Homework and plagiarism.

Hobbes

This is more curiousity then anything else.

How do the lecturers determine if someone hasn't actually done thier own work? Do they bother to check?

Sort of thinking myself I would get the the student to explain in detail to me personally what the program was doing, or have them explain parts randomly.

Must be something they often check up on. Beyond that a search for the code in google.

Just from the number of "please give me code" posts I am wondering if these people get caught out at all.

Phileas Fogg

Don't know if it's checked, I suppose it is, but if they haven't learned to do it for themselves they'll get caught out eventually. Probably at exam time.

Then again it mightn't be down to lack of ability, more of a phobia of work. Bleedin' students :v:

satchmo

I do demonstrating for labs, and usually ask people to give me a quick run-down of the code. It's usually blatantly obvious if it's copied, as they don't even know which bit does what. Besides the fact that if it is copied, it's usually copied from the person beside them and they haven't even bothered changing variable names etc.

To be honest I'm not too bothered about it, as it can be hard to prove absolutely and accusing people can cause alot more trouble than it's worth. When it comes down to it, if people can't do a simple lab on their own without copying then they're going to fail the year, plain and simple. So I don't worry about it too much.

Having said that, my labs don't count significantly towards their marks for the year so it's not much of a problem. I've heard that the department has software for detecting plagiarism, but this could be a rumour. In any case lecturers know full well how competent each student is, and if a student hands in work that is obviously above their level it's very easy to spot and prove without going to too much trouble.

projectmayhem

satchmo wrote:

I do demonstrating for labs, and usually ask people to give me a quick run-down of the code. It's usually blatantly obvious if it's copied, as they don't even know which bit does what. Besides the fact that if it is copied, it's usually copied from the person beside them and they haven't even bothered changing variable names etc.

seems to be the way. but sometimes you can see people's code and tell immediately that they copied. asking them questions tends to make copiers sweat

Nalz

explaining the code is the only way. There is supposed to be packages/programs out there to compare code but in most colleges the way is to quiz the author about the code he submitted. I know people who got in hot water over copying code, never seen anyone kicked out, but major deductions on mrks have often been employed on certain people.I Havent got caught yet anyway!!

rainbow kirby

For our practicals, we have to explain the code to our demonstrators, and show it working. If we can't explain it, we get marked down harshly, but if we can explain code that *almost* works we'll get the majority of the marks. It's a fair system imho.

When I had labs, we always had to explain which bit did what, and they'd randomly point to a part of it and say "what does this do".
There was one lab where we had to code something in particular, and a lot of people downloaded a fairly complicated version of it from the net. I overheard a demonstrater saying to someone that so many people could barely code, and yet produced this complicated stuff, that copying was obviously going on...

ixoy

In Trinity, they'd (rightly) ask for an explanation which the copiers often stumbled over. Some copiers are quite the idiot though: I recall one time that an examiner was going around a lab, looking at all the assignment code. When he got to me, he exclaimed "Ah so this is you finally. I've already seen your name on three other pieces of code today."

440Hz

When I was doing Comp Sci in UCC, some of our lecturers def. had scripts running on our code to check for repetition of vars etc. We also had to explain what the code was doing.
Im now teaching in UL, and doing the labs and people are copying for sure. What i do is go around to each person during the lab and ask them how they are getting on, ask them if they understand what they are doing and why... I think the main thing is to get the concept right in their head and understand it, if i put the code in front of them and they can tell me what it is doing then great... if they cant write a perfect algorithm from scratch in first year im not going to mark them down, IF they UNDERSTAND what it does/should do. The rest will come in time, thats what I think anyway, it was the way I found it myself in college.

Hobbes

For first year I'd agree with you.

Although me personally if someone plonked down C++ code I could probably tell you what it does, but can't write C++ to save my life. If it was a general IT course might not be big a deal.

440Hz

Hobbes wrote:

For first year I'd agree with you.

Although me personally if someone plonked down C++ code I could probably tell you what it does, but can't write C++ to save my life. If it was a general IT course might not be big a deal.

Yeah I totally agree. In my degree we would never have gotten away with it, I was just lucky to understand it, and be able to do the work. Im teaching engineers at the moment though, so they def dont need to be the worlds best coders!

dbraiden

In college we were made comment every line of code and for every line that we didnt comment they deducted 1%.
harsh i know but it proved that we understood it. Also learning how to comment code properly is handy for when you are working.

nag

current comp sci student o/

ive heard alright that some of the lecturers have progs that compare code. how they do it and what they look for, i dont know.

as for labs, yeah, if i was to borrow bits of code, the first thing id do is change the var names, the comments and maybe whatever print statements there might be. pretty obvious stuff really.

if im borrowing code, i also try and be a little more sneaky and try and get one of my mates labs that he did from the previous year as they usually repeat the lab assignments each year. and recently ive found out that some lecturers try and avoid this by alternating their labs every second year

but, in short, no, ive never been done for copying and im not worried about it either. id be more worried about not paying attention in lectures seen as how (just as some of the others have said) i can pick up and understand most code most of the time

WizZard

Explanations are the only way. Asking what the code does can be used but I've found the best way by far is to askwhy one way was chosen over another.
At least that worked when I was in college.

