Need to catch my students cheating

[Anonymous]

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!

[Anonymous]

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

[blair]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[blair]

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.

[Anonymous]

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/4...

BW

[pcrawley]

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 😉

[LT.Rusty]

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.

[JDMather]

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/tr...

[admaiora]

Thank you JD! Very interesting !

[nmunro]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[JDMather]

---

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

---

Can you attach example suspect file here?

[blair]

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.

[pcrawley]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.