Wow. One of my students handed in her crib notes with the final exam!

[Lisa]

I thought this kind of thing was an urban legend, but there was the page, tucked into the back of her exam booklet.

We'd actually given the students a list of potential exam questions to use when studying, and she'd written out her answers on the back, in point form, and used it as her crib sheet. (I know that this is one of the "dangers" of giving students such detailed preparation tips, but the benefits are generally so good that I've been taking that risk.)

I don't know whether she was pressed for time, or afraid of being caught, but I'd already marked most of her questions and she wasn't doing very well. She even left out one of the longer questions at the end ... and if she'd followed the points she'd mapped out on her sheet, she would gotten most of the things we were looking for.

[SacredCow]

1. Wow.

Sadly enough, just the act of making the crib notes should have been enough to pass a test. That's exactly how I used to study for history- I made crib notes on index cards. Just making them got me to C territory. Reviewing them and jotting other notes on them brought me to A or B status.

[Lisa]

4. great idea!

One of my profs challenged us to come up with a wallet-sized document that would summarize all the major points we'd covered in class that term, and awarded bonus points for the best and most accurate ones. (It could be a card or a larger page that folded, and any combination of text and graphics.) I'm thinking of doing a similar assignment in one of my courses.

[SacredCow]

8. I had a Biochemistry class like that....

Every test, we could bring one 4 by 6 index card with whatever we could cram on it. It was perfect for formulas and reactions that took too much time to memorize.

[LeftyMom]

11. I had a high school geology exam where we did that

After preparing the little notecard I knew the material backward and forward and didn't need it in the exam.

[Lisa]

15. some instructors include vital formulae, etc., on a handout for exam use

I know that some of the stricter old-school ones wanted us to memorize everything, but other profs would say that they would look things up in their books when they needed to, so as long as you know how to apply the information, there wasn't any point to rote memorization.

[SacredCow]

17. For things like Chemistry and Physics that's the fairest thing to do...

It's a waste of time to memorize formulas and equations that you can look up. In the real world, you have to be able to prove where you got a formula anyway.

[BikeWriter]

10. I did the same thing on a Sony pocket recorder. I could study...

while driving to school or work.

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

2. I'm afraid I'm a mere high school freshman, what are crib notes?

[Lisa]

5. I've also heard them called a "cheat sheet"

Notes that are smuggled into an exam (the closed-book type where you aren't allowed to bring anything in with you).

[MrCoffee]

3. is this a college?

do you get to throw her out?

[Lisa]

12. it's up to my supervisor ...

Yes, it's a university course. The guy who's in charge of teaching it will have to make the call -- I just came back from his office. Apparently the student sent him a panicked e-mail that evening, saying that she included the notes on purpose, to show that she really did know the material and had been studying it, even though she didn't have time to finish. I was there during the last half of the exam, and gave everyone an extra quarter-hour -- nobody stayed for the whole time, and I can probably check my list to see when she actually did hand her paper in. And she could have come back to the prof's office with me to talk about the exam, if she'd been having trouble then -- we encourage students to do that if there's any kind of emergency.

I suspect that she got home, unpacked her bag, and realized that she must have left her crib sheet in the exam book. She must have been freaking out!

My boss is VERY nice -- he's looked at her grades and feels that she just had a momentary lapse of judgement. He doesn't even want to flunk her (she's probably going to end up with a low-fifties grade, a bare pass). I'm suggesting that he warn her that this kind of situation looks rather bad, because I'm afraid that she might do it again, and get kicked out for sure.

[MrCoffee]

14. i'd have no compunction at all about turning her in to the prof

it's a no-brainer for me. i worked my ass off to go through undergrad and law school, and cheating does nothing but cheapen the degrees of those who honestly earned their degrees.

[SacredCow]

16. I was only tempted to use a crib sheet one time...

My last semester and I needed a microbiology class as an elective to satisfy my degree requirements. The only one that fit my schedule was Microbial Physiology- basically an in-depth study of all of the energy and/or metabolic pathways (Kreb's cycle, Electron Transport Chain, etc...). I found out later that it was rarely taken by anyone except Microbiology majors (which I wasn't). It was rough. I went into the final with a solid C and determined that I would have to flunk the final horribly to get a D or thoroughly ace it to get a B. The thought of a crib entered my mind, as I really didn't want a C on my records, but I came back to reality and realized that getting thrown out in my last semester would be worse. So I studied for the exam in a very general way- enough to prove that I knew what I was talking about, but I planned on BSing my way through the details.

