This type of stuff has been going on since the beginning of time. Mediums change, but everyone has picked up an “old exam” to study from. The key word is STUDY. Study the material, get familiar with the way the professor presents his exams. Don’t just memorize questions and answers… you’ll lose eventually.

Gavin
http://www.universitynotes.net

cc7, I made that comment because they usually seem to have a pretty good understanding of what goes on here at the Ivies, but this post really showed an obtuseness that I did not expect. Seriously though, IvyGate is used to condescension– most of their posts are dripping with it, including this one.

The point at which it switches over from study guide to cheating is when, apparently, a large chunk of students identified a quote passage incorrectly because it was switched at the last minute.

The study guide said: “Crime and Punishment–will be from epilogue.”

The exam had a quote from chapter 4. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the students identified it as coming from (big surprise!) the epilogue. These were also, in many cases, the same students who had noted the exact Canto of the Dante quote in their indentification.

It’s not studying when you memorize exactly what the sheet said and regurgitate the exact “guiding” on the test. That’s a cheat sheet.

And poorly done cheating, at that. Writing down the correct chapter number? Come on, guys. You can do better than that.

BREAKING NEWS!! The exam has been declared invalid by the Core Office. Here’s what the Core Curriculum office just sent us students:

***
To All Literature Humanities Students

The following is the statement that the University has released to the
press:

On May 7th it came to the attention of the Literature Humanities faculty
that the results of the final examination for the course may have been
compromised. The exam grades were immediately set aside and an ad hoc committee of senior faculty appointed to review the matter and recommend next steps.

The committee met today and confirmed that the exam had been compromised and that responsibility for this lay with an individual faculty member and not with the students. In these circumstances the committee decided that students in the course will have two options:

1. To have the course grade determined on the basis of all work
completed prior to the final exam;
2. To take a replacement exam.

Patricia E. Grieve
Austin E. Quigley
Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Professor in the Humanities
Dean of Columbia College
Chair, Literature Humanities

Well, as far as I’m concerned, that is, or should be, the end of it. In my personal opinion, what was done was not cheating. However, I certainly concede that it was a problem that had to be dealt with. If lots of students had been expelled, I would have been bothered. This seems like a fair way to deal with the problem.

also, what you are forgetting is that students did not know they were handed the answers until the test… And once they saw, many came forward.

These Columbia kids should spend less time with their study guides and more time throwing their water bottles at TI.

Penn ’09 – the administration is sensitive to a possible PR scandal. So this won’t likely be the end of it.

Somebody claimed life is all shades of gray. I disagree. Some things in life are clearly wrong. People claim “gray” when they lack the clarity of vision to see or the guts (and stamina) to act. And I do mean stamina, because in a situation like this, doing something entails much more work than doing nothing.

I think the TA who gave away answers was wrong and the students who believed they had gotten the questions early were also in the wrong. (Yes, I believe intent matters. But good luck judging intent in this case.)

I’ve actually given out answers to my students like this …probably wouldn’t again, though. If the answers spread around to other classes I’d consider it my error of judgment, especially if I had known in advance that the other sections were going to use the same exam. I don’t feel it is cheating on the part of the students since a teacher had already sanctioned it and it seems plausible to extrapolate this where the same exam is being used.

This said, if the students did it with a less than innocent mind, it becomes partly another issue, but it is still not, in my view, quite cheating. It is grounds for cancelling the exam results, however. Apologize for the ambiguity; bite the financial bullet and give a new exam; tear up the old one without trying to determine which students had access to the test beforehand and which didn’t. The prof should also publicly apologize for any slur on the character of the students that has resulted as a consequence of his/her mistake, though not be censured.

This is not a valid incident to pin a representation of “cheating” on.

Frunald Hall
Columbia College 1969

cc ’09–we do have an honor code. i remember having to sign a paper about it at the beginning of this year in (fittingly enough) lit hum.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/education/honesty

Ah, I missed that post above from CC’08…seems the university has already done pretty much what I had in mind. Except I might not have used the wording that the exam “may have been compromised.” Rather I might have tried to be slightly more amusing and written “an ambiguous situation regarding the exam has arisen” and then proposed the same solution. Sensible Quig, sensible!

