[LAU] Exam Cheating investigation

[Philipp Überbacher]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:13:07 -0800 (PST)
Ivan K <ivan_521521 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hello LAD/LAU members:
> 
> I teach introduction to western music courses at a local
> community college, and one thing I have to deal with is
> students cheating by using a smart phone during the
> exam.  Sure, I am in the room and occasionally walk
> down the aisles, but these enterprising students are still
> often able to hide a smart phone from me.
> 
> The way these smart phone cheaters are usually caught
> is when answering an essay question, they usually
> look up the topic on Wikipedia and copy word for word
> several sentences.
> 
> On these exams, there are a few audio identifications,
> and recently one student did a surprising thing.
> The audio example was from Pierrot Lunaire, and not only did
> answer the question by writing down the title and composer but
> she ALSO WROTE DOWN the title and composer of a track by Webern
> which was on the original CD that I ripped the Schoenberg
> from.
> 
> To summarize, from an mp3/ogg file that was put on-line
> of one track from a CD, the student was able to identify
> _other_ tracks from the CD that were not put on-line.
> 
> How did the student do this?  Here are links to the two sound
> files that the students had access to:
> 
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/66qkorouak19gpu/07_20th-pilu_p03_15-18.mp3
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/z17qoxey9ju4lei/07_20th-pilu_p03_15-18.ogg
> 
> Are there some tags embedded in these files?  How would I
> be able to see these tags myself?
> 
> If there are no embedded tags, how did this student obtain
> this information?
> 
> Thanks;  Ivan

Another possibility:
There is also the possibility that the student was not cheating.
True, given the information you provided it seems unlikely, and you may
have additional indicators, but I'd simply ask her why she wrote down
that other track.

In my humble opinion, you won't ged rid of smartphone cheats unless you
use a different mode of examination. It just shows that factoid
checking is an anachronism.

Regards,
Philipp

-- 
JID: murks at jit.si