accused of cheating

Parents Forum
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<p>These are exactly the concerns I would expect from a kid who did not cheat. He is rightfully outraged and wants to defend his honor. OP, this must be eating you up from the inside and I’m sorry for that 'cuz it just stinks. Checking cell phone records was a good idea. I’m glad you’ve contacted an attorney and I hope that attorney goes on the offensive, “loaded for bear,” and causes the prof. to back down, the accusation to go away, and the class to continue for your son. Good luck to you.</p>

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<p>I’d like to think that an attorney is unnecessary. It’s expensive and the money could be better spent on a future college education for the OP S. That’s your choice though. </p>

<p>Let me describe what I think are the strengths and the best way to handle this.</p>

<p>At this point, I don’t see anything that implicates the OP S in cheating, with the exception that the entire exam from 3 exams was copied. Everything that has been posted indicates that the student was cheated from and he may not have been part of the cheating.</p>

<p>If he actually hasn’t done anything (only he knows), he should not be afraid to talk with the Dean of Students and present his case. As long as he gives a plausible and reasonable explanation of how another unknown student cheated from him and how this was unknown to him, the entity that looks into the academic honesty question should accept that. They’d need a good reason to the contrary in order to do to that.</p>

<p>One thing that the S should do when he talks with the Dean is describe how his manners during the exams. Are they long exams that make him a little nervous? If so, he is likely to be very focused on the screen in front of him and unsure of what is going on around him. He should describe that because it would give him good reason to not be aware of the cheating.</p>

<p>Good plausible reasons sounds like the proctor was busy during the exam because there was only 2 taking the exam. She was grading papers or homework and didn’t observe anything. The computers were in close vicinity. The font size on the computer was large enough to be seen at a distance. Some simple diagrams and pictures of the room would be beneficial.</p>

<p>The fact the other student promptly dropped the class when caught and the fact that the other student did poorly on the exam when your student was out will work well to your students favor.</p>

<p>Having gone through the university processes, the one thing that universities strive for is fairness. They are not there to wrongly punish students and they are fair in general. (I don’t know your college specifically.)</p>

<p>One of the things that will work well to your S advantage is that he is a very good student. I was also a good student in high school, and knew that cheating would probably lower my grade (as my grades were usually higher than everyone elses). The same is true for your S - he probably doesn’t have a reason to cheat. </p>

<p>As you doubt have already figured, I’d leave out complicated discussions about remote access software on the computers, hacking or cracking the database, trying to show that the exam results were mere concidence, etc, etc because those arguments will be weaker than your S simply describing what he saw and observed in the classroom.</p>

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<p>Like bigtrees, I wish people would stop egging the OP and her son on. She can do all she wants with an attorney “loaded for bear”, but I don’t think that is going to help a whit, and could make things worse. As robinsuesaunders correctly said, this is not a legal proceeding, and legal standards of proof are not really relevant. The statistical evidence is sufficient to establish that someone cheated, and unless the OP’s son can prove his total innocence it’s not going to matter that it may not have been him. And the likelihood that the OP’s son can prove his total innocence here to the satisfaction of the teacher and college administrators is very, very low. And the risk is quite high if he loses. That’s why most people here would advise him to cut his losses yesterday.</p>

<p>Goaliedad’s arguments won’t work, because if they did it would become effectively impossible to stop cheating in this kind of environment.</p>

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<p>Are you sure about that? I’m quite prepared to believe the OP’s son was unaware that someone was copying from his test. All his actions are consistent with those of someone who is innocent. It would also appear that he is the one who knows the material so giving him a decent grade for the class would be an accurate assessment of his having mastered the material. I think there might be something gained by the OP’s son trying to work with whoever is in charge of this matter now.</p>

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<p>post 299:

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<p>OK, now I am confused – if they are the only 2 who take the psych course… how can there be “statistics” showing that there was anything unusual with the set of questions they got wrong?</p>