It would require non-simplistic code though.

Blowfish

current comp sci. student aswell

yeah, the lecturers/demonstrators usually pick up on people who copy from eachother in the same class pretty quickly, but not so much if they just rip it off the net coz its a lot harder to check(obviously). I do remember however one case where a guy had an assignment, and was marked down for plaguirism, coz the lecturer thought he had ripped it off the net, even tho he hadn't, he had just written it like a pro. It took a while of convincing, but eventually (after talking to the other lecturers who taught him) he was given his marks back.

Luckily i generally find all of the assignments easy, and any copying i do would be out of sheer laziness than not being able to understand the problem.

I do end up with people copying from me, though i always rip out all of my comments first, leaving them with at least some work to do. TBH i dont really mind them using my code, if they don't work out what it does, thats their problem, and as said they will probably fail anyway.

RedXIV

In Carlow IT, any code we hand up is followed by a test on some part of it the next day. it's a nice idea because if you did the work, it's a walk in the park, if you copied, your in trouble. They can ask you questions about anything in your code and if it isn't highly similar, you will be called in and asked to explain yourself.

bonkey

Its an interesting question...

I know (anecdotally) of one lecturer who never marked people down for copying, even for blatant plagiarism (e.g. handing in someone else's project, having forgotten even to change the student ID wherever it occurred in comments).

His attitude was that in the real world, copying code from someone/somewhere was a perfectly legitimate way of solving a problem or completing a task. What was interesting was that this led to a number of students asking themselves why Joe Bloggs should score the same as them, when they did all the work and then agreed to give Joe Bloggs a copy.

I can kinda see his point.

In IT in general, and in Programming fields in specific, its not something that worries me too much. I personally believe that anyone hiring a grad-student on the basis of an interview and a CV deserves what they get. I think it was Joel Spolsky (joelonsoftware.com) who pointed out that if you were hiring a juggler, you wouldn't take the guys word that he could juggle 5 flaming brands no problem. You'd at least give him 5 unlit ones and ask him to show you a bit.

From this perspective, employers should never be fooled into thinking that the possession of a degree in programming equates to an ability to program. If the person has managed to get through Uni through blagging and copying, they should find themselves unemployable. I have no sympathy for them in that case, nor for the employer who is foolish enough to be taken in by them.

I remember my college days. Up until coop (I'm ex-UL), the amount of people who would copy instead of learning was at least 50% of our class. It showed. I'd be frequently asked stuff like "my pc crashed, what do I do" ("Turn it off and on again", "but I'll lose my work", "no, you lost that when it crashed", "will you do it" "??? Its a power-switch ffs.") After they had all been exposed to the big bad world whilst on coop, it all changed. Those who had learned to copy found themselves in deep water, whilst those who had learned to program had no major problems.

Should lecturers worry much about this? I don't think so. Not unless it got to the point where the name of hte university was being dragged down by too many incompetent graduates.

jc

Blowfish

Yeah its true, its amazing how some comp sci. students can b completely clueless, im in third yr and have been asked what nvidia is, by a person who admits they dont like programming, or hardware, or networking, or sysadmining. it almost makes you wonder why some people do comp sci. degrees at all, when they obviously have no interest in it

Hobbes

bonkey wrote:

His attitude was that in the real world, copying code from someone/somewhere was a perfectly legitimate way of solving a problem or completing a task.

This is an extremly dangerous way to be thinking though. Your basically walking into a legal mindfield if you have such a bad habit of nicking other peoples code.

Phileas Fogg

Hobbes wrote:

This is an extremly dangerous way to be thinking though. Your basically walking into a legal mindfield if you have such a bad habit of nicking other peoples code.

What I took that copying other peoples code meant copy code of other people on the project which probably needs a little bit of explaining. I've just started on a project which goes into test in little over a week - to get myself up to speed on the architecture I've basically been copying peoples code. Not cut and paste type copying but modelling my own code on the existing base. Got me up to speed pretty quickly. This does go on in the real world all the time from what I can see. Obviously it helps to be able to program in the first place.

I'd never take code with me at the end of a project so I could use it for future reference. If I did that I'd need a portable harddrive for all those projects I've worked on.

Never ever *cough*

Mutant_Fruit

bonkey wrote:

His attitude was that in the real world, copying code from someone/somewhere was a perfectly legitimate way of solving a problem or completing a task.

