University of Central Florida professor Richard Quinn found out a large portion of his students cheated on an exam in his class, which led him to perform a little investigatory work, supposedly discovered who a large portion of the suspects were, and gave the above fourteen minute lecture where he presented the class with two options: Admit they cheated and there won’t be a permanent record of their cheating, or be handed over to the university authorities and suffer the consequences. Not such a difficult choice.
Professor Quinn apparently received a test bank in his mailbox from what seemed to be either a guilty party with a guilty conscience, or a pious student who wanted to incriminate the rotten cheaters. Quinn then performed some fancy analyses and found that the grading curve on the test was much higher than the grading curve of previous classes, which led him to perform some undisclosed, yet probably much fancier analyses and uncovered who most of the cheating students were.
Apparently, the test bank that circulated amongst the students contained 700 questions and answers, which they studied to take an exam of 50 questions.
During the fourteen minute lecture, he presents a choice to the students that seems like a no-brainer: Admit they cheated, attend a four hour ethics course and there won’t be a permanent record of the cheating, or be handed over to the UCF academic authorities and face a punishment that would most likely result in being booted from the school. Over 200 students ended up admitting they cheated. Hopefully they learned their lesson.
Each student in the class, even the ones that weren’t presumed to have cheated, were told they were required to take the test again.
Having graduated from UCF with a double major in Digital Media and Creative Writing, I find this kind of funny. Oh, those business students.
(story via The Telegraph, video via YouTube)
