<p>tjd, that is the scary part. If one can prove statistically that cheating occured, can the school then find both students guilty of cheating even though they cannot prove that they both cheated? I think that is where the student handbook and rules come into play. I guess one needs a lawyer and this is a mighty expensive situation for the OP’s family.</p>
<p>Text message charges vary by plan and carrier. I get charged twenty cents per text that I receive. Whether I read them or not. Someone could cost me a fair amount of money by sending me a lot of text messages.</p>
<p>College rules can be unfair. If you walk into a dorm where there is drinking and the RA comes in a moment later, you can be punished along with the rest of the drinking students.</p>
<p>Northeastmom, in the schools I know, it does not matter if you actively cheated or someone cheated off of you. It is your responsibility to guard your answers on a test. However, the issue here to me is not whether the kid cheated or not, since that really cannot be 100% determined, but the methodology that is being used. If this is what is supposed to constitute proof, I would object as strenuously as possible.</p>
<p>He wants to fight. I honestly would rather it be dropped. If he takes the WF, that will count as an F, which means he will also be disciplined by the high school, which is a visit to the guidance counselor, he will not be eligible to be junior marshall, he won’t be able to participate in most clubs he is in now, and he does not want his teachers to lose trust in him. All of those things are mportant to him. The fact that we haven’t already taken the WF is his choice. That doesn’t mean I don’t support him, I do. I don’t believe for one second that he cheated or knowingly allowed someone to cheat. I, however, don’t think it’s his responsibility to constantly check over his shoulder and watch what everyone else is doing. That is the proctor’s job. He should be focused on his test and his test only. As far as the texting, as long as your phone is on, you will receive messages. The number that sent a text at that time is a friend he has lunch with. No classes. We have unlimited texting, so we are not charged per text. I’m sure he keeps his phone on silent. The important thing is he did not send any texts. I would be concerned if there was communication between him and the other student during test time. I do have the other student’s number and as far back as I could look (at least 6 months), it has never appeared on our bill.</p>
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<p>I think so.</p>
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<p>cpt</p>
<p>If this were a pencil and paper test, yes I would agree that a student has a responsibility to position his paper and body in such a way that others cannot easily observe your activity. </p>
<p>However, this being a computer delivered exam, it is impractical to expect a test taker to both operate a keyboard AND position his body in such a way as to restrict the view of a monitor. It would be the responsibility of the proctor to position the monitors to allow the minimum possible viewing exposure.</p>
<p>A proctor should notice eyes looking where they should not be. Especially with so few students in the room.</p>
<p>I would suggest that the original poster take a few pictures of the examination room, draw a layout, and then indicate the positions of the students and proctor on the layout. If possible, find out what exam software they are using, perhaps get a demo and take pictures. Find out if the computer is locked down where there is no access to operating system programs. Was there a camera in the room that could have monitored what went on?</p>
<p>The issue of exam cheating is a big one with online courses and I see more electronic attempts to control it.</p>
<p>OP: are the students placed in the same arrangement each test ? Where were the two kids ?</p>
<p>I think the OP S will have to figure out the most plausible explanation for how the cheating happened.</p>
<p>What will work against the S is that the cheating happened multiple times and in a manner that the other student was able to copy every single exam answer. That’s not easy to do.</p>
<p>The other student cannot be allowed to get away with actions. Somebody needs to press him to explain what happened from his perspective.</p>
<p>My daughter is a matriculating college freshwoman this year. Her school has requested that end of semester grades be sent to them, so I am no so sure that the other kid is off the hook just because he is a senior.</p>
<p>If he insists on fighting, and you support him (and are willing to bear the expense) get the lawyer, threaten them with everything, and then if they offer to give just a W, take it and run.</p>
<p>Said this before, but I’ll repeat the advice: Get a statistician.
