[Bf-education] how to catch cheaters in a class?

Jamie Le Rossignol jlerossignol at gmail.com
Sat May 27 06:05:32 CEST 2017 

The cookie cutter or lock step approach that exists in some teaching
environments does lead to 'boring' copycat assignments. I've also taught
practical technology, like woodwork & electronics, and within that context
the student may have developed these skills and knowledge before I ever see
them. So the focus has to be different. There are that many tutorials
online these days that cover various skills.

Personally I avoid just evaluation technical proficiency and take the view
that Blender is a tool for expressing artistic intent. I get them to
provide a boarder scope of evidence to demonstrate their skills. For
example; Using Blender's modeling & 3D Printing tools I get the students to;

   - develop a concept on paper,
   - provide feedback on other's work, &
   - create model for 3D printing.

To drive their creativity you could provide each student with a randomly
generated mesh to incorporate into their design, to provide a unique key
that can be linked to each student.

I would suggest that when creating tasks that use Blender make it only one
part of the assessment.

For example; Creating a short 3D Animated sequence could also include
Script writing, Storyboarding, Design sketches, Modeling, Animation,
Composition, Sequencing. Of which about half happen in Blender. In the
classroom I make regular observations of student progress to track where
they are. For online teaching you could request a regular snapshot, and
response with feedback.

In the end, someone who cheats is only cheating themselves.

Regards,
Jamie



On 26 May 2017 at 22:27, Piotr Arłukowicz <piotao at inf.ug.edu.pl> wrote:

