catching Chegg cheaters

[centurion]

Due to Covid-19 now I and most of my colleagues give takehome exams. In another department the professors noticed big time cheating: students posted the exam questions on Chegg, and turned in the answers received from there.
That department filed honor court charges.

Technicalities:
1) Chegg claims to cooperate with honor court investigations, if they are contacted by a dean, or higher up. That is, not if they are contacted by a professor.
2) Posted questions can be removed from Chegg as soon as the exam is over. So the cheaters must be caught asap.
3) The dean submits a screenshot of Chegg (to Chegg) which clearly shows the posted question, together with the professor's testimonial that that was really the exam question.
4) Then Chegg investigates.

Has anyone had experience with this process? My concerns:

a) I myself cannot contact Chegg.
b) Based on past experience, if a professor files an honor court case, his course evaluations will be low for several years in a row: he will be probably outed on some online forums, and even in subsequent years, this could affect his evaluations.
c) Given b) above, it is only worth filing an honor court case if the case is bulletproof, AND the dean is totally supportive.
d) I wonder whether deans in the current situation would be totally supportive.


Thank you

[Caracal]

Presumably, you have take home exams which are easy to cheat on and difficult to detect cheating on? That isn't your fault obviously. But this semester is a mess, which will make trying to deal with this a mess if anybody is actually posting answers. Everyone from deans on down is dealing with all kinds of stuff.

Alternatively... you could just not go searching around on this site for your exam questions. I'm sure some are going to think that is a terrible abdication of our responsibilities, but unless you actually get some information that your questions are being posted, you really aren't required to go comb the internet. Frankly, this is just one way that students could be cheating. If they just send the questions and answers to their friends there's no way you'd ever be able to find out about it. I would leave the whole thing alone, and get this damn semester out of your life.

[Aster]

Once something is loose on the internet, it is there to stay.

[centurion]

Presumably, you have take home exams which are easy to cheat on and difficult to detect cheating on? That isn't your fault obviously. But this semester is a mess, which will make trying to deal with this a mess if anybody is actually posting answers. Everyone from deans on down is dealing with all kinds of stuff.

Alternatively... you could just not go searching around on this site for your exam questions. I'm sure some are going to think that is a terrible abdication of our responsibilities, but unless you actually get some information that your questions are being posted, you really aren't required to go comb the internet. Frankly, this is just one way that students could be cheating. If they just send the questions and answers to their friends there's no way you'd ever be able to find out about it. I would leave the whole thing alone, and get this damn semester out of your life.

It is an intro class, so it is relatively easy to cheat. It is actually me, who is bothered by this. It is easy to get info that my questions *are* being posted: google tells me when a question was posted on Chegg.

[Caracal]

Presumably, you have take home exams which are easy to cheat on and difficult to detect cheating on? That isn't your fault obviously. But this semester is a mess, which will make trying to deal with this a mess if anybody is actually posting answers. Everyone from deans on down is dealing with all kinds of stuff.

Alternatively... you could just not go searching around on this site for your exam questions. I'm sure some are going to think that is a terrible abdication of our responsibilities, but unless you actually get some information that your questions are being posted, you really aren't required to go comb the internet. Frankly, this is just one way that students could be cheating. If they just send the questions and answers to their friends there's no way you'd ever be able to find out about it. I would leave the whole thing alone, and get this damn semester out of your life.

It is an intro class, so it is relatively easy to cheat. It is actually me, who is bothered by this. It is easy to get info that my questions *are* being posted: google tells me when a question was posted on Chegg.

Who could be punished though? Is the idea that the company could track down the IP address of the person who posted the questions? Could it show the people who accessed them? Is this a multiple choice exam? If not, couldn't it be  evidence of cheating if several students have all the same wrong answers, for example?

This is probably the wrong thing to think, but I just don't know if you want to spend your time, energy and capital taking something like this on right now. Administrators are people too, and they are all having to manage a whole raft of issues all while working from home in less than ideal circumstances. Heck, the same thing is probably true of whoever is supposed to be in charge of dealing with this kind of thing at Clegg. I imagine nobody is going to really enthusiastic about taking on a cheating issue with so many moving parts and murky components.

Cheating is terrible, if classes are online in the fall, you'll need to figure out ways to make this sort of thing harder to do and easier to spot. But, I'm just not sure you really want to try to do this now.

[Aster]

This will be the semester to forget.

I'm already trying to forget it.

[dr_codex]

Hold the line, Centurion.

My colleagues in the Engineering Department have detected high levels of cheating on exams, through Chegg. They now have somebody signed up for the "service", and are prosecuting all cases. At least 20% of one section have been caught cheating; who knows what the actual rate is. PM me if you want a full description of our collective Engineering response.

