Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Universities report that cheating is prevalent in computer science classes. A closer look shows me that the universities are cheating the students by teaching them bad work habits.

Computer science enrollment is high this year in universities. Cheating in universities is also on the rise. Universities are proclaiming that the cheating is coming from introductory computer programming classes. Whoa!

Let’s step back and look at all this computer science cheating. Universities have policies about programming projects. The policies state that the student programmers are not to talk to other students and not to look at online resources. The universities catch the cheaters using automated tools that compare the programs among students and also compare the student’s program to source code on the Internet.

So let’s see, cheating is:

1. working with other students
2. finding answers online

I guess I am backwards. Those are two things that I want new computer science students to know how to do. I want new employees who have experience working with other people on problems. I want new employees who can find answers online instead of re-inventing them.

I don’t understand what universities are trying to teach and why they call these good qualities “cheating.” Sure, we want the students to “do their own work” so we can grade them accordingly. Let me try to say it this way:

Doing your own work all by yourself is not a good quality on the job.

What I want are people who can

1. work well with others
2. find answers to tough questions

But how does a university assign grades to students if they don’t do their own work? Two answers:

1. I don’t know.
2. I don’t care.

What I care about are new employees who can work in the real world. I grade on work delivered, not methods. I don’t tolerate stealing, lying, fraud, waste, and abuse. If a person delivers product from a collaboration, they say they delivered from a collaboration. That is ethical. If a person delivers product by finding answers online, they say they delivered by finding answers online. That too is ethical.

Pretending that a student is all by himself in the world is just that – a pretense. I have no interest in pretenses. And, by the way, I have little interest in adults labeling smart kids as “cheaters” when the kids use available resources and admit that is what they did.