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

Monique Dewanchand m.dewanchand at atmind.nl
Sun May 28 16:34:18 CEST 2017


Hi all,

My experience so far is to have teams or individual students come up 
with their own proposal. Teachers evaluate these and proposals shouldn't 
be identical. During a project or an assignment students are encouraged 
to work together and share knowledge. And if they copy stuff from each 
other that's okay as long as they are open and honest about this. During 
or after a project the teams or individual students are asked to explain 
how they did "things". Also students or teams are asked to make a 
screencast or a tutorial.

So in the school projects that I've been involved so far the teachers 
don't chase cheaters, they just check whether the student has understood 
the material.

Monique
-- At Mind --
-- b3d101 --


On 27-05-17 06:05, Jamie Le Rossignol wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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
>     <tel:+48%2058%20523%2021%2051>, https://inf.ug.edu.pl/~piotao
>     <https://inf.ug.edu.pl/%7Epiotao>
>     Polish Blender Course: http://polskikursblendera.pl/ [PL]
>
>     2017-05-26 11:00 GMT+02:00 Ernesto Del Valle <cecilff at gmail.com
>     <mailto: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
>         <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <http://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
>                 <mailto:antonio.rcarvalho at fatec.sp.gov.br>
>                 antoniorcn at hotmail.com <mailto: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
>>                 <mailto:ton at blender.org>   - www.blender.org
>>                 <http://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 <mailto: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 <tel:+48%2058%20523%2021%2051>,
>>>                 https://inf.ug.edu.pl/~piotao
>>>                 <https://inf.ug.edu.pl/%7Epiotao>
>>>                 Polish Blender Course: http://polskikursblendera.pl/
>>>                 [PL]
>>>
>>>                 2017-05-25 0:12 GMT+02:00 Mike Pan
>>>                 <mike.c.pan at gmail.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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
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