How to prevent students from copying files?

[fafbot]

I teach several Intro. to Engineering Design classes using Autodesk Inventor 2013. I can't use USB drives on the student PC's due to past problems. Presently, i have the students save files to the desktop, then copy them to a network drive that has each student directories with password protection.

Some of the students copy files and I don't know of a way to prevent it. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Gary

[pendean]

Enroll them into an Ethics class?

Seriously though, there is little you can do about it at the user end if every student is willing to share their password with others.

[fafbot]

If they start their ipt files in a designated autodesk porject, will that help?

[steve216586]

Fail both, (multiple), students for the particular project they copied from each other. It is called "Academic Plagiarism". It used to be done often enough to teach the other students to stay honest.

Instructors are afraid to "lower the boom" because of the pressure they receive from the Department Presidents and senior staff. Sad but true, is the fact that it looks bad on the university if students drop out or transfer due to academic dishonesty or poor grades. (Plus the University loses tuition money.) This growing trend of ignoring or giving second , third chances to cheating students, promotes an unrealistic atmosphere for the instructor to curtail cheating. Here's the problem with students' ethical growth because they never have to suffer substantial repercussions. According to a survey conducted by US News & World Reports, 75 percent of college students admitted to cheating at least once. More alarmingly, 85 percent of students believed that some cheating was necessary to get ahead.

If you don't enforce the policy, nobody will obey the policy. It is that simple. You can't "dummy proof" everything for the student. You have to teach them to make the right decisions or suffer the consequences.

[dgorsman]

A good idea in theory, but it requires some definitive proof of copying lest there are counter-suits, academic complaints, blah blah blah.  Students who cheat aren't known for accepting their lumps if confronted (its *always* somebody elses fault, after all).  Instructors don't want to be hauled in front of a review hearing and risk impacting their career prospects when they only have circumstantial evidence.

About the only thing I can think of is assigning each student a different part of a complex, multi-part device.

[jggerth1]

I like dgorsman's idea.  But i'd take it a step further and assign teams for the final assembly of the project.  You assign the teams (since that's the way the real world works)  and pair up people who you have reason to suspect have not copied drawings from each other in the past.

With Acad, I'd think about using object handles to validate the drawings -- dunno if Inventor has anything that is similar?

[graemev]

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@fafbot wrote:

I teach several Intro. to Engineering Design classes using Autodesk Inventor 2013. I can't use USB drives on the student PC's due to past problems. Presently, i have the students save files to the desktop, then copy them to a network drive that has each student directories with password protection.

Some of the students copy files and I don't know of a way to prevent it. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Gary

---

Don't worry about prevention, worry about detection and enforcement.  I'd imagine a comparison of any two honest student files should reveal discrepancies, even though they are "identical" parts.  I would imagine that modelling labs early on are fairly rigid in structure and may yield identical files.  This should disappear fairly soon as the students are "unleashed" to model as they see fit to acheive the desired result.  (Things like file metadata - date and time of file creation and modification, etc. - may provide "fingerprints" of copying.)  "Cheating" on early labs, while an ethics violation, will be more difficult to prove.  Remind the class during the first lesson about the ethics you expect.  Warn early, punish rigidly.

If it were up to me, the student receives a zero grade for any copied work and the course remains incomplete until a verifiably original work is submitted, still receiving a zero grade.  Second strike: add a visit to your institution's ethics review board.  Third strike: Failure of the course.  Fourth strike: expulsion.

[scot-65]

Are the students copy and pasting between drawing files?
Are the students flat-out copying another file for their use?
Thinking out loud, someone here might be able to set up the following:

 - One AutoCAD editor open at a time.
 - Lock down SDI (with a command/sysvar reactor).
 - Clear the copy-clip holder upon shutdown (and/or command OPEN).

 - Any suggestions on how to avoid inserting one student's file into another?
 - Assign one DWG file per student where each file contains a unique dictionary item by way of VLAX-LDATA-PUT.

There may be other preventative methods...

(defun S::STARTUP ()

 (vl-load-com)

 (if (not (vlax-ldata-get "MyClass" "MyStudent"))

  (progn

   (alert "Please enter your full name at the command prompt.  ")

   (vlax-ldata-put "MyClass" "MyStudent" (getstring T "Welcome to Engineering Design 101. Please enter your full name: "))

  );progn

 );if

);end S::STARTUP

;;;conceptual.

[kiraimmorris]

This might be a bit much but you could write a batch file that locks certain areas per account of a pc for an aloted time slot, so that one person can't access anothers individual folder that way it keeps them in their own folder. This way even if they log into another students account the pc will lock up and cause them to use a classmate's account that is in the room with them. Which is an easy fix, if i remember correct there's a log in and lock feature you can run if you are using network connectivity that locks out a logged in account from being logged into from another pc (as long as its not the admin.) Although to be honest couldn't they just email these things to each other, unless they're cut from that already?

You could also write  batch file that wipes the desktop of specific file types after every start up or upon placement of said file. If you have an IT department, or a networking, html, css teacher where you are they should be more than qualified to write such a thing.

[doni49]

If you know how to write an extension, you could write one that adds history to the file's extensible storage.  Done properly, this would be a portion of the file that is only accessible to your extension -- the users wouldn't even know about it. 

Everytime the file is saved, the extension would log the date, time and the username under which they're logged in.

Then if you suspect something your extension would be able to display this history (using a password of course).  So if Jim creates a file, the log will show that.  Then later if it's all of a sudden showing up with a DIFFERENT username, you've got your evidence.

[leowarren34]

Hi @Laura_Jonees,

This thread is from 2014 and so is likely to be pretty dead, however over on the Inventor forum, there has been a discussion about this with a variety of technical and non technical methods depending on how much detail you want to dive into: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/need-to-catch-my-students-cheating/m-p/5587748 

[RobDraw]

Copied work can be quite detectible and, with a little creativity, preventable. There are lots of good ideas discussed in the various threads in the software forums. 

[carlstensfer102]

I read what methods are used there. Quite an effective method of combating academic dishonesty. I believe that in addition to such methods, it is necessary to stimulate the culture of students to perform work independently