As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating
I&#x27;ve been a TA for a couple CS classes at Iowa State University. Cheating here at least is pretty rampant. I would guess 1&#x2F;3 or more of the students cheat in some capacity.<p>Some of it is really easy to detect too. For a first semester freshman class, I tried using MinHash to cluster student submissions together. Maybe 10% of the assignment have near duplicate pieces of code. More comprehensive methods like MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity) find much more.<p>It&#x27;s hard for professors to take time to deal with it. A professor more or less told me that the process to report it to the dean of students would take months of his time, and that he already spent 55 hours a week for his classes. He explained that the time it would take to go after the cheaters would detract from time to make good assignments, labs, and lectures for the students.<p>It&#x27;s hard to see a professor for a large class (500 people) having the time to deal with handling cheaters so the problem continues. I&#x27;m curious how common this is as a problem at other schools.