<p>I rob a bank, and enjoy the services of my get-away car driven by Sam. Sam is brought to trial, claims innocence, and demands that the authorities <em>prove</em> he could not have been a random victim.</p>
<p>I wish Sam all the best, but I’ll save a cot for him.</p>
<p>But if Sam was an innnocent driver who you car-jacked and forced to drive you away, he has a defense. Or if he’s a taxi driver who picked you up without knowing that you just robbed a bank. In any case, the state will still have to provide positive proof that Sam knowingly committed a crime.</p>
<p>Let’s focus on the OP’s situation, not a hypothetical criminal situation. No criminal violation was commited here.</p>
<p>The student has not presented his information to the Dean of Students. Everybody assumes the Dean will determine he cheated. We don’t know that.</p>
<p>All that we know is the professor has found the misconduct (two students turning in identical exams) violates the academic integrity policy at the college. He is not required to investigate the situation or try to determine who did what. His responsibility is to refer the case to the Dean of Students. He is giving the students an option to take a WF if they want. Should they not want to, the case will be referred to the dean of students. The dean will investigate, interview the students, and make the determination. An appeal is likely to be an option if the students felt that the ruling was unfair.</p>
<p>Well, a start might be for the OP’s son to suggest, based on the room layout, opportunities, shared knowledge, etc., how the other student might have cheated without his consent or knowledge. It’s kind of hard for me to reconcile the notion of protecting somebody who is destroying you. If the OP’s son is indeed completely innocent, don’t you think it would be helpful if those who are determining the resolution to this situation could conceive a plausible scenario in which he is completely innocent? Maybe right now they can’t conceive such a scenario given only “I didn’t do anything”, which you’ve got to expect they hear a lot.</p>
<p>I don’t think OP ever said they were required to prove innocence, just that the professor had convincing evidence (statistical).</p>
<p>I think professor is making a lot of presumptions here about what was going on here. And unless he has more than statistics, all he can show is that 2 students had a common understanding of answers on SOME of the tests. Remember many of the tests (we don’t know exactly how many total tests there were) were NOT brought up. In fact, if those tests had a low overlap of incorrect answers, it would be mitigating evidence in some conspiracy. Perhaps in those tests, the other student actually studied or perhaps copied answers off of someone else more conveniently situated?</p>
<p>A good questioner in this inquiry will ask about the degree of overlapping answers in the other tests and in those other tests with other students. If the professor does not produce the overlap of the other student with the remainder of the class in those other tests, s/he clearly is only looking at one possible scenario (cooperative cheating) and not another likely situation (one-way cheating from the most convenient source). </p>
<p>Given that the professor did not supply the other testing results (degree of overlap) to the OP family, this would either imply that the data is not consistent with his accusation or he didn’t do enough research to say any cheating (not just between the 2 in question) was done in these other tests.</p>
<p>Once again, this is bad science regardless of the statistics.</p>
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<p>Actually, he does have a responsibility to ensure that the exams are proctored correctly. After the first or second suspicious test (if he is going to test results, s/he should be doing it all along), s/he should be instructing the proctor to observe the students and their computers more carefully to make sure that nothing is going on. So now we are at the end of the semester and all s/he has (due to his/her lack of diligence in discovering this trend earlier) is the ability to cast aspersions on the 2 students.</p>
<p>Actually, “all” the prof has is overwhelming stat proof of cheating. Just because you think the prof should have hidden under the table of each student does not make it so.</p>
<p>Are you a marketeer, goaliedad ? Your spin ability is unusual.</p>
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<p>This is absolutely correct about the professor’s responsibilities. In the universities I’ve been involved with, though, it isn’t the dean, but an honor court with both faculty and student members that hold a hearing and make a determination. In my experience, the honor court members do their best to do the right thing and certainly do not want to convict innocent students. Showing up with an attorney (unless it is customary at this school) or trying to intimidate them in other ways, is likely to be counterproductive.</p>
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<p>No, this is incorrect. Individual professors are unlikely to have any contact whatsoever with the proctors, who would be chosen by the high school, and if anyone at the university has any say about it, it is the office that handles delivery of on-line courses to high schools. </p>
<p>And, no, if students happen to cheat on one test without getting caught, it doesn’t give them a free pass to cheat for the rest of the semester. If a proctor is negligent, it doesn’t make cheating OK, either.</p>
<p>Goaliedad, I agree with almost nothing you’ve said, but if I’m the OP I’m probably thinking you wouldn’t be a bad person to have on board.</p>
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Nobody said anything to warrant words like “free pass” or “OK.”</p>
<p>I think the point is that statistical evidence strongly suggesting cheating has taken place, and proof of an individual student’s complicity in the cheating, are two different things–and that if the former had been flagged soon enough that steps could have been taken to establish the latter by direct observation, this case would not be so problematic.</p>
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<p>Trying to setup students to get caught cheating is not the responsibility of the professor the university.</p>