> Yes, it seems that the motivations and staying away of cheating is a
> personal, individual manner. In fact, cheating is a significant signal sent
> loudly: classes and assignments are boring and seem to be unnecessary.
> However, this is education, the daily struggle with laziness and
> unmotivated ppl. Indeed, more psychology than technical stuff.
>
> You all helped me understand better what the real goal should be, and if I
> start to dig and detect cheats it could mean that I failed as a teacher.
> Unfortunately, students choose to study computer graphics (and my favorite
> Blender) because they do not want other classes, even harder, like
> calculus, etc. So, if they choose by elimination, not by selection, they at
> start are not motivated enough to take the effort.
>
> Thank you! :) I understand something, but more thinking and analyzing is
> necessary to avoid cheating.
>
> regards
> pio
>
>
>
> Piotr Arłukowicz, PhD, BFCT
> University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics,
> Dept. of AI,
> Wit Stwosz 57, 80-952 Gdańsk, room 121, tel.: +48585232151
> <+48%2058%20523%2021%2051>, https://inf.ug.edu.pl/~piotao
> Polish Blender Course: http://polskikursblendera.pl/ [PL]
>
> 2017-05-26 11:00 GMT+02:00 Ernesto Del Valle <cecilff at gmail.com>:
>
>> The first thing I thought about when I read this message is the point
>> that Ton refereed to. If Open Source and Creative Commons has shown us
>> something is that copying is not bad. Saying that you copied something and
>> not acknowledging it and the work of someone else, is. Basically it's
>> lying. But using someones work and building upon it is not bad, and is
>> definitively and important skill set in Blender specifically. Is just
>> impossible to tell, how many times I have reused others work as well as my
>> own. Just think of libraries.
>> Of course it is important to develop the skills of building something
>> from scratch, but in order to do that, one must be really motivated to do
>> it, so that thing that is going to be build from zero, must be something
>> one really relates to on a personal level, so it must have one's signature.
>> Even in that situation, is way faster to just take some parts or solutions
>> already done. Taking a solution made by some else, also makes me think on
>> how they solve the problem and I can learn from that.
>> The students must be encourage to make their own projects with their
>> distinctive signature marked by their own ideas and tastes. If the projects
>> they are to deliver are way too similar, and it's easier to just copy the
>> file and put my name on it, I think the project is not making them learn
>> much anyway, but just to repeat a set of instructions that deliver an
>> expected result. In art in general and in Blender in specific, you have to
>> be able to solve the unforeseen problems that arise always.
>> So, to grade that kind of work is harder, but the learning is completely
>> guarantee to be valuable and enjoyable.
>>
>> I love this subject, but I guess is more suited for a pedagogy specific
>> panel.
>>
>> Happy blending!
>>
>> 2017-05-25 15:37 GMT-04:00 Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> I was also thinking about giving out team projects. This would mean, if
>>> there were cheating, it would at least be a team effort.
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 7:37 PM, Antonio Carvalho <
>>> antoniorcn at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Piotr,
>>>>
>>>>     I'm teacher in Brazil, working in many classes of Java Programming,
>>>> C Programming and cheating is a problem faced all days.
>>>>
>>>>     Actually I'm giving individual works for each student (they can
>>>> choose what they want to do), and according to Ton Roosendaal sugestion, I
>>>> applied a competion, each student evaluate the job of other 3 (or more
>>>> students), based in some criterias, distributing  a number of specific
>>>> points for each criteria, for sample 18 points in case of 3 jobs, and to
>>>> avoiding have them distributing 6 points for each, without evaluate
>>>> correctly, I penalize the students that evaluate the jobs in certain
>>>> criteria, in diferent way than the other peers.
>>>>
>>>>     It looks like complicated, but there are some tools which allow it,
>>>> in my case I'm using Moodle (www.moodle.org) whoose have a kind of
>>>> exercise type named workshop allowing this propose, in this kind of
>>>> exercise the teacher can specify the criterias, the student can submit his
>>>> own work, after that the tool will random who will evaluate whom, and at
>>>> the end you can calculate the average of each student.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> *Antonio Rodrigues Carvalho Neto*
>>>> Faculdade de Tecnologia do Estado de São Paulo (FATEC)
>>>> campus Zona Leste e Carapicuíba
>>>> Analise e Desenvolvimento de Sistemas e Desenvolvimento de Jogos
>>>> Digitais
>>>> antonio.rcarvalho at fatec.sp.gov.br
>>>> antoniorcn at hotmail.com
>>>>
>>>> Em 25/05/2017 13:24, Ton Roosendaal escreveu:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> When a teacher starts putting tricks in place to avoid cheating he's
>>>> losing it. I wouldn't solve the symptom (cheating) but the cause (students
>>>> don't like homework or assignments).
>>>>
>>>> Give them something that relates to them (build your own bedroom) or
>>>> makes it personal (give each a different letter of alphabet to do something
>>>> with). Think of a challenge involving competition. Or teamwork. And they
>>>> should actually learn skills from it. It's the process what counts then,
>>>> not the result.
>>>>
>>>> -Ton-
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
>>>> Chairman Blender Foundation, Director Blender Institute
>>>> Entrepotdok 57A, 1018 AD, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 25 May 2017, at 07:52, Piotr Arłukowicz <piotao at inf.ug.edu.pl>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks Mike,
