Daughter accused of collusion

[Iamsodonewith2020]

Daughter received end of year results and got a first in everything except one grade which was 0. She queried it and was told she was being investigated as the marking software had detected plagiarism. Fast forward a month and she has been called to a official hearing and is being accused of collusion. The evidence they have given is that another student on the course handed in identical project inc spelling mistakes! She is a first level student and hasn’t a clue what to do next as she definitely did the work but how does she prove it’s hers and she didn’t give it to someone else ( this is what is being implied)

If your DD only has the final saved versions of the file, you can right click on the file (before you open it) to see previous versions of the original file.

That depends on what software/OS you're using. Coders will often have previous versions saved explicitly in some way (and if they don't they're asking for grief!)
That doesn't really help the situation described. It sounds like there isn't much doubt whose work it is - the question is how to prove it was copied without her knowledge. If the work is all online and she doesn't know the likely culprit, that has to be some sort of hacking either of her computer or a uni file system I'd have thought.

ErrolTheDragon I agree but I think the start point is OP's DD asserting that she is the owner of the work.

From that point the do the course leaders have to assume that there was collusion (ie that OP's DD is guilty) or that the other person has stolen the work to pass off as their own (ie that they are guilty)?

Why would the person who is resitting be the more likely person? Surely if they are resitting they have no benefit from stealing work?

Nothing much to add but re paraphrasing - this still needs to be referenced.

OP

She needs to make contact with her student union, this is the kind of thing they are here for and if she is pulled into a meeting she can bring an SU rep.

For future use it's always worth 'hiding' something in coding, at GCSE level I have sometimes given students a sample piece of coding and asked them to develop their own. I usually 'hide' a bit of code eg I will have a variable count to 10, it doesn't do anything in the actual program but if it in the student's work I know they have copied and that probably means they don't understand the program.

Another thing she can do is put something in the comments that relates to her only.

Hi OP. I'm an academic with experience in academic conduct panels. The official hearing you refer to is standard practice whenever there is suspicion on wrong doing. In this case, your daughter's tutors are probably pretty clear that she's unlikely to have been involved in the collusion. However, they still need to call her in, as well as the other person with the identical essay, and have a chat with her to ascertain who is to blame.

If you think about it, it is only fair to do it this way. There are two identical essays and two students potentially responsible for it, so a conversation needs to be had to clear things up. Your daughter should be fine, especially if she is polite (which I'm sure she is), she engages with the process and shows as much evidence as she can about her work.

I appreciate it must be a very unpleasant experience to have to go through. But in my experience, the panel tend to be gentle with the students and don't make the process harder than it needs to be.

Good luck.

I used to sit on an annual committee investigating these things. I was genuinely shocked by the level of student cheating. Often the real story was students afraid of failing, or getting what they thought was too low a mark (anything below a First nowadays, such is the entitlement of expectation). So they'd cheat, instead of doing the hard work of learning.

Our practice was that we didn't investigate students in our own Faculty, but if we needed a discipline expert opinion, we'd go back to the student's department, but not the person who'd taught the student in the specific module in which academic malpractice had been found.

In our investigations:

• We asked them to show us their preparation work - notes and drafts - this is very important
• We asked them to explain what they did in the preparation and submission of the work - take us through their process, step by step (of course, they can still lie at this point)
• We had a subject specialist take them through a viva - an oral examination to see whether they knew the material

In cases of collusion, we would interview each student separately.

But as a lecturer, finding two pieces of identical work (down to spelling mistakes) would make me very angry with both students. I would want to know how it happened, and we would investigate very thoroughly.

Does she know the other student? Have they told her who it is?

No way would we - as staff involved in an investigation like this - give that information to the student.

@Iamsodonewith2020

Thank you all. She has done some digging and has worked out one if only 2 people it can be and one of those is a retaking the year and all their exams this summer are being re-sat so she is pretty certain it’s probably them but she only knows their name but doesn’t recognise the name. She has no idea who they are and due to all work being online hasn’t been into campus since March 2020 so has no idea what they even look like.

Does she have any idea how the person might have accessed her information? might it help her if she can suggest a way to how the cheating happened that the committee can then linvestigate?

I work at a university and if the work is identical, then the work was either shared or taken from a cheating website.

Someone making the same mistakes as your DD by accident? yeah right.

I think your DD is not being honest with you.

@YeDancer I don't think anyone is suggesting accident, but if the OPs DD did nothing wrong and was hacked/had her work stolen would your university assume that she is culpable for being the victim of such a crime?

Hear that excuse a lot but I can't remember a time evidence of a hack was provided, even if true.

