A UCF professor who blew the whistle on students whom he said cheated on tests is now at the center of a firestorm, as students are fighting back.
Professor Richard Quinn of UCF recently claimed that some 200 students had cheated on Capstone tests and roundly excoriated those who had done so. The professor went on to express his disappointment saying that the behavior of the students who supposedly cheated, had made him “physically ill and left him absolutely disgusted and completely disillusioned”. He called on the students to come forward and confess to their wrong doing and offered those who did so an opportunity to re-sit the exam. For those who did not, Quinn threatened expulsion.
But, students at UCF are saying that it is Quinn’s honesty that is in question and they have produced a video to prove it.
The video shows Quinn at the start of the semester telling the students that he is responsible for “creating” and “administering” mid-term and final exams, implying that he is the person responsible for preparing the test. In fact, Quinn says in the video that, “I may write a question that I can’t answer”, clearly giving the impression that he prepares the test questions. Quinn also tells students that they should not use questions produced by test banks from publishers to study for the exam. “Don’t dream of it”, he says.
And that’s precisely what the students at UCF did–studied for the exam using all the available tools, including studying hundreds of model questions available from the publisher.
The problem of course is, Quinn did not prepare his test questions as he had indicated he would be doing. Instead, the professor took his questions from the test bank, from the same publisher the students used.
Can the UCF students be blamed for using all the available tools to study for the test? How were the students to know that Quinn would take his questions from the test bank, when he explicitly said that professors do not do so any more? Moreover, why did Quinn tell his students that he is the one who creates the mid-term and final exams, when in fact it wasn’t so?
Understandably, students are upset as Quinn has stated that they are all required to take the test again. And moreover, now that the “UCF Capstone Test Scam” story has made national news, many are calling into question UCF’s reputation and the degrees being awarded related to this strategic management course.
There definitely seems to be a double standard at UCF.
Good angle on this story. Those cheating students really have an excuse now. Yeah, unpublished test bank answers are great legitimate study materials. How are you not writing for the NY Times? You really hit a home run here.
“Quinn also tells students that they should not use questions produced by test banks from publishers to study for the exam. “Don’t dream of it”, he says.”
He clearly told them NOT to use the test banks. I’m pretty certain some of these people figured out that’s exactly where the test was coming from and thus got a hold of the answers for the exam.
That’s not studying; that’s outright cheating. Case closed.
He told them that while accusing them of cheating, not in the introduction to the class.
In the introduction, he stated he was “responsible for creating the exam”.
Personally, I suspect some students noticed that previous semesters’ questions were on the test bank and whispered around that studying the test bank would be a good idea because he takes his questions from it. Still, it’s impossible to prove this, and thus impossible to prove cheating. The instructor should take a lesson from this and write his own questions in the future.
What I find kind of amusing is how he says the “team” working for him wrote a new midterm and final. Even when he is forced to write a new exam… he delegates the task to his underlings! Not much of a professor, whichever way you slice it.
Look, I’m sorry to all the students who were implicated in this. I feel for you. As a student, I cheated, too, and had to confess it. I’m really ashamed of what I did, because in essence, I betrayed the trust of the professor, the college/university, the other students, and myself. I’m really sorry that I cheated myself out of the challenge of studying, giving it my all, and then taking responsibility for either my failures or successes. I well remember the pressure of measuring up, and how that pressure–and my own fear and stress–clouded my judgment (that is, I allowed it to cloud my judgment). If I could go back and do it again, sigh, hindsight is 20/20. I would like to tell all young people (and even not so young people who cheated or who may be contemplating cheating): go ahead and confess, you’ll thank yourself years later. And, yes its wrong, but don’t be imprisoned by shame. You’re in good company. But go ahead and make it right, get the darkness out of your psyche. As one wise person said: you can never go wrong by doing the right thing.