(Incidentally, in a room of 24 students–neglecting Feb. 29 birthdays–it is more likely than not that two of the students will have the same birthday. I appreciate the point that the odds are much lower for 2 particular students to have the same birthday.)</p>
<p>Still scratching my head over the relevance of this analogy …</p>
<p>Being left-handed, I have to say that I find it ridiculously hard to block my paper, due to the fact I write with my paper PERPENDICULAR to my hand, so it is facing the person to my left.</p>
<p>So far, I haven’t been accused of anything yet.</p>
<p>+I glare at the person to my left enough to get the point across. An answer for an eye!</p>
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<p>I don’t think trying to argue the statistics is effective. That’s a weak argument and one that is unlikley to hold water, especially if the university has disciplined students before on the same reason.</p>
<p>The stronger argument is that the student didn’t know anything about the cheating and it wasn’t a collaboration.</p>
<p>tjd, I think your calculations are slightly incorrect, though your conclusion is correct. Student A picked the answers he picked; we shouldn’t factor in the probabilities there. We should instead look at the chance that Student B just happened to pick those same answers. So, for the first test, considering the eight wrong answers, we get .06<em>.07</em>.17<em>.27</em>.30<em>.33</em>.48 = 9 x 10^(-6), or nine in a million. For the second test, again considering wrong answers only, .02* .12 * .16 * .18 * .31 * .37 *.41 = 3 x 10^(-6), or three in a million. Both events happening by chance? We multiply the probabilities, and get a chance of 2 in a hundred billion, if my arithmetic is correct. Um, yeah. This is not a coincidence.</p>
<p>So either the students collaborated, or Student B cheated off Student A without student A’s knowledge. If the latter, why did Student B always pick Student A, and why didn’t the proctor notice anything?</p>
<p>(I did the calculations, but really, one doesn’t need to do them, and one doesn’t need a statistician. A quick eyeball of the numbers shows that the probability that the two students were choosing independently is, essentially, zero.)</p>
<p>I think that the number of students in the proctored exam was very small. It’s possible that they all just sat in the same place since there would be so many empty seats and people are often a creature of habit. Of course the cheater could have strategically placed himself far enough away that the proctor wouldn’t move him but close enough to see.</p>
<p>^ But the two students might have had their birthday on the same day.</p>
<p>The only thing a statistician can prove is that the 2 students had the same understanding of the “correct” answers (not necessarily the ones the professor thought were correct) and answered accordingly. </p>
<p>Whether that understanding of the “correct” answers was due to intellegence gathered by one or both parties during the test (i.e. cheating) or whether they came to the same understanding of those “correct” answers by studying together CANNOT be determined by statistics. The test measurement does NOT say that the students did or did not study together or worked off of the same or different notes. That information has to be gathered by human intellegence - asking questions of the two, comparing their class notes, etc.</p>
<p>Now if they truly did not have the means to come to the understanding that led to the same “correct” answers before the exam (i.e. intellegence gathered during the test - cheating), the failure by the one student (absent another overriding excuse like illness) would indicate a 1-way intellegence gathering was occurring, which I would accept as cheating on the part of the other student. However, this does not indicate that the intellegence gatherered was yielded voluntarily (cheating) or involuntary (innocent bystandard). That determination cannot be done statistically as there is no indication (other than the ending times of similar scored tests) of coordinated behavior. And similar test end times can be innocuous in nature as well as coordinated. In fact, if a good coverup was to be coordinated, both parties would be more logically inclined to disguise their behavior by wrapping up at different times.</p>
<p>I still think the professor is reaching to draw this conclusion as although the data may indicate coordination, it cannot indicate when (before or during the test) or how the coordination (planned or opportunistic-lack of coordination) happened. That is purely done by controlling the subjects and the test, which the professor did NOT do and the proctor indicates was clean. I think he is taking a good (but not perfect) bet on a hunch. Perhaps good by Vegas rules, but not by academic standards where the statistics of a study are only as good as the control of the experiment, which in this case was not adequate to support the conclusion. Bad science, not bad statistics. And I still say this professor should be laughed out of the office based on this bad science, but too many in academia let professional relationships cloud their professional review duties.</p>