<p>I guess things have changed a lot over the years–or maybe they haven’t if you happen to be a star football player at the U. Many moons ago I was in my first Univ teaching position at a Big 8 school. A student turned in a final paper for a required course. I recognized most of the language in it, and was able to reference the many exact quotes stolen from multiple sources. I failed him on the paper, and brought the evidence to my dept. chair, with the intent of following through on the U’s clearly stated cheating policies. The dept chair said, well, the kid is a recruited athlete, star football player, give him an incomplete and let him re-write the paper! No support at all from the administration. So that’s how it went. The funny thing is, when I returned the paper to the kid, he said, you’re right, I didn’t write the paper, I used one written by my friend for last year’s class. (the prof I had replaced). Pathetic that the prof was so unfamiliar with the publications in my field that s/he did not recognize the language!</p>
<p>Very sad to see cheating that should be prosecuted being excused, yet in this case (assuming the OP’s son is innocent), it seems that one is assumed guilty until proven innocent, which could be quite a challenge to do. I’m so sorry for this family, and I hope that this works out in the favor of truth, without too much $ spent. Good luck, and do keep us posted.</p>
<p>I expect that the university does not necessarily consider that it has the responsibility to always make the determination as to how cheating occurred, only that it likely did. Op’s son is not convicted, only accused, and if he wants to pursue his exoneration he has the opportunity to do that through the honor court. I think he’d be well served by thinking how it might have occurred.</p>
<p>This case is problematic for OP and her son, not for the Prof or the University. I really think that goaliedad’s posts are a disservice to OP, insofar as they imply the possibility of spinning away from punishment, when, at least in my opinion that happening is about zero, UNLESS OP can cast reasonable doubt that her son was complicit.</p>
<p>Knowing the method might do it;
Confession of the other kid might do it;</p>
<p>Critiquing the Prof is going to be counter-productive in the extreme.</p>
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Not at all. I am technical by trade. I just have a low tolerance for misuse of statistics and a lack of communication other than the accusatory evidence by the professor. He seems more interested in defending against cheating than finding the truth. </p>
<p>Never said prof should be hiding under a table, just that he is responsible for taking responsible actions other than turning in a cherry-picked set of statistics and leaving the students charged to defend themselves without all of the evidence (the rest of the statstics for comparison) being available.</p>
<p>What he has wouldn’t even stand up in civil court (preponderence of evidence) much less criminal court (beyond a reasonable doubt) as he has no way of proving whether OP’s son took any action to allow copying (given that the one-way cheating evidenced by the one test where the other student failed is accepted as proof of cheating).</p>
<p>I accept that students cheat. They are young and make mistakes in judgement while that frontal lobe is still developing. </p>
<p>I cannot accept that professors that are paid professionals with a duty to take ALL actions necessary to preserve the integrity of their academic program can only come up with statistics on 3 or 4 tests and not do more investigative or preventative work. The professor is actually doing a poor job of controlling his/her academic environment. If his department will not allow him/her to control the remote testing enviornment (I can’t imagine that s/he is not allowed to warn the proctors about a trend evolving), then he should put that in writing when turning in “required” statistical analysis of test results and clearly state that this is not sufficient evidence to prove any ONE of the pair cheated, but that he is not allowed to gather further evidence. </p>
<p>I don’t know how much control he had over the testing environment. We know they hired a proctor who saw no cheating, but also had no instruction as to who to be specifically giving extra attention to. We don’t know if they scanned the machines or network history records to find evidence of a method, but OP has not indicated that this was an issue. OP didn’t indicate that the professor ever asked any questions of her son or the other student.</p>
<p>Bottom line. This is just sloppy and irresponsible and the professor and college don’t feel particularly compelled to do anything else but threaten and see if they can get a confession without doing due diligence.</p>
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<p>Absolutely not. The burden remains on the accuser. Even in a court of law one does not have to prove innocence. </p>
<p>If a “WF” is going to be put on a student’s transcript, then there needs to be more than what the professor has offered. The idea that a student should have to meet a burden of proof higher than the law requires in court is absurd.</p>
<p>If the student wants the Uni to spend time and resources to meet a more complicated level of diligence, then the punishment will not simply be WF, it will be a permanent mark of dishonesty if found guilty.</p>
<p>That the Prof used a simple test to identify cheating to the billionth chance is to his credit, both in terms of threshold acted on, and efficiency. Your demands of extra hoops to show professionalism are irrelevant.</p>
<p>Goaliedad:</p>
<p>For the sake of helping the OP, trying to argue that it was pure concidence that two students (who knew each other, took the test at the same time, and sat in the same room while taking the exam) put down identical answers for 87 out of 89 answered test problems is a waste of time and effort. </p>
<p>Whether you believe it was a good use of statistics is not releveant. The only thing that is releveant is whether the university administration, faculty, or students who will review the case will think that the information indicates cheating. I think the opinions in this thread will reflect the university folks well, and based on that, arguing statistics would be a futile point for the OP.</p>
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<p>Criminal law requires the highest burden of proof. (beyond reasonable doubt). Civil law requires a lower burden of proof (preponderance of evidence).</p>
<p>A college academic integrity board requires a much lower burden of proof. </p>
<p>Right or wrong, it is the way it is.</p>