>>>> in fact, I already was forced to do such 'heuristics', because lots of
>>>> files were 'too' similar.
>>>>
>>>> However, in case of animation this is rather hard to tell, especially
>>>> when students are opening the same file with assignment. I could
>>>> potentially solve that telling them to import rather than open, and then
>>>> such lovely random string or just something (creation timestamp?) will be a
>>>> nice addition to the normal Blender.
>>>> How many teachers are still here? Don't have any of you cheating
>>>> problems?
>>>>
>>>> Maybe it's a good idea to create such a plugin, where student can
>>>> 'submit' the work right from Blender...
>>>>
>>>> pio
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Piotr Arłukowicz, PhD, BFCT
>>>> University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics,
>>>> Dept. of AI,
>>>> Wit Stwosz 57, 80-952 Gdańsk, room 121, tel.: +48585232151
>>>> <+48%2058%20523%2021%2051>, https://inf.ug.edu.pl/~piotao
>>>> Polish Blender Course: http://polskikursblendera.pl/ [PL]
>>>>
>>>> 2017-05-25 0:12 GMT+02:00 Mike Pan <mike.c.pan at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> Very interesting question...
>>>>>
>>>>> You can certainly build an addon that saves a random string of some
>>>>> sort into the Blend file. Or even something that tracks the originating
>>>>> computer name and total time spent editing the file (to prevent copy+paste
>>>>> from blendswap/turbosquid) but the students can always 'forget' to use the
>>>>> correct blend version or the addon.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think a more fool-proof approach might be to analyze the students'
>>>>> files based on a bunch of heuristics. This way, the blender file doesn't
>>>>> have to be special, but you can still catch copycats.  Here are some things
>>>>> you can look at:
>>>>> - Datablock names. Especially mesh, material and image names, which is
>>>>> something many people don't bother changing.
>>>>> - Node positions. Even if the material is identical, chances are the
>>>>> nodes are arranged differently. (unless they are using the material panel
>>>>> to generate all the nodes)
>>>>> - Look at exact value of properties? (eg. If both students are using a
>>>>> particle system, unlikely they are both emitting exactly 2740 particles
>>>>> from frame 77-333)
>>>>> - if an image texture has been packed and not "made relative" yet, it
>>>>> might contain the full path of the image, which is telling if it originated
>>>>> from another user/computer.
>>>>>
>>>>> That's all i can think of for now. Hope that helps,
>>>>>
>>>>> Mike
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 24 May 2017 at 12:14 Piotr Arłukowicz <piotao at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>> is there any way for a teacher to tell whether or not some files in
>>>>>> the class, which were collected from an assignment, are copied from the
>>>>>> same person or were created on the same computer?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have classes and I have collected quite a few blend files to check.
>>>>>> They are similar in few areas, so I'm unsure if they were created by
>>>>>> different persons.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To solve this problem Julian wrote a small patch few years ago which
>>>>>> stored a random number inside blend file (so I could at least tell if
>>>>>> somebody copied somebody's else work and modified it slightly), but
>>>>>> unfortunately I've got a bunch of files made in just an ordinary, brand
>>>>>> blender release 2.78.
>>>>>> Files from students are suspiciously similar (for example a
>>>>>> manipulator is often set to rotate, not translate).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, is there ANY way to tell?
>>>>>> If not, it could be a good idea to introduce just a random number or
>>>>>> microsecond stored when file is created and then never changed. This small
>>>>>> thing could make life easier and could also detects nasty cheating, which,
>>>>>> unfortunately happens too often in some countries :(
>>>>>>
>>>>>> anybody?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> regards
>>>>>> pio
>>>>>>
>>>>>> pz
>>>>>> piotr
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Piotr Arlukowicz
>>>>>> -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
>>>>>> Version: 3.1
>>>>>> GCS/ED/IT/S d++(-)>--pu s(+):(+)> a C++(+++)$@>++++$
>>>>>> ULAVISC*()$>+++$ P++(+++)$>++++ L++(+++)$@>++++$ !E---(---)>++
>>>>>> W++(+++)$@>+++ N(+)>++ o--? !K-(-)>-$ w++(+)>-- !O-(-)>- !M-(-)>-- !V-(-)>-
>>>>>> PS(+)>++ !PE()>+  Y PGP>+ t(-) !5? !X R()>* tv- b++ DI++ D+(++)>+++ G++@
>>>>>> e++++>+++++ h---()>++ r+++ y+++
>>>>>> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Bf-education mailing list
>>>>>> Bf-education at blender.org
>>>>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Bf-education mailing list
>>>>> Bf-education at blender.org
>>>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Bf-education mailing list
>>>> Bf-education at blender.org
>>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Bf-education mailing listBf-education at blender.orghttps://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Bf-education mailing list
>>>> Bf-education at blender.org
>>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Douglas E Knapp, MSAOM, LAc.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Bf-education mailing list
>>> Bf-education at blender.org
>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Linux User #412877 - http://counter.li.org/
>> Macuare Producciones - http://www.macuare.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-education mailing list
>> Bf-education at blender.org
>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-education mailing list
> Bf-education at blender.org
> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-education/attachments/20170527/fcc7cbae/attachment.html>

More information about the Bf-education mailing list