Cheaters Never Prosper
I do a computer science degree at university. We had a group work project which is set out in two stages. Part A involved making an application and writing a report about it (50/50 split). In Part B, we got feedback from Part A and had to improve upon it. In total it was 100% of a module. It is also important to note that there is a group contribution report (GCR).
This is where each student puts in how much they think each student has done. I was in a randomly selected group with four others, and we each picked a part of the work that we wanted to do. I was apparently the group’s most confident coder, so assigned myself about half of the code. I finished up my work in about the first three weeks and worked on other projects I have for other modules.
Soon after I finished my work, the others asked me if I can do their parts of the code too. I initially protest as I have my other coursework due, but eventually I say fine, so long as it is noted in the GCR. They all agree. I sweat it out over the next three weeks or so alongside my other coursework. Eventually, this bothered me, however, and I contacted my module organizer explaining that I had done half the work.
They suggested that if people weren’t pulling their weight to leave the group (taking my code with me) and do the report solo. That would mean I would need to work flat out to produce the report and probably would mess it up. I didn’t want that, since the deadline was in about a week. Except then they asked me to do more work. By this point, I felt pretty used by them.
Still, I didn’t really mind so long as I got the marks. All in all, I worked out that I had done the workload of three people. There was talk amongst the others of all writing that we each contributed 20% of the workload to “make us look better as a team.” I flatly refused. They exploded. They started calling me every name under the sun, swearing at me, telling me to screw off.
I sent off my GCR with 60 for me and 10 each for the rest. And thought that was that. Then my module organizer emailed me asking if I had any proof of my participation, as they all put me at 0% and themselves at 25%. I’d worked my butt on this project, putting in 150+ hours on the code and another 50+ on the diagrams and report. All while attending lectures 20 hours a week.
There was no way I was letting this slide. I emailed him back, linking him to the GitHub I used to share the code with the team and showed him that all the commits (version of the code) were done by me, proving that I did all of it. And thankfully we did the whole report on Google drive so I could also see the history on that document and send him screenshots of all the alterations made by me, proving that I wrote ~20% of the report also.
He added it all up and made a special exception for my group, saying he would give me most of the credit for the work. I think I ended up with a 65 and they all got 11 for the whole coursework Part A. They would need 69% to even pass the module. When they found out their marks, all hell broke loose. They started calling me up and emailing me and messaging me almost for about three hours.
I was happily out at the time and didn’t have my phone with me so didn’t respond. My module organizer sent another email explaining that they had lied and he had proof about it so he corrected the marks accordingly. When I got back to my phone, I screenshotted all the messages they had sent and recorded all the voicemails, including the ones they had sent previously where they told me to “screw off.”
And screw off I did. I sent all these voicemails and screenshots to my module organizer requesting that I leave my group. I said I understand that it is more work for me but I’d rather not deal with that. He agreed and also escalated the messages to someone higher up. At this point, I quit the group and decided to work on Part B, the next part, by myself. But that wasn’t the best part.
I also TOOK ALL OF MY CODE WITH ME. I removed their access to all of it. I of course asked my module organizer first and they said it was fine as it was my work and if I was no longer in their group the others couldn’t submit it. I did the whole report from scratch. I then get messages from the group to “please come back, we really need you” kinda stuff a few days before the assignment was due.
They even offered to pay me. I screenshotted it and sent it to the module organizer, just to let him know what is happening and then I just ignored them. I ended up submitting two weeks early for the deadline and got 100% on the whole Part B. This is basically unheard of at the university. Little did I know, they were trying to get their bitter revenge on me.
Later that day, I get an email from a plagiarism and collusion officer. Not someone you ever want to get an email from. Basically, it says I’m summoned to a hearing as an external body looked at both my group (me, myself and I) and my old group’s coursework and thought it was very similar. I get the whole project that my group handed in and my own back as evidence so I can look and prepare my answers to their questions.
I email my module organizer and ask if he supports me in this because basically they can punish all of you OR one group (never nobody). He says yes he supports me in this. Perfect. I prepare for this meeting by going through the hundreds of commits I have made to the code while they had access to find the one that is most similar to it. I find a PERFECT match, 0 differences, not even a single character.
Through the thousands of lines of code. So I turn up to this meeting and there is the VP of computing there. My old group, when asked to present their answer as to why this has happened, go on about how they did all of it by themselves blah blah blah. You get the point, this goes on for about 10 minutes. Then I am asked to present my argument.
I ask if I can share my screen. VP: “Yeah… Okay…” puzzled. So I share it. Show all the screenshots I took as some of the people in the meeting weren’t aware that we knew each other, including them basically begging for me to come back and offering money to me. And as if this wasn’t enough to convince them, I then showed me downloading a fresh version of what they submitted, and a fresh version of one of my commits, and running it through a trusted comparison software.
I narrated this to explain what I was doing just to be clear. Took a while, but it came up—as I knew it would—with 0 differences. Everyone was stunned. One of the group members uttered “but…”. I just laughed. I was quickly asked to hang up as I was no longer involved. It turned out they had cloned one of my commits and still had a copy on their laptop when I blocked their access.
They just submitted it and hoped for the best. One of my friends who is friends with someone from my old group asked what grade they got and they said that they failed the whole module. They would have to retake it over the summer, costing everyone in my old group their placement year jobs. This meant that they all lost out on being paid ~20k each for the year’s work. While I happily get mine.