Compare sources to detect plagiarism
On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 14:41:51 -0200
Felipe Sanches juca@members.fsf.org wrote:
There's a huge issue of software freedom on all of the 5 "solutions"
suggested in this article. But even more damaging than that is the
generalized will to frame copying as a bad thing, by using terms like
"plagiarism" to refer to it.
Copying is a reality! It should be incorporated into the educational
framework, instead of banished as some sort of crime or blasphemy. Refusing
to acknowledge that copying happens and that it will continue to happen as
part of our daily digital modern lives, will only propagate (or even
further increase) the distancing of educational practices from the
realities of our modern world.
Plagarism is copying without credit. It's an important difference. The
smart arse student who throws together a large project by building 95% of
it out of other credited existing software and then spends the rest of the
week redesigning his pet arduino project is the one I want to be hiring 8)
I could go on a long rant about the output of a lot of universities but
it's drifting off topic. Suffice to say it's about time some of them were
taught "being good enough", "coming in on time and budget", "quality
metrics and testing models" and "two things frequently happen at once in
the real world"
Alan
On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 09:31:31 -0700 (MST)
johnmdanskin johnmdanskin@gmail.com wrote:
There are -lots- of tools for detecting academic plagiarism. If you want
something automatic, best to use a real tool. Here is a recent list of
reviewed tools.
http://www.edudemic.com/the-5-best-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-educators/
And make sure when you get sued you can provide the source of the tool to
the students expert, and can justify the decision it made !
Alan
The tool just identifies suspicious pairings. Humans make decisions. Using
the tool to actually prosecute a case of plagiarism without applying
responsible human judgement would be irresponsible. In the student case,
you end up with something like 2 500 line programs with 8 subroutines with
the same number of parameters, non-whitespace lines of code, exactly
matching expressions, basic block structure and so on. At the undergraduate
student level, you are generally dealing with people who are cheating
because they don't know how to write computer programs. If they could do a
really good job of cheating, they wouldn't cheat. Catching bottom feeder
plagiarizers isn't rocket science, but it can be an n^2 problem for the
instructors, hence software to identify suspicious pairs.
On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Alan Cox alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk wrote:
On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 09:31:31 -0700 (MST)
johnmdanskin johnmdanskin@gmail.com wrote:
There are -lots- of tools for detecting academic plagiarism. If you want
something automatic, best to use a real tool. Here is a recent list of
reviewed tools.
http://www.edudemic.com/the-5-best-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-educators/
And make sure when you get sued you can provide the source of the tool to
the students expert, and can justify the decision it made !
Alan
Miro,
Here is the thing, when it goes to a class learning openScad or any C based
language. Reality of the matter is the following.
#1 Students will heavily lean on the examples especially if they are new.
#2 there is only a finite number of ways to accomplish the task given
#3 the outliers will be those people that have previous coding experience
not gained at the same university and same professors.
for example many of your students might have taken an intro into C++ with
the same professor and have no other previous coding experience so there
work will look the same
#4 but there will be that student or two that took that previous class just
for credit and they have massive self taught coding skills so their work
will look different.
#5 if you have some people in your class on a higher math level their work
will look different from the rest.
#6 but if you have 10 students in your class that took algebra in their
requirements with the same teacher their work will look the same too.
OpenScad is heavily algebra dependant
my
$.02
terramir
Respectfully,
R. Daniel Borkan
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On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 12:31 PM, John Danskin johnmdanskin@gmail.com
wrote:
The tool just identifies suspicious pairings. Humans make decisions. Using
the tool to actually prosecute a case of plagiarism without applying
responsible human judgement would be irresponsible. In the student case,
you end up with something like 2 500 line programs with 8 subroutines with
the same number of parameters, non-whitespace lines of code, exactly
matching expressions, basic block structure and so on. At the undergraduate
student level, you are generally dealing with people who are cheating
because they don't know how to write computer programs. If they could do a
really good job of cheating, they wouldn't cheat. Catching bottom feeder
plagiarizers isn't rocket science, but it can be an n^2 problem for the
instructors, hence software to identify suspicious pairs.
