UCF Professor Richard Quinn accuses class of cheating [Original]

okay we're going to get started and I know we planned on going through and talking about the chapter nine material today talking about mergers and acquisitions alliances and those kinds of things that's been preempted and unfortunately I think some of you know I've been here for 11 years I spent 10 years before I came here at the Rochester Institute of Technology so I've been doing this for the last 21 plus years probably delivered course content to tens of thousands of students over those 21 years and it was always one lecture that I hoped I never would have to give and unfortunately that hope ran out because I'm going to give a lecture today that basically is the toughest one I've ever had to give and for some of you it's the toughest one you've ever had to hear when the midterm exam ended on Friday a week ago I looked at this data from the midterm exam and at first I was just looking at the running statistics for the exam and the exam was running about a grade and a half higher than it ever had run before I thought that was rather interesting I kind of set up a little bit of a red flag because with six hundred some-odd students and basically of course haven't taught fundamentally the same way for the last four or five years you don't see that kind of a great improvement by chance once the exam ended I ran more complete statistics on the exam and what I came up with or what came out of that was something that looks like this right and I'm comparing the summer 2010 capstone course which I taught to the fall 2010 capstone course in summer 2010 this is the great distribution it's all virtually a standard normal distribution around the mean you'll notice that there's a single peak in the distribution and that the tails of the distribution are relatively equal with the exception of the one student down at the bottom who basically scored a 6200 it's a relatively normal distribution that's what it ought to look like about 400 students in the course in the summer this is the grade distribution from this semester and I think you can notice immediately notice the difference this is what's called a bimodal distribution bimodal distributions exist when an external force has been applied to a data set that creates the systemic bias to the data set now on Sunday when I ran this I didn't know what the systemic bias was but I knew that it was there on Monday I found out what it was because a student either through a guilty conscience or as a heads up anonymously dropped this in the bin on my office door this is as some of you out there know because some of you out there are also in possession of this is the input complete test Bank for the midterm exam during the course of Monday the lab instructors basically took a look at the data started receiving emails from students who were concerned and upset that classmates had been bragging to them that they had advanced copies of the exam and that they aced the exam because they had all the answers ahead of time guess what the midterm exam grades are being tossed whatever you scored on the midterm exam no longer exists everybody in the capstone course is going to be required to retake a new midterm exam and before I get into the specifics of that I want to thank all of the lab instructors and all of the team for working virtually non-stop over the course of the last 96 hours to write a completely new exam with about 200 questions to choose from none of which and I repeat none of which come from a test Bank so whoever has the test Bank for the midterm it's worthless and I'm presuming you also have a test Bank for the final exam it's also worthless because as soon as this exam is completed the entire team is going to write a completely new final exam with zero questions coming from any test Bank over the course of the past four days your lab instructors academic services and the office of the Dean have begun and are continuing a forensic analysis of not only all of the data but all of the available traffic over all of the available environments that possibly could provide us with better information about where this started and how widespread it is let me tell you where we are right now right now we've narrowed the pool of participants to about a third of the class so when you get in your labs this week just to give you some idea of the perspective of that when you get into your labs this week look at the person on your left side look at the person on your right side statistically one of them cheated on the exam now we had two options one was it basically just simply scrub all of the other activities through the rest of the semester cancel the capstone competition but that would have been unfair to the 2/3 of the class that was honest and ethical and tried and did it right on but I want to send a clear message to the ones who started this and the ones who propagated it and the ones who encouraged it over the course of the weeks leading up to the midterm exam as I said to the associate dean for undergraduate studies when I met with him late last week I could give him a list today and I could guarantee him with about a 95% certainty that everybody who cheated on the exam was on the list what I couldn't do was give them a list and guarantee that everybody whose name was on the list cheated on the exam that was going to require some further forensic analysis of the data we expect to have that forensic analysis of the data completed by the end of this week at the end of this week we will turn our findings over to academic affairs and at that point in time the options and the results and the conclusions are out of our hands they will do what they need to do to protect the integrity of the university and to protect the integrity of the college I don't want to be the one to have to explain to your parents why you aren't going to graduate so I went back to the Dean and I negotiated a deal with the Dean unfortunately the deal has a time limit and the time limit runs out at 7 a.m. on Monday morning because that's when we're going to turn the data over to academic affairs and at that point in time they're going to take over and do their own investigation and they're not happy so here's the deal if you participated in this you have it you have a choice you can sit back in silence and hope your name doesn't get caught in the net which is very quickly closing around the participants or you can individually quietly one by one anonymously if you wish to the rest of your classmates identify yourself to your lab instructor do that get to complete the rest of the course the grades you get in the course is the grades you earned in the course and providing you complete a four hour ethics course being offered by the folks over in academic affairs any permanent record of this will be wiped from your transcripts there'll be no further action taken so the choice is yours if you want to take a high-risk gamble take it I challenge you to take it because we know who you are we know where you are and when academic affairs is done you'll know the outcome and oh by the way for those of you who think that this is something that we caught by accident college is informed every faculty member in the College of Business and every faculty member at the University of Central Florida that if they're using a publisher's test Bank that the test banks have been compromised so if you've got a test Bank from somebody else's textbook you think you're going to use don't even dream of it I've also been in contact with every single one of the major publishers who publishes his textbooks that are used by the College of Business they're not only aware of it but two of those publishers have turned the matter over to their legal staffs to pursue whatever legal action comes out of the investigation the informations also been shared with the Academy of Management and every organization that deals across college campuses and I met in Atlanta Georgia with faculty from 20 universities and chaired it with them the days of being able to find a new way to cheat the system are over they're over not just for this course but for this University this kind of behavior will not cannot be tolerated you know who you are to say I'm disappointed is beyond comprehension physically ill absolutely disgusted completely disillusioned trying to figure out what was the last twenty years for for those of you out there who acted ethically and acted honorably and did it right you have my undying gratitude and my utmost respect for those of you took the shortcut don't call me don't ask me to do anything for you ever again the midterm exam makeup will open at 7 a.m. on Monday morning November the 8th it will close at midnight on November the 10th will be open for 51 hours that's it those are the hours you get to take the makeup exam I don't care what's on your schedule I don't care what you have planned if you have to give birth you're going to give birth in the exam room because it's going to have to take a sign hand-delivered note from God for you to get out of taking this midterm exam so adjust your schedules blow off whatever it is you have to blow off to be there but this is a one shot one time 7 a.m. on Monday to midnight on Wednesday if you miss it too bad it is mandatory for everybody yep and you can thank your teammates and your classmates and those that did participate for providing you with the opportunity to do this I tell you how frustrating this has been I didn't even have the wits about me in the last nine days or eight days they actually load the slides for the chapter nine presentations so I literally have unless I have it on my like keychain I literally don't have the material available to me to be able to present it