Obviously, these aren't multiple choice exams. Students are submitting identical solutions, usually wrong in the same ways. Apparently, knowledge of metric units on the part of the "experts" providing the solutions is leading to some odd mistakes.

We have had situations in the past when large chunks of a cohort have been caught cheating using a common system. It is an existential threat, and some kind of institutional response is essential. It doesn't matter how hard this semester has been; students have to master the material, or they cannot earn their degrees.

[Caracal]

Hold the line, Centurion.

My colleagues in the Engineering Department have detected high levels of cheating on exams, through Chegg. They now have somebody signed up for the "service", and are prosecuting all cases. At least 20% of one section have been caught cheating; who knows what the actual rate is. PM me if you want a full description of our collective Engineering response.

Obviously, these aren't multiple choice exams. Students are submitting identical solutions, usually wrong in the same ways. Apparently, knowledge of metric units on the part of the "experts" providing the solutions is leading to some odd mistakes.

We have had situations in the past when large chunks of a cohort have been caught cheating using a common system. It is an existential threat, and some kind of institutional response is essential. It doesn't matter how hard this semester has been; students have to master the material, or they cannot earn their degrees.

It does seem like if you find cheating, you should avoid having to go through the company. Take screenshots of the answers posted online and if you have students who give those same answers, including all the same wrong ones, that should be evidence enough. Then you can just follow the normal procedures with the students who cheated and not be asking deans to try to get some outside company to investigate.

[arcturus]

I think it is the responsibility of faculty to create a teaching/learning environment that is fair for all students. That means designing assignments and exams that minimize the possibility of cheating and reporting (and penalizing) cheating when it is discovered. There have been many discussions on these boards regarding ways to design online exams to minimize cheating (randomized questions; randomized answer choices for multiple choice questions; time limits; not allowing students to re-visit questions they have already answered; not allowing students to see the correct answers immediately after they have completed the exam; etc). My own experience for an online GenEd course is that it is possible to have similar success rates for an online class as for a in-class exam, simply by making the questions less fact-based and more application-based. This makes the questions less google-able and also more relevant in the context of assessing what students have learned in the class.

One thing that has not yet been discussed is whether it is appropriate to set traps for cheating students. For example, you could create a question for which there is no correct answer. Post that question and a "solution" on Chegg yourself. Every student who uses the Chegg solution is then reported for academic misconduct. This has the unfortunate side affect that the non-cheating students may spend an innordinate amount of time trying to solve the unsolvable.  If, however, it is the last question posed, and you have the exam set up such that students cannot go backwards, then that has an inherent time limitation and should not adversely impact the success of the non-cheating students. But, the question remains: is it ethical to set a trap for cheating students?

[centurion]

Hold the line, Centurion.

My colleagues in the Engineering Department have detected high levels of cheating on exams, through Chegg. They now have somebody signed up for the "service", and are prosecuting all cases. At least 20% of one section have been caught cheating; who knows what the actual rate is. PM me if you want a full description of our collective Engineering response.

Obviously, these aren't multiple choice exams. Students are submitting identical solutions, usually wrong in the same ways. Apparently, knowledge of metric units on the part of the "experts" providing the solutions is leading to some odd mistakes.

We have had situations in the past when large chunks of a cohort have been caught cheating using a common system. It is an existential threat, and some kind of institutional response is essential. It doesn't matter how hard this semester has been; students have to master the material, or they cannot earn their degrees.

It does seem like if you find cheating, you should avoid having to go through the company. Take screenshots of the answers posted online and if you have students who give those same answers, including all the same wrong ones, that should be evidence enough. Then you can just follow the normal procedures with the students who cheated and not be asking deans to try to get some outside company to investigate.

But how would I identify the students who *used* those answers? As it is, it is impossible to perfectly identify them,  because anyone can read Chegg. But Chegg can identify the student who *posted* the question.

[Caracal]

Hold the line, Centurion.

My colleagues in the Engineering Department have detected high levels of cheating on exams, through Chegg. They now have somebody signed up for the "service", and are prosecuting all cases. At least 20% of one section have been caught cheating; who knows what the actual rate is. PM me if you want a full description of our collective Engineering response.

Obviously, these aren't multiple choice exams. Students are submitting identical solutions, usually wrong in the same ways. Apparently, knowledge of metric units on the part of the "experts" providing the solutions is leading to some odd mistakes.

We have had situations in the past when large chunks of a cohort have been caught cheating using a common system. It is an existential threat, and some kind of institutional response is essential. It doesn't matter how hard this semester has been; students have to master the material, or they cannot earn their degrees.

It does seem like if you find cheating, you should avoid having to go through the company. Take screenshots of the answers posted online and if you have students who give those same answers, including all the same wrong ones, that should be evidence enough. Then you can just follow the normal procedures with the students who cheated and not be asking deans to try to get some outside company to investigate.