Now write a paragraph in the “Columbia College Handbook for TA’s” telling the tale of “XXX’s Folly” and warning TA’s never to do anything like this on a shared exam again without clearing it with the department head and everyone else.

Furnald Hall
cc ’69

P.S.. There was (or so student rumour in the mid 1960′s had it) an admissions officer at the College who decided one year (probably the early 1960s)to admit strictly on SAT scores and nothing else. The cohort so admitted was known as “Dudly’s Folly” and there were vague rumours that this had proven, ah, an extremely bad idea. I never could find out exactly why in any detail. Phrases like “They were all like quicksilver…,” was the most concrete wording I could get out of anyone. Is this a true story, and if so how did they turn out in the end?

I always envied them somehow…

Ah, I missed that post above from CC’08…seems the university has already done pretty much what I had in mind. Except I might not have used the wording that the exam “may have been compromised.” Rather I might have tried to be slightly more amusing and written “an ambiguous situation regarding the exam has arisen” and then proposed the same solution. Sensible Quig, sensible!

Now write a paragraph in the “Columbia College Handbook for TA’s” telling the tale of “XXX’s Folly” and warning TA’s never to do anything like this on a shared exam again without clearing it with the department head and everyone else.

Furnald Hall
cc ’69

P.S.. There was (or so student rumour in the mid 1960′s had it) an admissions officer at the College who decided one year (probably the early 1960s)to admit strictly on SAT scores and nothing else. The cohort so admitted was known as “Dudly’s Folly” and there were vague rumours that this had proven, ah, an extremely bad idea. I never could find out exactly why in any detail. Phrases like “They were all like quicksilver…,” was the most concrete wording I could get out of anyone. Is this a true story, and if so how did they turn out in the end?

I always envied them somehow…

Might explain the antics of ’68

this is very selective ivygate, you mischaracterized a lot here. first off, people who saw the guide saw innumerable different versions of it. almost every lit hum teacher holds some sort of review session before the exam where they talk about themes and sections that are important to review. this teacher obviously got waaaay too specific and gave a significant fraction of the class an unfair advantage, but she did not give them the exact answers to the test.

Yeah, I feel as if this is a little unfair. If a student is told something by a teacher, how on earth are they not supposed to know it? This isn’t comparable to insider trading or any other sort of ethical quandary because once a teacher says it it’s public information. The school should do something other than crucify her, though.

I did not get the “study guide,” but it was not made clear on it that these were actual answers to the test- merely that they were critical parts of each book, just as teachers often give tips of major themes or important characters to study. most of the people who are mad are not self righteous cheaters wanting to be rewarded for sharing their ill-gotten gains- they are just people who’s exam grade got cancelled, something irritating. Calling an entire school morally bankrupt because of some assistant professor who hasn’t learned boundaries is a little bit excessive.

to cc ’10. yes i also vaguely remember signing something at the beginning of the year as well, but that’s the problem. we briefly read it over once, sign it, and then forget about it. a real honor code is signed for ever paper handed in and every test taken. an honor code is only effective as long as its visible and pervades student attitudes towards cheating. perhaps that sounds naive but i think it can be effective and i have visited colleges where it is.

you’re making huge generalizations and expecting too much of these kids if you think they are cheating here. i was not in this section and didn’t get this study sheet, but when these kids got the sheet, even if it seemed suspicious, they weren’t going to go to the core office until they had seen the test and been sure that the prof was being way too specific on her study guide. no one would go out of their way to slander a prof unless they were 100 percent sure she was cheating.
and as to the spreading of the cheat sheet, my professor gave me a list of sample ids for the first semester final, none of which were on the exam, but as most kids don’t get sample ids from their profs, i used it when studying with other kids. this is a class-wide exam, of course kids are going to study with their friends when preparing for the exam.

way to blow this incident way out of proportion ivyblog. as if columbia really needs more slandering from people who aren’t in the middle of this…

I can’t believe the Ivy League is so full of excuses for poor behavior. Distributing “study guides” that consist of answers to an exam is cheating, no matter how easy or tempting. Are we really the future of America here? No wonder our nation’s upper echelons are rife with corrupt CEOs and lying White House administrators. Since when is “but it was so EASY to break the rules!” been an excuse to do it? Maybe it’s time the Ivy League do away with honor codes and student self-policing, bcs we clearly can’t handle it.

