Subj : Re: Are programmers like this in the real world? To : comp.programming From : Chris McDonald Date : Tue Jul 26 2005 07:02 am Ben Pfaff writes: >Chris McDonald writes: >> Ben Pfaff writes: >>>[...3 out of 80 students cheating...] >>>I hope this isn't typical. >> >> I'm not sure if I'm missing any possible saracism in this post, >> but, no, Ben's experience is *far from* typical. >> >> I can unequivocably state that plagiarism rates in many university CS >> courses, particularly in the first or second years, are far closer to >> 20%-30% of all students. It's no big secret that it occurs. >I was not attempting any form of sarcasm. 3 out of 80, or about >4%, seems much too high to me. I'd be very distressed to hear >about a plagiarism rate five times that. >Do you know about anyone who has looked at the problem? I'm >naturally suspicious of something that "everyone knows." >At Stanford, students found cheating are normally suspended for a >full academic quarter. This is a stricter policy than most, as I >understand it. I wonder if it has any impact? Hi Ben, Plagiarism is a serious issue, and is treated seriously in the great majority of university CS courses. However, I certainly envy Stanford if it is able to (genuinely) limit plariarism rates to only 3/80. My personal feeling is that a rate of 3/80 (at any institution) would be close to the reported and announced rate, but that the true undetected/unreported rate, is much higher. Raise your questions in the newgroup comp.edu which is read by many CS Faculty/Academics, and many members of the ACM SIGCSE community (cf. http://www.sigcse.org/). I'm very confident that you'll raise a healthy, if not inflamed, discussion as to why genuine plagiarism occurrence rates are so much higher than their actual detection/reported rates. ______________________________________________________________________________ Dr Chris McDonald E: chris@csse.uwa.edu.au Computer Science & Software Engineering W: http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~chris The University of Western Australia, M002 T: +618 6488 2533 Crawley, Western Australia, 6009 F: +618 6488 1089 .