<p>In all multiple choice tests, there are “distractor” answers – answers that are inserted because they look like plausible answers, but are in fact wrong. Good distractors draw on commonly made errors or misunderstandings – and are very likely to be chosen by someone making an educated guess when they don’t know the material. </p>

<p>Here’s an example:</p>

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<p>Obviously the answer is A. But B is a true statement, even though it doesn’t answer the question. C makes no sense, and D and E are false statements.</p>

<p>The above question was taken from [Multiple-Choice</a> Tests | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org/multiple-choice-tests]Multiple-Choice”>http://www.fairtest.org/multiple-choice-tests) - here’s how they explain the value of the distractor (emphasis added):</p>

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<p>The problem with the “statistical” analysis is discerning the difference between the “wrong” answer that falls in the B category (“those who don’t quite get it”) – or the C, D, or E category (“little or no knowledge”).</p>

<p>If there are only 2 students in the class taking a particular course – and it is an online course without a teacher – then whenever either one has difficulty with a concept, they are going to talk to to the other. If on a set of multiple choice exams, they get most answers right, but both select the same “don’t quite get it” choices… that is exactly what you would expect under such circumstances. </p>

<p>Comparing similarities between those 2 students with some outside population to make a statistical analysis and to draw some outside conclusion makes no sense whatsoever.</p>

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<p>Excuse me, but my argument was 2 fold.</p>

<p>1) The only thing the have was the statistical results of comparing the selected scores. No other supporting type of evidence has been offered and in fact, the proctor supports the position that cheating did not happen.</p>

<p>2) The gathering of the selected scores did not eliminate the possibility of innocence on OP’s son’s part, as it did not rule out 2 perfectly valid ways that the results could have happened that were not cheating on the OP’s son’s part.</p>

<p>I’m saying that the best that statistics could prove is that one cheated (if there hasn’t been cooperation in studying), but cannot prove 2-way cheating and if you punish all who are involved in a statistical anomaly, you punish the innocent victims of shoulder-surfing as well as the perpatrators. </p>

<p>While test statistics can help identify possible cheating, it in and of itself cannot prove cheating when you do not control for other possible explanations.</p>

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<p>^ There are 2 students in the classroom. It’s an online class that has 50-100 students throughout the world.</p>

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<p>Thank you calmom for supporting my thinking…</p>

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<p>Yes, I agree with this. However, the professor of an online class cannot make the determiation of who cheated and who the shoulder surfers were. All he can do is identify that the academic integrity of the exam was comprimised and then refer the students to sit before the academic integrity board. He allowed the students an opportunity to drop with a WF before sitting before the board.</p>

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<p>Calmom, if this was the case (all students learned material the same way) then in a class of 20 students all taught by the same teacher, they would all have the same answer for the test. But that’s not the case because some students learn faster than others, some spend more time on it than others, and some are more interested than others. Some students misread exam questions, some make silly mistakes, and some skipped over that material because they were too busy.</p>

<p>This online class is no different. </p>

<p>I’d be very surprised that the two students spent exactly the same amount of time learning the material, spent the same amount of time reading the assignments, spent the same amount of time on the homework, and were identical copies as to their knowledge of the subject. I’d be surprised if they both interpreted questions in the same way.</p>

<p>Those differences are likely to show up in an exam. Some of the answers may be the same because they studied that material. Other answers are likely to be different because the students didn’t cover that material and they’ll guess in different ways. Other answers will still be different because they disagreed on what they learned in the material and each decided their own way was correct. </p>

<p>My wife is a twin. She and her sister studied everything together. They lived together. They worked on homework together. Yet, when it came to tests, they got very different scores and they put down very different answers. If this is true with a twin, it’s certainly be true with classmates who hardly know one another outside of the classroom.</p>

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<p>I haven’t read all of the responses, so sorry if this is a repeat. First, I would request copies of the tests and examine them for testing bias. What I mean by that is the wrong answer they gave “correct” given they made the same wrong assumption. I would also examine the test results not in question, comparing both sets of answers to see what patterns exist. </p>