I just read through all the comments and just had to lave my own…

The problem with this situation is that people are making assumptions one way or another about the actual content of the study sheet, what the teacher said, or what the students were thinking. These aspects of the situation just can’t be verified so making assumptions about them just isn’t right.

I do know that study guides are not inherently cheating because we sell them in our bookstores for everything from books to certification tests to the SATs. The only time these resources become cheating is when they are strictly prohibited… otherwise anyone is free to read/study/peruse/ or even quote things like cliffs notes and pinkmonkey.com.

Additionally, I also know that group studying is allowed and encouraged… that it is not cheating to share ideas in OR outside of a class that is considered a discussion class. The aformentioned honor code that is signed at the beginning of the year for all CORE classes states that ___________ will not pass off another person’s (including other students) work as his/her own. It goes into depth about plaigarism and that stuff, but it doesn’t prohibit the use of study guides and or group studying.

Finally, even though I may or may not consider this whole event cheating (I cannot make a decision because to do so would require me to assume too many abstract things) I do agree that something had to be done though and that the decision made was probably the best one possible. I would be pissed if I hadn’t cheated and the final had helped me get a better grade, but when something like this happens something needs to be done to re-level the playing field… and that’s just the way life is.

oh… and I really hate people who just throw out opinions and insults without thinking them through… What is the purpose or reason behind it? Can we not just simply disagree and debate like civilized grown ups and expand our lives and breadth of knowledge and opinion in the process?

Anyways… if you took the time to read this- thanks… It’s nice to be able to share an opinion, and even better when someone takes the time to “listen” :)

How could it be cheating if the students didn’t know that it was the exam? And how could they know that it was the exam? I would have figured it was just another study guide until I got the test itself. The fault to me seems to be on the prof.

BALLLLLLLINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN’

it is what it is…I wan’t someone to tell me how what the students did was deviant in anyway, how they dide anything that students do everyday. (Reiew test material with their teachers and study what the teacher tells them to study). So yea I had the thing, I prob woulda done well on it without it, but i didnt cheat. Freedom of Information peoples, as long as its not stolen isnt it fair game?

i am a current freshman at columbia and i took the exam, without the “study guide”. the upsetting part here is not students bitching about people having an unfair advantage, but about the core office’s solution, most students did NOT see the sheet and worked really hard and thought they did well, to void the exams just sucks…

ps- i have friends in that section an the PROFESSOR gave them a study guide of “important passages” and ideas for the esaay. my professor gave my class a sample id to do that was not on the exam. and since there are about 50 different sections w/ different teachers, we all compare notes with our friends to help us see how other classes approached the material. AND all the professors have copies of the test!!! this individual professor just made an error in judgement by using the actual test questions as a study guide. the students are NOT to blame.

so all of you who are saying that this is cheating need to check all of your facts! information given to you by a professor is supposed to be legit… how were the students supposed to know it was the actual test questions.

ROAR LION ROAR

A wonderful example of why grades are bad for education. How much effort did y’all just waste into trying to determine what falls into the “cheating” box or not? Yeah, that definitely improved the world.

And, by the way, this was so not cheating, in any sense. This was one instructor who obviously misjudged or was inattentive to her colleagues’ opinions concerning the conditions under which the exam should be taken. Perhaps a mistake on her part, but not, I don’t think, a capital one. Certainly far more forgivable than being inattentive to her students’ needs.

And it’s entirely beyond me as to why it would be reasonable to hold the students culpable because they failed to realize that their instructor’s judgment about the norms of the exam was incorrect. If your prof says or strongly implies that certain conduct is OK, why on earth would we expect any student to doubt it.

Damn, am I glad I no longer attend a school with actual grades…grade and cheeating-obsessed teachers are possibly the worst aspects of formal education.