So when your boss says "Look, heres a new unique problem, if we can solve this, we've got ourselves a goldmine. Can you program a solution for this?" and you reply with "No bother, wait til someone else does it, then i'll copy their code and we'll be sorted", what do you think will happen?

If you can't figure out the simple college problems, how are you ever going to be able to figure out a real world problem, which is a lot more complex. Anyone who's satisfied with the "copy someone else's code" will quickly find themselves unemployed. Very quickly.

damnyanks

Why complain about it ? In actual fact you should be promiting copying of code... the more people that don't understand it the better you look. The better you look the better you get paid

I remembmer 2 guys in my class (Who were going into 3rd year) didn't know what a variable was. People like that can get through college... but if they get a job in development they are ****ed

rainbow kirby

I remembmer 2 guys in my class (Who were going into 3rd year) didn't know what a variable was.

The mind boggles.
I'm 2nd year CS myself, and the amount of people who do absolutely no work and just can't get their head around programming is unreal. Though some of my classes had a 60% failure rate at Christmas... maybe it will force people to actually do some work! Somebody mentioned that their co-op forces people to learn... UCD, in its infinite wisdom doesn't have anything like that. TBH, I wish we did.

bonkey

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

So when your boss says "Look, heres a new unique problem, if we can solve this, we've got ourselves a goldmine. Can you program a solution for this?" and you reply with "No bother, wait til someone else does it, then i'll copy their code and we'll be sorted", what do you think will happen?

I think you've mistaken "a perfectly legitimate way" to mean something like "the only way you need to be able to implement", which is not something this lecturer, nor I, have ever advocated.

This is an extremly dangerous way to be thinking though. Your basically walking into a legal mindfield if you have such a bad habit of nicking other peoples code.

He never once advocated stealing code. If someone was willing to let you use their code, he'd give you marks for it.

If someone reported that you submitted a copy of their project without their permission...that was a different story.

In the real world, you can quite generally and happily copy code from one project to another within a company, or from one module to another from inside a project. There's no shortage of public-domain code out there as well.


There's also this Programming forum on boards.ie some of you may have heard of, where you can ask other people to give you code to save you solving a problem on your lonesome

His attitude is no more a legal minefield than the existence of this forum, if you look at it that way. Arguably, it is even less so.

How can anyone receiving a solution here, for example, have any faith that the person supplying it hasn't taken said code from somewhere they don't have a right to? i.e. that the 'help' you receive isn't, in effect, stolen property?

If you can't figure out the simple college problems, how are you ever going to be able to figure out a real world problem, which is a lot more complex.
Anyone who's satisfied with the "copy someone else's code" will quickly find themselves unemployed. Very quickly.

I agree entirely.

I would also point out though, that those who don't learn to "copy existant code (when useful and legal)" should also find themselved unemployed very quickly. I would have no use whatsoever for someone who wouldn't be able to spot that a problem in Project X was identical/very similar to a problem they - or someone else they worked with - had already solved in Project X, Y, or Z, or for someone who could spot it but would still decide that coding from scratch was better than taking code they had every right to re-use.

jc

bonkey

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

So when your boss says "Look, heres a new unique problem, if we can solve this, we've got ourselves a goldmine. Can you program a solution for this?" and you reply with "No bother, wait til someone else does it, then i'll copy their code and we'll be sorted", what do you think will happen?

ASide - I wouldn't say that. The more people who do say it....the more I'm likely to be able to demand in salary.

I don't see why this is a bad thing for me....until I move fully into management.

jc

bobbi

I'm 2nd year CS myself, and the amount of people who do absolutely no work and just can't get their head around programming is unreal. Though some of my classes had a 60% failure rate at Christmas... maybe it will force people to actually do some work!

I think i know who your talking about but don't make assumptions about these people you don't know for sure that they do no work they might doss in the labs doesn't mean they don't go home and do work?Plus your doing a different course BA computer Science is quite different set up and it seems most of the failing is done by BA's:rolleyes:

Blowfish

bobbi wrote:

BA computer Science is quite different set up and it seems most of the failing is done by BA's:rolleyes:

i'd agree with that, the 2nd yr soft. eng. project was (for us, its a different project now) a joke, it was about the same difficulty as the first yr one, because the BA's had 2 do it, where as they didnt in first yr, meaning it was completely dumbed down. i'm definitely lookin forward 2 nxt yr where it will just b us BSc lot.

rainbow kirby

bobbi wrote:

BA computer Science is quite different set up and it seems most of the failing is done by BA's:rolleyes:

I wouldn't necessarily say that most of the failing is done by BA's... there was one course before Christmas that was BSc/general science only that everyone did crap in. (taught by a certain lecturer with the initials D.D...)