<p>I just got a news alert from the Harvard Crimson that the largest investigation of academic dishonesty in Harvard's history is occurring now. About 125 students who took the Spring 2012 class Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" are suspected of inappropriately using assistance on the final exam.</p>
<p>It is fairly early in the investigation. 125 students is a huge number and if there was that level of cheating the word of it would have spread fairly quickly throughout the College-- but didn’t. Let’s let the Ad Board do its work before jumping to any conclusions.</p>
<p>From the article:</p>
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<p>I know students who were found guilty of cheating in a class and were forced to take a year off. The class was wiped from their transcript and they took it again when they returned. With policies like that, in some circumstances it would be dumb not to cheat, and you could write the risk off as the “cost of doing business” or something similar. </p>
<p>Harvard has an outrageous cheating policy. At this point, when students are high-achieving adults, aspiring to become the world’s leaders, doctors, and God knows Wall Street executives, they shouldn’t get any slack. They know what cheating is, and if they don’t, they shouldn’t be at Harvard. </p>
<p>Students found guilty of academic dishonesty should receive a failing grade for the course, have a star next to the grade on their transcript that says “due to academic dishonesty”, and be required to withdraw permanently.</p>
<p>With that said, I doubt all of the students implicated will be found guilty. I’d guess they would cast a wide net with things like this.</p>
<p>The Crimson reporting on the issue, linked to from another news story I was just reading: </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Investigates “Unprecedented” Academic Dishonesty Case | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/8/30/academic-dishonesty-ad-board/]Harvard”>Harvard Investigates "Unprecedented" Academic Dishonesty Case | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>I didn’t realize Harvard had classes this large. Hard to teach/learn effectively in such a setting. Perhaps that led to the alleged “collaboration.”</p>
<p>It was an open book, open internet take home exam, just don’t get how cheating could even be necessary?</p>
<p>SwatGrad: Some of the most popular, best taught classes at Harvard (and many other top-rate universities, Ivy or otherwise) are large:</p>
<p>[Computer</a> Science Sees Unparalleled Growth in SEAS | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/13/cs-greatest-growth-seas/]Computer”>Computer Science Sees Unparalleled Growth in SEAS | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>It is a persistent but incorrect myth, from people who extrapolate an elementary education model to university teaching, that large classes must mean poorly taught classes. Poorly taught classes means poorly taught classes.</p>
<p>And, not to excuse cheating, if it occurred, but 2bornot2bivy, the instructor for this class seems highly problematic. From the same Crimson article (<a href=“Harvard Investigates "Unprecedented" Academic Dishonesty Case | News | The Harvard Crimson):%5B/url%5D”>Harvard Investigates "Unprecedented" Academic Dishonesty Case | News | The Harvard Crimson):</a></p>
<p>"Another student wrote that he or she joined about 15 other students at a teaching fellow’s office hours on the morning of May 3, just hours before the final take-home exam’s 5 p.m. deadline.</p>
<p>"Almost all of [the students at office hours] had been awake the entire night, and none of us could figure out what an entire question (worth 20% of the grade) was asking,” the student wrote. “On top of this, one of the questions asked us about a term that had never been defined in any of our readings and had not been properly defined in class, so the TF had to give us a definition to use for the question.”</p>
<p>That same student also expressed frustration that Platt had canceled his office hours the morning before the exam was due. In a brief email to the class just after 10 a.m. on May 3, Platt apologized for having to cancel his office hours on short notice that day due to an appointment."</p>
<p>According to the same Crimson article, Matthew Platt, the instructor for the course, earned a dismal rating of 2.54 out of a possible 5. The average score for social science courses was a 3.91.</p>
<p>Without implying anything about this particular situation, since the cheating is still being investigated and the teaching is not even being looked into, as a general comment that applies to other universities and even LACs (yes, bad teaching exists in LACs too): exasperating, poor teaching is no excuse for cheating, but it does put students in a difficult spot.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to know what the teacher’s ratings were like prior to this class. If half of the Spring 2012 class knows they are being investigated for cheating, their reviews of the teacher’s performance might be biased by that experience.</p>
<p>^^^Hm, I don’t think it works that way.</p>
<p>The investigation is for the final exam, so it would have started after the class is over. Q Guide feedbacks are submitted by students enrolled in the class towards the end of the semester, before the final exam, and before the class is over. So the students wrote their evaluations before they knew they would be investigated – in fact, before they’ve seen the final exam.</p>
<p>The instructor’s vita ([Matthew</a> B. Platt – Home](<a href=“http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mplatt/]Matthew”>http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mplatt/)), however, shows that he has been at Harvard since 2008, so he should have Q Guide ratings from a bunch of courses. Don’t know if the poor rating reported in the Crimson is just for this course, or from all courses combined (in some way).</p>