@YeDancer I am sure that the claim is falsely made by those guilty of collusion but it is ridiculous and incredible to believe that genuine crimes of this nature never happen. The university authorities are the only ones with the capacity to record, log and then check logs for when, how and from what machine a file was accessed. If you can't remember a time when evidence of a hack was provided that can only mean that the university is either choosing not to log this information or is not letting those accused of collusion access that evidence.

Has she used an online website such as grammarly etc? These often copy and paste and sell on

• obviously I am assuming here that files are stored on a network managed by the University IT department. I accept that a student would be responsible for their own security if they don't use the university network but I am not sure how much that happens.

I'm not sure it would always be possible to actually prove a hack or other means of data theft. Or at least, not something the student could be expected to be able to provide evidence of. I wouldn't have a clue - how many people would?

@blinkthreetimes

Has she used an online website such as grammarly etc? These often copy and paste and sell on

Is grammerly then that checks for spelling mistakes? That cant have happened here as the mistakes are still there

Don't universitieswarn students about these kind of websites? You'd hope they'd all be aware of the dangers

I've had my work copied by another student, unknowingly.
Mine was saved as a model answer to an assignment and another student essentially cut and pasted a section from what I had written some months earlier. It was easily proven as I had written about location A, and they were supposed to have written about location B which had similar features. They'd cut and pasted a section which specifically named location A.
I think it was the same student who has previously asked me to write a conclusion for their essay "because you're good at that shit."
Needless to say I declined their offer.

It seems strange that the spelling mistakes are identical, but have recently offered some dissertation support I have noticed some commonly misspelled words/misinterpreted phrases, so I am not sure how uncommon as such that element is.
Presumably both students will be required to provide earlier drafts of the work, etc.

@caughtinanet

Yes it’s that one, I’m just thinking maybe the other student got hold of the daughters unedited version. Highly unlikely I know

And no, universities don’t warn you of them at all. I’ve just finished my final year and have used them throughout

Can't imagine anyone using a grammar/spellcheck program on a coding project.

Don't coders usually use a lot of "off the shelf" code, so isn't it possible that the OP's dd and the so-called copier copied (legitimately) from the same place?

It's a bit like using a precedent template agreement for a contract. Two lawyers can come up with more or less identical agreements because they've used the same template to tweak.

But I would have thought that tutors in computer science departments would be well aware of that

Completely off the shelf in the sense of using standard libraries and headers is fine.

Cutting and pasting bits you've googled and found in stack exchange etc - really it's rather like plagiarism of normal text. Good practice is to type it in yourself, use variable names congruent with the rest of your code and put in comments etc.

@ErrolTheDragon perhaps they were checking their variable names with a spell checker!
If your DD was using a source control system ( unlikely for a student) she could easily prove that she worked on it. Otherwise can she compare it with some of her previous work to show the style is the same? Most programmers, including me, name things in a consistent manner. My colleagues can tell stuff I've written on easily. This should work in her favour.

perhaps they were checking their variable names with a spell checker!

Highly unlikely, variable names are often LongCamelCasedEntities. Or with_underscores. Or single letters like n.

Lol it was meant to be a joke!

I just finished my rotation as a faculty rep on the Honours Council at a college that has a “prove you’re innocent” approach

She should ensure she writes down everywhere she ever worked on the project e.g public computers. The more opportunities there were for this work to be taken in a way she was unaware of, the more reasonable doubt there is. A copy of her emails, social media etc with everyone on the course could be made available. Any GroupMe conversations etc especially if she has their number but not their name added are good to illustrate that she doesn’t know these people.

We never expect all of this to be produced at the meeting, but ultimately that would be better because otherwise students can get a rough time of it from administrative staff (at least in the US). If she has any accounts on tutoring websites, get the data from those, unless they’re not in her name/uni email.

If it were me, I’d get some legal help, because the ramifications - even just in terms of stress - can be significant on you. A sniff of lawyers and universities usually back off in part due to fear, in part due to coherent explanations presented in a way no student can.

@igelkott2021

Don't coders usually use a lot of "off the shelf" code, so isn't it possible that the OP's dd and the so-called copier copied (legitimately) from the same place?

It's a bit like using a precedent template agreement for a contract. Two lawyers can come up with more or less identical agreements because they've used the same template to tweak.

But I would have thought that tutors in computer science departments would be well aware of that

This was my first thought.

My second thought was has she used any online resources like grammar/plagiarism/referencing checkers etc where you upload your work? There are dodgy sites that steal your work and sell it on.

There was a thread not long ago by someone who had been accused of selling her essays online. I think she was an academic who was doing an A-level course for fun. I believe she found her work for sale online, has your DD checked that?

If it was stolen rather than the other student bought it online, it could have been stolen from the university system rather than directly from your DD eg when she uploaded it for marking.