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June 15, 2009, 12:52 PM ET
Student Beats Cheating Charges for Posting Work Online
A student majoring in computer science at San Jose State University said he fought against a professor who had tried to force him to remove his homework from the Internet, and won.
On his blog, Kyle Brady explained that he had posted his computer code assignments online after the due date, in an attempt to help others and serve as a reference for future employment. But Mr. Brady says his professor, Michael Beeson, demanded he remove the content, or he would fail the course for breaking the university’s policies for cheating. Mr. Brady said the professor said students in the future would be explicitly forbidden from publishing their work in other courses. Professor Beeson did not respond to messages requesting comment.
“It was not my intention to help others cheat or facilitate it. In fact, I still don’t believe this could be considered cheating, since it is a very different situation than passing a Final around the room,” Mr. Brady said he wrote in an e-mail to his professor. “There is no reason to not make homework solutions public at an appropriate time, and what I have done is no different than sharing answers after they have been turned in for grading – or reviewing graded homeworks in groups before a Final Exam. I merely used the Internet as my distribution method, instead of a paper-and-ink solution.”
After several e-mail messages were exchanged between them, Mr. Brady said, he was informed on June 3 that he would not be punished by the university for his actions.
“I have now heard from Debra Griffith, Judicial Affairs Officer of SJSU, and she agrees that what you have done does not in any way constitute a violation of the University Academic Integrity Policy, and that Dr. Beeson cannot claim otherwise,” Mr. Brady said his department chairperson wrote him in an e-mail.
On his blog, Mr. Brady triumphantly wrote, “Thanks to some perseverance and asking the right questions, SJSU Professors are now prohibited from barring students from posting their code solutions online, as well as penalizing their students for doing so.” —Marc Beja
Comments
1. paievoli - October 11, 2009 at 04:07 pm
This is how a self-admined social network could help. Students could use it to connect with others with the school having the admin necessary to delete posts. I do agree with both sides. As long as the work was not time sensitive the same things could be said of any textbook entry. Now that textbooks are going online and for free this is going to happen a lot more.
We have to learn how to manage this new frontier.
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