CAMBRIDGE — Harvard University is investigating 125 students accused of collaborating on a spring take-home final exam, in what could prove to be the largest Ivy League cheating scandal in recent memory.
Nearly half the students in an introductory government class are suspected of jointly coming up with answers or copying off one another. Groups of students appear to have worked together on responses to short questions and an essay assignment, violating a no-collaboration policy that was printed on the exam itself, said Jay Harris, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education.
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A take home exam at Harvard? Really?
Why not? Harvard has make believe faculty members which use graduate students to teach their class.
Harvard Law school has make believe Cherokee females as professors and with enough time to campaign for US Senator from Massachusetts, surely the undergraduate school should use take home exams.
Some people are so obsessed with partisan politics that it colors everything they see and do. This story is about education at a private university, but MLuther can't help himself. Pathetic.
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Take home exams are fairly common nowadays. The old multiple choice days are history and most grading is subjective, which makes it more difficult to get away with cheating. There was cheating back in the dark ages when I was a student. There's always cheating, and its common for it to be covered up. I give Harvard credit for not only discovering the cheating, but making it public.
This is not a reflection on the Harvard undergraduate of today, but on undergrads everywhere, and our modern culture where, apparently, for so many young people, cheating is not seen for what it is: It is blatant deceipt.
I would like to know how bad most of the cheaters (and their parents) feel if they did cheat. Not too much? Just about having been caught? Minimizing the seriousness of what cheating is?
Again, a take home exam at Harvard? And they have to cheat? Here's a clue to all those future leaders. A take home exam means you can actually open the book and find the answer. The dumbing down of America.
That's not what a take home test is. A take home test is usually given to allow students time to produce thoughtful answers. Take home tests are usually essay questions or difficult problems, not fill in the blanks or multiple choice. Often take home tests are given so that students can collaborate. Professors often design take home tests in such a way to force students to work together. I don't think you can pass a take home test at Harvard just by "looking up the answers." Looking stuff is ok--that's the point, it's research and higher education is not about memorizing facts, because you can ALWAYS look up facts. You pass the test by showing you understand the concepts and significance behind what you can look up. You don't copy paragraphs out of the book like in high school, but you might have to refer to the book.
I don't understand "no collaboration" on take home tests (or problem sets). Life is about collaboration--that's what you're going to be doing at work and in grad school. I went to a school that's considered a "little Ivy" or something condescending like that, and collaboration was highly valued. Take home tests were often take home tests for the very purpose of collaboration. I have great memories of working through impossibly difficult problems with classmates and everyone in the group contributing in a different way. The tests were designed so that they were very difficult to pass by only working alone. It felt so good when you finally figured it out as a team. Of course, "copying" someone else's answers is something you do in 7th grade during lunch in the cafeteria, not at Harvard. Working together on something is one thing but copying answers is ridiculous. When you "collaborate" on a test you should still have to submit original work, use what you learned from the team to summarize the answers in a way that's your own and shows you understand them.
Life is about learning to stand on your own two feet and reaizing that you can't always depend on others. It is a shame that too much project collaboration in their academic past has either made them lazy or unable to draw conclusions on their own...either way it is a shame. Now they will learn something else, punishment for doing the wrong thing.
I'm not sure what kind of take home test this was, but all the take home tests I've had we were allowed to partner up with our classmates and share ideas. Copying word for word obviously wasn't allowed, but working together was actually what the teacher wanted us to do.