Ironically, I got the flu a few days before the exam. Not wanting to reschedule, I downed all the cold medicine I could get my hands on and took the exam. I don't even remember taking it I was so out of my head with the meds and fever. When the grades were posted, I had pulled a B in the class. I was heading to the Prof's office to see how that was possible but I changed my mind and chalked it up to the fates!

[Dora]

20. "Do you get to throw her out?"

You make it sound like a ride at Disneyland! :rofl:

[LeftyMom]

6. Can you let her other instructors know to look out for signs that she cheats?

Then do whatever the procedure is for student ethics lapses at your school.

[SOteric]

7. Oh Lord. I have a sick feeling

she may have tucked her notes back there and then forgotten and been unable to find them when she needed them during the test.

[MrCoffee]

9. compare the notes with the exam booklet.

should be pretty easy to tell if she was copying off the sheet during the exam or not.

[Lisa]

13. unfortunately, the other answers follow her outline pretty closely

It's going to be rather hard to prove that she didn't have the notes in front of her during the exam. I did get up and walk around the room a couple of times, but it's a large class, and instructors aren't supposed to go around too much between the rows, even when checking for potential irregularities, because it disturbs people's concentration.

[ecstatic]

18. What if someone set her up?

How do we know she put the cheat sheet in the booklet, and that it wasn't sabotage?

[Shakespeare]

19. See post no. 12. n/t

[Generic Brad]

21. Give her a copy of this discussion thread with her "F"

That will learn the little cheater.

[Evoman]

22. I'm merciless when it comes to this shit. I've caught three people cheating in my lab classes

..and those were in the first 3 labs that I taught. The first one, I was new to teaching, so I consulted a senior TA...she failed the student, but let him go on. The next two, I not only failed them on the exam, but I also went to the board and tried to get them kicked out...both of them got second chances, but I failed them in the whole lab portion.

I will not tolerate cheating. I'm a nice teacher...I try to make my labs interesting, and lively. I'm always there for my students. But I tell my student thats I HAVE kicked out students, and if any of them cheat, I will make their lives as miserable as I can. Since I've been doing that, no cheaters. Over 60 percent of students supposedly cheat..and if I could catch them, I would expel every single one of them.

[Lisa]

26. one of my colleagues teaches a course with a tough in-lab final exam ...

Students are expected to go in there and do the experiment from scratch, and as the prof points out in the introductory lecture, copying lab writeups from their friends, or bringing in a cheat sheet, isn't going to compensate for not having the actual skills when it comes down to the crunch. I'm kind of envious, because by the midterm it becomes clearly apparent that only people who actually do the work and can carry out the procedures reasonably quickly are going to pass. (The worst I can do is allocate a "0" for a bs answer, but there's nothing like having stuff actually blow up in your face, in front of the rest of the class, to drive home a point!)

[philosophie_en_rose]

23. Yikes.

I was going to suggest giving her the benefit of the doubt. (maybe she outlined her answers, prior to writing?). However, it seems pretty clear that she just cheated.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. The most idiotic cheater I knew in graduate school

plagiarized a paper from the professor who had assigned it.

Yup, the professor picks up a student paper and finds that it's his own article on the subject from years before, word for word.

That was the end of that student's graduate career--much to the joy of the rest of us, who couldn't stand him.

[Lisa]

25. they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ...

But in that case, it would appear to be a form of idiocy!

That's one thing about academia which you've probably noticed, Lydia -- frequently the research areas are so specialized that a plagiarized paper will be familiar to those in the field (so they'd at least know the author). There was an absolutely amazing book review in a biogeochemistry journal a few years back, written by someone who'd been asked to review a title which, he soon discovered, contained significant portions which had been lifted from his own work! I distribute it as a warning handout in the science methodology class which I teach in the spring semester.

And one of the other grad students in my department has spent 6 months going over her own MA thesis, after finding that a newly-submitted doctoral dissertation from a university in another country (which had been distributed to her supervisor, and a few other people around the world who are experts on a particular South Pacific island) contained significant portions of her writing, word for word. Apparently the other school has required her to do this because they're putting together some kind of hearing. She's a very kindhearted and idealistic person, and it's been a painful process for her (especially after the plagiarist's partner decided to blame her for the impending punishment, and deluged her with hate mail).