Romania dictionary altered to thwart exam cheats
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Obviously schools already try to curtail cheating, it's not useful to just say "be more vigilant instead". This is a clever way to identify cheats from an unexpected angle; and obviously if they're cheating on one section of the test, they're likely to be cheating on others.
Punishment for cheating also presumes the validity of 20th century-style academic testing, which is debatable.
What is the purpose? To ensure I'm qualified for a job? A job where I am free to look up words in a dictionary whenever I want?
I'd also add this: The internet is developing quickly into a literal extension of the human mind. I don't think it will be all that long before we're connected much more intimately to the internet than we are right now with just our eyeballs and fingertips. And that means we need to reevaluate what it means to learn information versus to find information.
These are students sneaking cell phones into an exam, and going out of their way to surreptitiously look up answers with them. There's no moral ambiguity here.
> Punishment for cheating also presumes the validity of 20th century-style academic testing.
No it doesn't.
> What is the purpose? To ensure I'm qualified for a job? A job where I am free to look up words in a dictionary whenever I want?
These are primary school-children. There's nothing wrong with asking them to learn basic skills like literacy or numeracy (or, say, basic integrity) even if they're disconnected from "jobs".
> I don't think it will be all that long before we're connected much more intimately to the internet than we are right now with just our eyeballs and fingertips. And that means we need to reevaluate what it means to learn information versus to find information.
Sure, and there will be tests for that set of skills where accessing the internet during the exam won't be considered cheating. But in this situation it is.
At minimum they want you to be able to articulate a phrase and mostly to understand one and, who knows, maybe to have you try to make sure that you'll be able get critical thinking and hopefully not be a little manipulated, cheating prick that will vote an incompetent as a president just to prove a point to an unknown "enemy".
The purpose of the exam is to show that you have a vocabulary, and you can understand and answer some questions about a text you're seeing for the first time.
This is important for a lot of jobs, and it isn't something you can google. Sure, you can google individual words, that is less useful if you're the one writing.
Just because the rules are different for different exams doesn't make cheating fluid.
The rules are there to provide some semblance of a level playing field and to ensure that the relevant skills are being assessed. An elementary school arithmetic test is a pointless exercise if calculators are allowed; an undergraduate engineering test would be a farce if calculators weren't allowed.
That backfired immediately, when one of the words being searched wasn't actually part of the alleged cheating.
They are literally changing the definition of words (albeit momentarily) to try to identify cheating. This is likely a private institution administering the test and a government dictionary. Even if both were governmental (dictionary and test), it still seems silly to do this, as opposed to trying to catch the cheaters.
That doesn't seem like it will provide enough evidence to actually "catch" a cheater.
It was more of an experiment/eye opener from the team of volunteers behind the online dictionary project.
Imagine if a math site temporarily said "2 + 2 = 5" in order to catch cheaters on a math test. You've caught some cheaters, but then some of them will continue thinking that 2 + 2 really is 5.
There must be better ways to do this.
But yeah, it is somewhat morally hazy in this instance, I agree.
So it would only be unethical if they were being paid? I'm not sure what the distinction is.
The dictionary website is private, but very well known.
As it's a mock exam, nobody will get into trouble for it. But, if nothing else, it should make the students think twice before trying to cheat on the next exam.
1. As others pointed out, this is not a full-blown exam but a simulation, in preparation for the exam that shall take place in June.
2. Cheating is not unheard of in Romania, in some places is common practice, sometimes with the aid of teachers. As the Ministry of Education is not striving too much to fix it, this is just a private initiative to spot it and hopefully put raise awareness / public pressure towards this phenomenon. Noteworthy, the uncommon volume of search on the terms that were present in the exam started even before the official start of the exam.
I was at first also thinking that they could've just hid the words and put up a notice for the regular users, but after thinking more about it, I think they're approach was optimal.
Sidenote, the guy[1] that started the project is an ex-googler[2], I trust he (& team) gave this some thought before choosing this approach.
Also, story seems made up.
First, the words "Everywhere, [to] spot" seem too simple to need to be researched - are these words so uncommon in Romanian that students need to look them up?
Second, they impacted ALL users to their site, merely because they saw an increase in use that coincided with the test? Did they even check their website logs to see where the source IPs were geo-located? They laugh off the impact caused to a blogger's readers with their replacement of "treachery"'s meaning.
The article suggests you could likely count the number of innocent users affected on fingers & toes?
> The DEX editors assumed it was and changed its definition, but later discovered that it had been used by a well-known Romanian author in a blog post that morning, something they call an "unfortunate coincidence".
The poem is at least 70 years old.
I'm all for punishing cheaters, but this measure has just too much collateral damage. Legitimate dictionary users are being mislead. It's a bad idea, and it would shatter my trust in any dictionary.
They replaced the words with similar sounding words that have no link with the original words. Anybody could easily spot the change.
No, this article is specifically about them working together.
It says it's for Romanian students and is in the Romanian language, so it doesn't look like it's a foreign language to them but their native language.
For example, a similar article translated to Romanian might claim English-language students were tested on knowing a word for "rural" (simplified translation) but the exam actually used "bucolic" (a word which I know has been part of the GRE vocabulary in the past).
It's probably closer to something like "ubiquitous", which would be a reasonable entry in a vocabulary exam.
Cheating at exams and plagiarism is rampant in Romania. Multiple gov't officials, MPs and even a former prime minister nicknamed copy/paste were accused of plagiarism in the last few years. They tried to subordinate comitees that analyze PhD thesis just to get away with it and even succeeded in doing so.
National exams use cameras to twart cheaters.
Dexonline.ro is a volunteer effort and assumes no responsability for the correctness of its content.
Finally, I think it's useful to point out that this was just the team of volunteers behind the online dictionary who modified the definition of 3 very uncommon words for a few hours.
They cheat the public by spreading misinformation and lying.
Quote at end of article:
"The third word that appeared abnormally popular, "treachery", wasn't actually on the test. The DEX editors assumed it was and changed its definition, but later discovered that it had been used by a well-known Romanian author in a blog post that morning, something they call an "unfortunate coincidence"."
They fucked over a bunch of unrelated innocent people with their fake news/fake definition and simply call it "unfortunate".
Talk about the irony and double standards here. What a pathetic bunch of sorry human beings.
Where exactly is that point? I don't know.
If you haven't the heard the word up until that points, odds are pretty good that you might not have needed it.
If looking up words in dictionaries is sufficient, how many words should you memorize offline? If everyone agrees learning words is outdated, what will they use to speak? Orwell's newspeak?
Most communication, as opposed to art for instance, works both ways. You listen and read, but also speak and write. Dictionaries help you with the first part, but you'll need a little more effort with the second.
I can imagine a MITM product for schools to help here, perhaps not though if everyone is using LTE instead of the school's network.
https://github.com/dexonline/dexonline/commit/1f67d663d8a8d5...
Edit: And not-needlessly-online software in general.