UCF Professor Speech About Cheating from Knight News on Vimeo.

Insidehighered – The revelation that hundreds of University of Central Florida students in a senior-level business class received an advance version of a mid-term exam has exposed the widening chasm in what different generations expect of each other — and what they perceive cheating to be. “To say I’m disappointed is beyond comprehension,” Richard Quinn, instructor in the management department at UCF, told his students last week as he announced that all 600 of them would have to retake their midterm exam in his strategic management course. The discovery that at least 200 of his students received a version of the test prior to the exam shook Quinn deeply, leaving him “physically ill, absolutely disgusted, completely disillusioned, trying to figure out what was the last 20 years for,” he said in a widely distributed Web broadcast of his lecture, which a student posted on YouTube, after appending his or her own captioned commentary (a more complete version of Quinn’s remarks is here). Quinn told his class that any students who came to him before the make-up midterm and admitted to having received the first exam beforehand could take an ethics seminar, remain in the class, and have the allegations of cheating scrubbed from their records. About 200 students came forward, said UCF spokesman Grant Heston. Those who remain quiet and are later found to have participated — a number the university believes to be about 15 — will face sanctions ranging from failing the class to expulsion. The incident has sparked debate and soul-searching far beyond Florida, with some seeing the case as a classic example of the philosophical divide between many students and faculty members about just what constitutes cheating — and how it can be prevented. Further, it shows just how difficult it can be to stamp out and respond to large-scale incidents of academic dishonesty.

The perception of exactly what happened leading up to the midterm has become a point of contention. What is clear is that some students gained access to a bank of tests that was maintained by the publisher of the textbook that Quinn used. They distributed the test to hundreds of their fellow students, some of whom say they thought they were receiving a study guide like any other — not a copy of the actual test.

Several students have protested that they had no intention to cheat. These students say that they only became aware that they had more information than they should have when they took the actual test, realized they had seen the questions before, and knew the answers. Some students have blamed Quinn, accusing him of misleading them and being lazy. They posted clips from the first class’s lecture, in which Quinn can be seen telling his students that he is responsible for creating the test. The students have tried to use this statement to justify their acts; since Quinn told them he would be writing the exam, they did not think the prefab version they were using to study would be used. “After seeing that, it was safe for us to assume that having it online, having it e-mailed to you, whatever it was, wasn’t the test,” one student told the Associated Press. “No student knew that was the test, and that’s what we continue to say over and over.” The university has rejected that argument. “Let’s be sure to keep the focus where it belongs,” Heston told the Orlando Sentinel. “Not on the instructor who administered the test but on those students who chose to acquire the test beforehand and use it inappropriately.”Some testing experts were highly skeptical of the entire defense. “That’s a crock. These are not grammar school kids. These are college kids in a business school,” said John Fremer, president of Caveon, a Utah-based testing security company. “The idea that there’s any validity to their argument is a stretch.”


This honestly couldn’t be more clear cut for me.   I am 100% on the students side here.  Like I don’t get how UCF is just discounting the fact this professor claimed he made his own tests from scratch and then used the cookie cutter one?      That seems pretty fucking cut and dry to me.    Like how could they think they were cheating if he specifically said he didn’t use those ones?    But let’s ignore that overwhelming fact for a second here.  The bottom-line is that any college professor who uses a textbook produced midterm exam deserves to get “cheated on”  or better yet fired.   I mean how fucking lazy can you be?  Obviously tests in test banks are going to be available on the internet.   Duh.   As a student you’d almost have to be an idiot not to practice with them.   So spare me the righteous indignation here.  If anybody should be mad here it should be the students for paying 10′s of thousands of dollars to go to a school where the professors half asses it.       Not to mention the fact the way they are handling this is total bullshit.  Basically either admit what you did was wrong regardless of whether you believe it or not and get a free pass or stick to your guns and fail even though you did nothing wrong.   Seems fair.