On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Alan Cox alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk wrote:
On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 09:31:31 -0700 (MST)
johnmdanskin johnmdanskin@gmail.com wrote:
There are -lots- of tools for detecting academic plagiarism. If you want
something automatic, best to use a real tool. Here is a recent list of
reviewed tools.
http://www.edudemic.com/the-5-best-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-educators/
And make sure when you get sued you can provide the source of the tool to
the students expert, and can justify the decision it made !
Alan
Any process that claims to be "educational" in my opinion is
fundamentally based on transmitting values. Certainly many aspects of
knowledge can be judged as value free in their purest sense eg
mathematics, but as soon as any application of that knowledge is made in
our real world then somebody's values will intimately be entangled with
that knowledge. The choice of a particular mathematical formula, or in
our present case, one algorithm over another alternative will have some
sort of value judgment to be evaluated. The discussions in this forum
would be incredibly dull if there was not some sense of people's
personal values being revealed at the same time.
Plagiarism is disliked because it is akin to identity fraud. People
passing themselves off as something they are not. Deception is
generally not highly valued in the work place (unless you are a used car
salesman or a politician ( my own values and experience creeping
here!!)) As a student chasing higher grades this may seem
understandable, as many people do not value the process of education
that much, just the 'rewards'. But to me as an employer, looking at a
prospective employee drawing a salary for work completed, the reverse
would be true, deception is not liked much (take the VW Diesel scandal
for an example!!).
In a world swamped with "information sources", getting students to
attribute their sources would be best practice. As an educator spending
enough time with students is the best way to know whether you are
dealing with a impostor or not. However this means small class sizes and
at least some customised individual projects for all students. This goes
against educational bureaucracies always trying to minimise costs and
mass production, however it allows the observant educator time to make
more reliable assessments, and time to also pass on the values of
honesty and integrity.
If students feel they are being processed by algorithms, then it must be
tempting, and some degree understandable to write a better algorithm in
return to beat the system. This escalating technology battle is how
education can ultimately become debased, but in fact the students are
only returning the values they are being presented with ie "Don't worry
about student contact hours, just come up with a better program to do
the job...."
Cheers, Rob
On 03/12/15 04:11, Felipe Sanches wrote:
Cheers!!! :-D
On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 3:05 PM, Dr Nicholas J Bailey
<nicholas.bailey@glasgow.ac.uk mailto:nicholas.bailey@glasgow.ac.uk>
wrote:
On Wednesday 02 December 2015 14:41:51 Felipe Sanches wrote:
These kids should all be writing patches and making pull requests!
Well, I'm a University lecturer, and what you say is a breath of
fresh air
Felipe. It is said, "Copying from one person is plagiarism;
copying from lots
of people is research". I encourage copying when it promotes
understanding (as
in your scenario) but in a commoditized educational environment,
establishments reach for metrics to prove they are getting their
assessments
right, and one of those is "similarity" (which is falsely taken to
mean a lack
of originality).
I had an excellent PhD student once who got accused of copying by an
antiplagiarism program once. It turned out he was judged to have
copied from a
paper which had quoted one previously written himself while
working at a
different institution!
We have a research group drinking game now. Every time somebody is
falsely
accused of plagiarism, the rest of the group has to buy him or her
a drink.
Fortunately it's a small research group...
I'll shut up now because this doesn't really have much to do with
OpenSCAD :)
Nick/.
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I think this thread is off topic to OpenSCAD ?
Not really. What I am suggesting is that before contemplating putting
large amounts of effort into some involved technical solution it is
worth exploring the values associated with the process. Without wishing
to be offensive, I am suggesting that deeper and deeper technical
analysis of student's work by smarter and smarter algorithms will not
necessarily produce better students.
In the case of analysing CFG trees to the nth degree to assist
assessment I think it is waste of a good educator's time?? So I am
politely suggesting that setting the same project for many students for
a significant part of their assessment where plagiarism is a significant
threat, is just bad planning.
openSCAD is potentially a fantastic educational tool and the type of
skills it encourages should be incorporated in all modern curricular.
However when teaching these skills, if the challenges are not set up
well for students, 3-D modeling could get a bad name because it will be
perceived they are impossible to assess with regards to plagiarism.
I encourage to all educators to consider openSCAD, especially
Mathematics and Technology teachers!! It is a fantastic resource.
On 03/12/15 09:44, Carsten Arnholm wrote:
I think this thread is off topic to OpenSCAD ?
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