<p>Harvard, heal thyself.</p>
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<p>That’s incorrect. Students can submit the Q guide well after the end of the semester. In fact, over six semesters I’ve never submitted a Q guide before I’ve taken a final exam.</p>
<p>^^^ Wow, some people I know would want to do things differently from now on!</p>
<p>Hmm. Was gonna do some checking, but apparently the Qs are no longer public. I vaguely remember being able to find public online versions of the Q, but now it seems to be a part of the course selection system, which requires a login.</p>
<p>It seems from the comments section of the Crimson article that this was the first time Platt had taught the Congress class. </p>
<p>There was a question on the exam which confounded the students, a huge number showed up in a TF’s office on the day the exam was due. The TF purportedly gave his/her opinion on what the question meant- and likely steered the direction of the answer.</p>
<p>The professor canceled his office hours a day before the exam was due, because of an “appointment”. Perhaps if he had kept the office hour, students would have been able to grasp the meaning of the question, and not had to discuss it with the TF.</p>
<p>While these conditions are no excuse for cheating, the question is, do conversations with the TF amongst a large group of students constitute cheating? If so, why did the TF allow them to speak in a group? By saying anything within a group at the TFs office, that would qualify as “discussing with others”–a no-no from the professor’s instructions.</p>
<p>And, as asked above, why do professors insist on take-home exams? Was it a scheduling convenience so the prof could leave campus early before exam week was over? </p>
<p>I’ve seen frequent examples of profs requiring final papers be due before exam week, instead of sitdown exams, so professor does not need to stick around for scheduled exam period, which can be weeks after the last class is taught. Even though this is strictly against the “rules” in the academic handbook, students must use their study time in reading period to produce “final” papers due before exam time.</p>
<p>I hope the Ad board examines weak faculty decisions as well as student short-cuts when addressing this scandal.</p>
<p>^^^ “I hope the Ad board examines weak faculty decisions as well as student short-cuts when addressing this scandal.”: Agree with you completely.</p>
<p>fauve</p>
<p>The article says that 15 students showed up at the TF’s office (not exactly a “huge number”). </p>
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<p>However, 125 are being investigated. That means that it is doubtful that the meeting in the TF’s office is the sole basis for the cheating allegations. Moreover, take-home exams are extremely common and I think that normally kids are perfectly happy to have open book take-home exams in a course.</p>
<p>I am not saying that the professor asked appropriate questions in the exam, nor do I know anything about why he chose that method of exam. However, I don’t think your assumptions are necessarily correct.</p>
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<p>Reading period…for studying time??? What kind of sorcery…I don’t even…</p>
<p>A number of my S friends had all of their work done during “reading period” as they had final papers not exams–so the idea of it being a real “reading” period has died a while ago. </p>
<p>If 15 showed up you can be sure that some x times that number were equally as confused but either didn’t think of going to office hours, thought that they could figure it out with more thought or had tried office hours in the past only to find he wasn’t there (if a prof cancels office hours just before a final it is a pretty good bet that he has been less than diligent about keeping them during the term–and someone who doesn’t keep the hours gets a reputation among the students to not even bother going to see him…).</p>
<p>That being said I find the one year suspension to be as the outside penalty to be too lenient. Obviously there are gradations of academic dishonesty but for those cases which are egregious the guilty should be separated from the College. They have forfeited their right to be at Harvard.</p>
<p>Midatl- Thank you for providing the number of students who supposedly went to the TF.
I ‘ll retract the term huge. Obviously I did not imply my addition gleaned from the Crimson article and student comments was a “correct” and full report. Aren’t we all trying to find out the truth? It is information from a more direct source than the other posters’ wild guesses of some mass conspiracy. </p>
<p>Dwight- Oh, please let parents believe you are studying during reading periods, not just hitting up: garden parties at the clubs, winter formals, or the X-box. </p>
<p>etondd- Students in the STEM fields depend on reading period to prep for exams. And wouldn’t students who had no work for RP, and no exams, just leave campus?? So they are out ot the equation anyway. </p>
<p>There is certainly the liklihood that the final club crowd, team bros, and frats joined forces within their ranks to unethically collaborate, or worse. But, is that really news? Stories of old tests, recent tests, and study guides held in the private real estate of some of those groups abound.</p>
<p>I simply doubt they all did it as a united band of 125 marauders.</p>
<p>Alas, JK Rowling’s proclamation and Annenberg notwithstanding, Harvard is not Hogwarts and anti-cheating charms exist only in the imagination.</p>