Channel: SubZeroCobra

Views: 7,418,300

Rating: 4.2029409 out of 5

Keywords: ucf, cheating, cheat, exam, richard, quinn, quiz, test, bank, professor, goes, nuts, MAN4720, fall, 2010, univerisity, of, central, florida, ucf.edu, fraud, finals, study, students, Professor, Richard, Quinn, forensic, analysis

Id: rbzJTTDO9f4

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/rsredcheeseontoast]

Speaking as an outsider who is wholly unfamiliar with how universities in the US operate, it's sort of baffling that a faculty wouldn't write their own exam.

[u/RigobertaMenchu]

The oldest trick in the book is 'turn yourself in and you won't get in as much trouble if you don't.' I'd take his challenge.

If college taught me one thing...deny, deny, deny to the very end.

[u/[deleted]]

Even if it gets thrown over to student affairs there is a great chance some innocent people are going to be accused with the number of people said to have done it. That is absolutely insane

[u/Flemtality]

Memorizing 700 questions and answers for a test of 50 questions. Sounds like studying to me.

[u/[deleted]]

From 2010, and questionable: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/21485811928/200-students-admit-to-cheating-exam-bigger-question-is-if-it-was-really-cheating-studying.shtml

[u/DanetOfTheApes]

This is one thing I dislike about college. I don’t believe this man can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that individual students cheated outside of confession. I think that he chose not to rewrite his tests yearly and his lack of effort allowed an opening for test banks. While I see that this can be discouraging for the professor, I think his man is on a power trip and is bluffing his way to confessions. It’s unfortunate for any honest (admittedly by the professor 2/3 of the class) students that are forced to retake the test regardless of their plans as notes from God seem scarce in the latest millennia.

[u/pinky0926]

That was so cold I felt like I'm in trouble now.

I feel terrible for any students who did well but didn't cheat.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_MUTTS]

"the days of finding ways to cheat the system are over"

hah. what a naive comment. they will never be over.

[u/NahDude_Nah]

I don't really understand? I used practice tests and tests from previous years to study all throughout college. Was I cheating? That isn't cheating.