UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I'm a teacher who teaching computer programming languages.

Generally, I give each student a username in a Linux Server. Then each student use his username to login the Server and program their programming task by putty or secureCRT and so on.

But one fact had bothered me for a long time. Instead of doing programming by themself, some students are proned to copy the source code from anywhere else effortlessly. It's a cheating, but , as a teacher , I have trouble in avoiding this behavior.

If I can disable the copy and paste of the putty or secureCRT, the cheating of the student is impossible to occur!

Can I take any method to disable the copy and paste?

Anyone can give me a well-proven method?

Thanks!

Surely the cut/paste is a function of the client (PC) operating system, Windows (?).

Putty is just the application.

If the client is Windows then I guess you need to disable the clipboard.

Please describe your environment (Server & Client O/S's), etc.
Are your clients also Unix/Linux?

If your clients are Windows I suggest you post to a Windows forum.

Thank you for your quick response!

Generally speaking , most of the student use window, but everything has its exceptions, if some student find they can not do it in windows environment , they may use linux environment.

So, if under the linux environment, how should I do?

Thanks!

Unfortunately, cheating is rampant. I think you need to test your students in an environment where they cannot cheat. I'm sure there are ways to do that.

It's good you are concerned. But I do not think turning off copy / paste will stop students from cheating, since they could easily look at the correct answer from one of their friends, and copy it down by hand. Turning off copy / paste slows the cheating process, but does not stop it.

The copy / paste cheaters are even easier to catch, since the answer is exactly the same, down to minor formatting details, a dead give-away of cheating.

Thanks for you concern for cheating. I understand what you said. But my aim is to void the students' daily programming task , not for test.
Yes, they can easily look at the correct answer from anywhere else, but I think at least it's a way to learn programming. If the students have to input the code letter by letter, I think I do the right thing.

That is a VERY good point.

Another strategy would be to deny them the ability to open anything but putty. Nothing to copy from, cannot paste.

Otherewise, you may need to rebuild your own version of putty from source, with the pasting feature removed.

Of course, if you cannot stop them from using some other client, that's no good. You cannot control it from the server end. It doesn't know when data's being pasted. Letters are just letters to it.

Many teachers these days use software to compare assignments for similarity. That'd be another way to catch cheating.