero commitments. The rise of colleges as a mandatory path was an orchestrated effort by the government and banks with the college institutions. The government backed loans (I think they stopped this recently?) and the fact that Congress passed a law preventing you from defaulting on student loan debts is proof of this.

People generally aren't risk takers; most people would stick to a safe path others have left out for them. And people have been told all their lives that college is the next step all while trades and alternative avenues are being downplayed.

You took too many courses simultaneously, you should lighten up your schedule.

This is on par for an engineering track. A lot of people can tell you, because of the work load it's studying to pass, not to learn. Everyone goes through that experience of constant workloads and no sleep inbetween.

KamenRiderBlade posted...

You're supposed to fumble, fail, and experiment in college before you get to the job.

Failing in academia is completely different from failing in the industry. If you fail a class, you're penalized with having spend a few months taking the course over, even worse if you needed that course as a prerequisite as then you're at a standstill until you complete it. And the failure is on your record for all to see. In the industry, you're free to do as you please if you screw up. This is important is it allows you to jump from executing idea to idea without being tied down to any innate obligations. Even better, if you screwed up and got fired, there's no record for everyone to see. Just don't talk about it. Learning how to fail and bounce back is an important process and necessity in life and academia discourages and teaches people to fear it.


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