topic Re: Need to catch my students cheating in Inventor Forum

Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Apr 2015 23:09:10 GMT

Hello there, my name is Nigel, and I currently teach engineering courses.

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

I am trying to catch my students, because I suspect a few may be cheating.

Is there anyway I can look to see where their inventor files originate from? Whether that be another students file, or one downloaded off of the internet. Or am I pretty much out of luck when it comes to catching them in the act of academic dishonesty?

I searched this up myself, and I only found answers pertaining to past inventor versions. I need answer specifically for inventor 2015.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:48:03 GMT

I really need an answer to this guys. Can someone help?

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

blair — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 03:05:03 GMT

The iProperties of the file may help, I don't know if ADSK has any special hidden features/values beyond what's in the iProperties.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 03:24:46 GMT

So how wld I know using this if they cheated? Thanks for the response btw!

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 04:39:22 GMT

If the files are copied and pasted (ie creating a new file) then the created date will be the time it was copied and pasted. it depends how lazy your cheating students are, if they all have user ids then its possible they might forget to change the author/designer field between copies. I think the author/designer is driven from the options dialogue box.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

blair — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 05:33:24 GMT

Good chances they all didn't use the exact same steps to create the same file size. As also posted there should be some time between the creation date/time and other data within the iProperties tabs.

A few compressions of these fields of suspected part and assembly files should show up any cheating.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 07:14:56 GMT

How far are you prepared to go/learn?

You could issue the class with a "standard" template set that contains hidden iproperties values. When the work is submitted, check for the values .

Something like this: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/block-user-access-to-custom-in-iproperty/td-p/4800613

BW

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

pcrawley — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 09:28:30 GMT

Every file contains a unique ID (called a "GUID"). It's Inventors internal name for the file.

When you "Save Copy As", or just use Windows Explorer to copy one, you will copy the existing GUID. It's this number that allows the "Save and Replace" function to work, or content center parts to be swapped out without breaking constraints. When you create a new Inventor document from a template (or a zero-content-template) then Inventor will generate a new GUID.

You can expose this GUID with a few lines of iLogic - or even better - get someone to write an app that you can throw all the student files into and it identifies all the files with shared ancestry (same GUID).

Curtis-the-great-Waguespack (I have learnt so much from his blog) has written a bit about it here (it's not about plagiarism, just replacing derived references): http://inventortrenches.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/ilogic-replace-derived-reference.html - and if he's reading this, he might be tempted to rise to the challenge of creating something all Inventor Tutors would thank him for 😉

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

LT.Rusty — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 13:54:13 GMT

Hm.

This one is relevant to my interests as well. I had a student recently that I believe was simply taking my sample files and renaming them.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

JDMather — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:46:34 GMT

Turn on the Sketch Dimension Display as Expression and view the d? variable names and positions.

As noted - it is unlikely to impossible that they would create a significant portion in exactly the same steps.

(Actually, just go to Manage>Parameters and compare the list of dimensions.)

If you want to go a bit further - see the attached document (but I haven't used this in years).

Those instructions were written long before iLogic existed in Inventor.

I show them a bit of this the first day before they know anything and do the best to "scare" them out of any notion of even attempting to cheat in my class. I haven't had any trouble in several years. Those that cheat - aren't usually good enough to hide their tracks very well.

Thanks to Neil Munro and Sean Dotson (see Sean's code in post #33)

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-general-discussion/student-cheating/td-p/1504358/highlight/true/page/3

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

admaiora — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:32:12 GMT

Thank you JD! Very interesting !

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

nmunro — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:26:31 GMT

If anyone is really interested, I have developed an add-in solution that allows you to see the author of a wide variety of part, assembly, and drawing features and provides a detailed description of "who did what". It does take a bit of set-up but can be used in labs and on student's home computers as well. You can reply here with contact information or send me an email at neil at c3mcad dot com.

Neil

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 22:55:25 GMT

all these answers seem good, but how do i tell if they downloaded one of the internet?

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

JDMather — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 22:57:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
.... how do i tell if they downloaded one of the internet?

Can you attach example suspect file here?

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

blair — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 23:10:51 GMT

A simple look at the iProperties and the creation date and version of software used to create the file would show a date considerably before you asked for the assignment as well as the version of software that was used to create it could be considerably older than what they are using.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

pcrawley — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 09:53:46 GMT

There are some good ideas coming out here, and it looks as though you are going to need a few bits of information to catch the "downloaders" and the "copiers".

If you can extract Create Date and internal file name properties, then you could review this data in a spreadsheet. Any create-dates that are prior to the assesment, and any with duplicate internal names would be worthy of further investigation.

A further safeguard could be the internal property that identifies the version of Inventor that was used to create the file. Files downloaded would (most likely) be created before the assesment, and (quite likely) be created by an earlier version of Inventor. (The internal version number updates when you add service packs, so you need to be sure all your students are running the same build, or you could be a bad call!)

A few lines of iLogic could extract all this information and write it out to a spreadsheet, and I would use Code Injector to mass-process all the student files.

Hope this helps.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 22:57:46 GMT

Hmm very interesting.

Thanks for the response, but I checked iproperties and it shows the creation date is after the day project was assigned and the last modified is from a few days ago. Also the suspected student has their name on all their idw files. I'm assuming I was wrong in thinking they were cheating? Based on all that info. Surely there isn't a way around that stuff is there?

Thanks for all the help so far guys!
-Nigel

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 22:58:42 GMT

That would be against my school district's rules JD. Sorry.

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 23:06:11 GMT

Of course!!
Open new idw > cut views from existing (old) idw > paste views into new idw.

Bingo - new up to date idw that checks all the boxes...

BW

Re: Need to catch my students cheating

Anonymous — Sun, 17 May 2015 20:51:00 GMT

As we draw near to final exams, I can only think of one other way they would be cheating. Copy and pasting work onto a new file.

Is there any way I can see if my students sketches are pasted from somewhere?

Sorry everyone, this is my first year teaching this course.