<p>I’m assuming it was a computer test. I would have each computer tested for a keystroke reader, mirror program and look at the history logs. If there was some virus involved, it should exonerate your son as he has no control over the equipment.</p>

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<p>If they did study alike, walk alike, talk alike and did the whole Patty Duke thing, then I would expect correlation on all of the tests. The three with near identical responses were less than half of the total set of tests that they took and apparently the correlation on those other tests weren’t strong enough to flag cheating.</p>

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<p>I disagree with this. The last thing he should do is start speculating about cheating methods with the dean!</p>

<p>His defense is simple: I did not cheat. I had no reason to cheat. I am doing well in the course through my own legitimate effort. Even the accuser does not suggest that I benefited from cheating, if cheating did occur. I have no knowledge of the behavior of the other person. If you want to know whether he cheated and if so how he cheated, ask him: only he knows. I will not sign anything that suggests that I am guilty of cheating, because I am innocent.</p>

<p>For those who seem to think that an WF that converts to an F is a lesser evil: there is no way that a WF or an F on his record is going to be anything other than a huge red flag. He will have to explain it anyway. Far better IMHO to explain an unjust accusation of cheating, with evidence in hand that you refused to accept the WF and fought it to the end because you were innocent and believed in justice.</p>

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<p>And as proof of your position, proffer up your lawyer, who unreservedly believes your story.</p>

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<p>Oh, give me a break. When a person in unjustly accused of a crime, they don’t go without a lawyer because it would “prove” they are innocent.</p>

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<p>I don’t know whether the OP’s son cheated, but this defense is lame. Plenty of cheaters cheat by helping their friends get better scores.</p>

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<p>And that is the bitter truth. Someone who provides answers is just as guilty as the one who receives the answers.</p>

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<p>Two different situations. When you are accused of a crime, you enter a complex world that is difficult to navigate. If you are in jail during your accustation, you don’t have resouces that allow you to learn and navigate the system as effectively.</p>

<p>This situation isn’t a criminal situation. It’s not hard to present your information to the board. You have ample resources from the university that will help you with this. </p>

<p>The downside to getting an attorney involved is the university will likely involve their legal counsel as well. What’s the problem with their counsel? They have a really large budget and their attorney can eat up hours of your attorneys time. At $200 an hour, it can become a battle of who has the deeper pockets and most universities have very deep pockets.</p>

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<p>This is exactly right.</p>

<p>When I suggest that the lawyer take the offensive, “loaded for bear,” it’s my feeling that the issue of whether the student cheated is done with. As the student has been offered no choice but to withdraw/fail, the university has decided he did cheat. Since he did not cheat, the issue is now a matter of the student’s having been wrongly accused; I hope (I do not know) there is a prosecutable offense in that false accusation and that the attorney can use the threat of prosecution to cause the whole issue to go away.</p>

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<p>The purpose of bringing a lawyer into the proceedings is not to litigate, but to advise the client on their options in working within the college’s judicial system. Having a dispassionate, experienced advisor will help the family make the most of the system including understanding what type of evidence is allowed (can you bring character witnesses, what type of cross examination of witnesses are allowed. These proceedings have policies and procedures. If there are flaws in how these are carried out, a trained attorney will find them and help to devise strategies to correct them. The attorney may also be able to observe and advise if the execution of the procedures violate any state or federal regulations with regards to how his/her academic record is handled. The student does have certain rights that cannot be signed away by an educational contract.</p>

<p>This does not necessarily trigger school administrations to hire engage their legal counsel, just to make sure they are carrying out their duties properly.</p>

<p>Parents, no matter how well educated, are not dispassionate observers able to do this. There is a saying that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. When serious, life-changing proceedings take place, legal representation is money well spent.</p>

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<p>Another idea. Perhaps have him take the CLEP exam in Psych and get a very high score to prove that he learned the material well and didn’t need to cheat.</p>