[LAU] Exam Cheating investigation

[Ken Restivo]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 02:32:14PM +0100, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> 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.
> 

Or you could do your exams in a Faraday cage in the basement of the building.

-ken