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Students question cheating scandal

Editor-in-Chief

Published: Monday, November 8, 2010

Updated: Sunday, November 14, 2010 14:11

 

In a YouTube video posted by an anonymous student, professor Richard Quinn can be seen making statements about the midterm exam on the first day of class.

"The only party of the grading that I deal with is I'm responsible for creating and administering the midterm and final exam," said Quinn.

In the full version of the lecture, Quinn also states, "So there's an opportunity that I may very well write a question that even I couldn't answer."

Lectures are made public and can be downloaded on the UCF College of Business Administration's website.

The student who uploaded the video to YouTube was not willing to meet, but did respond to messages, clarifying points made in the clips.

An unnamed source that was accused of cheating on the exam spoke with the Associated Press.

"Everyone sees the first day of class and his opening remarks are, ‘I created the test. I'm responsible for it," said the student. "After seeing that, it was safe for us to assume that having it online, having it emailed to you, whatever it was, wasn't the test."

"No student knew that was the test and that's what we continue to say over and over," he said.

Taylor Ellis, the associate dean of the UCF testing center, said that a student had acquired the test bank answers online and distributed it throughout the class.

When contacted, professor Quinn refused to comment on the YouTube video or video of his first lecture of the semester. UCF released an official statement on Friday evening.

"Let's keep the focus where it ought to be, not on the test and the instructor who administered it, but on the students who acquired the test beforehand and used it inappropriately," said Grant Heston.

Ellis has said that so far, roughly seventy-five percent of those believed to have cheated on the midterm have come forward.

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5 comments

Anonymous
Wed Nov 24 2010 10:22
This "professor" is a joke. Cheating scandal - deal with it, but don't be a jerk. He berated these kids like a power-hungry idiot. As an MBA student in a top program and an active duty military officer with more than 18 years of service, I can tell you that this management "professor" is doing more harm than good. He is setting a poor example of how to calmly deal with a crisis. Instead, he is acting out - very typical of a power-hungry "professor" with little or no real work experience. You can tell he merely relies on the text (and it's test bank) for his lecture rather than his own experience...
Anonymous
Tue Nov 16 2010 11:55
If the tests questions were freely avaliable online and the proffesor said he would not be using them (implied by the fact that he said he would create his own questions) then I dont see cheating. I see students studying a practice test offered by the publisher (whos only connection to the teacher is the book he CHOOSES to use). If a student gets their record tarnished for studying then UCF shouldnt be called a school.

This is the professors fault. He should be taking one of those seminars in ethics, not the students.

Anonymous
Sun Nov 14 2010 12:37
This is 100% on the professor. He is paid very well to teach students and to accurately gauge their progress in the course. He decided to take the easy way out and use the test bank that just about every student knows about.
Using a test bank to study is not cheating. It is a way to prepare yourself for an exam you were told would not be from these questions.
I hope Quinn is forced to apologize to everyone in the UCF community for embarrassing us with his own lack of integrity and work effort. Then I hope they terminate him.
Anonymous
Sat Nov 13 2010 23:56
So the publisher of the course book wrote a bank of "test" questions and publishes them? The professor chooses to use this published test bank of questions as the exam for the course. The students locate this "test" online and presumably distribute it, based on what they are saying, to review the course material and potential test question they think may be similar to this test bank. The professor indicates at the beginning of the class that he writes the test.

I am not in the class and initially I was disgusted by what I heard, but now I think the Professor is far more responsible for this situation. If the students had a well founded reason to believe the professor writes his own test and they had a copy of a "sample test" from the publisher, why would they think they were cheating? Seems like smart preparation and studying for an exam.

You can buy sample tests for all kinds of tests (LSAT, GRE etc) from publishers, does that mean you are cheating if you use that test to prepare for the real thing? There has been no evidence the students actually used a copy of this material in the testing rooms either. Just that they had it prior to the test and could have only studied the material in advance.

I think the professor is lazy as hell. He should be fired for incompetence.

Jerr
Sat Nov 13 2010 16:12
I'd like to start off by saying I'm not in this class. I think that this scandal is tip-toeing a fine line of cheating. The facts right now are that a test bank (test questions) were distributed to the class by a student, and that this was looked over by over 200 students. Now for it to be cheating, the students would have had to have known with absolute certainty that this was the exam. To demonstrate, take this scenario: a student, attempting to study for a class, finds a sample exam online and thinks it a great study guide. Since many professors often give these types of sample exams, the students seeing this probably assume the test will be similar, but different. After all, with this widespread availability, why would the professor use this test?
Additionally, lets say this was posted on Webcourses discussion. Professors can see all the posts, and often respond to student inquires. If the professor saw this posted up, he would have realized that his test bank was posted online.
The fact that the test bank comes from the textbook publisher and was found online defeats the argument that the test bank was "stolen." Again, finding a resource online and using it as a study guide isn't really cheating. If you had to worry that you may be labeled a cheater every time you look at past tests online, things would be crazy. I know some professors post up old tests online specifically to help their students. If another teacher decides to use the same test, the teacher assumes the risk of having students finding that.






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