But how would I identify the students who *used* those answers? As it is, it is impossible to perfectly identify them,  because anyone can read Chegg. But Chegg can identify the student who *posted* the question.

Well, what sort of exams are these? Are they just multiple choice? Is there any requirement to show work? Unless the answers on Chegg are perfect, it seems like it would be pretty obvious if a bunch of students get all of the same answers wrong and also all have the same wrong answer?

[centurion]

Hold the line, Centurion.

My colleagues in the Engineering Department have detected high levels of cheating on exams, through Chegg. They now have somebody signed up for the "service", and are prosecuting all cases. At least 20% of one section have been caught cheating; who knows what the actual rate is. PM me if you want a full description of our collective Engineering response.

Obviously, these aren't multiple choice exams. Students are submitting identical solutions, usually wrong in the same ways. Apparently, knowledge of metric units on the part of the "experts" providing the solutions is leading to some odd mistakes.

We have had situations in the past when large chunks of a cohort have been caught cheating using a common system. It is an existential threat, and some kind of institutional response is essential. It doesn't matter how hard this semester has been; students have to master the material, or they cannot earn their degrees.

It does seem like if you find cheating, you should avoid having to go through the company. Take screenshots of the answers posted online and if you have students who give those same answers, including all the same wrong ones, that should be evidence enough. Then you can just follow the normal procedures with the students who cheated and not be asking deans to try to get some outside company to investigate.

But how would I identify the students who *used* those answers? As it is, it is impossible to perfectly identify them,  because anyone can read Chegg. But Chegg can identify the student who *posted* the question.

Well, what sort of exams are these? Are they just multiple choice? Is there any requirement to show work? Unless the answers on Chegg are perfect, it seems like it would be pretty obvious if a bunch of students get all of the same answers wrong and also all have the same wrong answer?

The questions  are not multiple choice, but they are pretty basic: write a few equations, take derivative, find where it is zero. The Chegg answers show all work.

So, if 1) Chegg has correct answer 2) student gets answer correct, then the only way to punish anyone is to catch the one who **posted** the question. And for that, the Dean's office needs to get the ID of the poster.

A colleague of mine just told me that the Dean's office is hedging.

[Caracal]

So, if 1) Chegg has correct answer 2) student gets answer correct, then the only way to punish anyone is to catch the one who **posted** the question. And for that, the Dean's office needs to get the ID of the poster.

A colleague of mine just told me that the Dean's office is hedging.

I think you might be underestimating how easy it would be to track a student down. A username or email address is only going to be any good if the student is dumb enough to use their own name, or an identifiable email address. I guess there's payment information which would have a name, but I would bet that lots of students share accounts, possibly with a lot of other people. The credit card on file might well just lead to some person at the university not in your class.

[polly_mer]

Don't worry about cheating for relatively simple things that people can get right on their own.  That's a waste of your energy.  If someone needs to cheat at that level, then they will soon weed themselves out of the program.

However, I would follow Caracal's advice for the problems in which people put down the wrong answers that are wrong exactly the way Chegg has them wrong.  Take the screenshot with a date and then attach copies to the test as you send it to the local honor court charges.  That screenshot should then have sufficient information for the dean to submit it if that's what the institution wants to do.

When I was teaching engineering, I sometimes assigned homework problems to which the easily Googlable answers were bizarrely wrong (think using the ideal gas law for liquid water that must use the steam table or significant typo in the equations such that the answer couldn't possibly come from those equations).  Then, I would inform all the students whose papers had that bizarrely wrong answer that I knew they were cheating and it was in their best interest to either cheat better (i.e., know enough about the actual material, even if they couldn't immediately do it on their own) or start coming to the help sessions.

Your job as the professor holding the line isn't to root out all cheaters everywhere.  It's to ensure that people who fail cheating are not allowed to continue and take up seats/resources/energy that should go to other people.

[Caracal]

When I was teaching engineering, I sometimes assigned homework problems to which the easily Googlable answers were bizarrely wrong (think using the ideal gas law for liquid water that must use the steam table or significant typo in the equations such that the answer couldn't possibly come from those equations).  Then, I would inform all the students whose papers had that bizarrely wrong answer that I knew they were cheating and it was in their best interest to either cheat better (i.e., know enough about the actual material, even if they couldn't immediately do it on their own) or start coming to the help sessions.

Last semester, we were reading a non-fiction book called "American Dream" about welfare reform. I was assigning low stakes response papers to keep students accountable for the reading and got really confused when I had several students writing about characters known only as mommy and daddy who seemed to have killed their son or something. Apparently, there's an Edward Albee play also called American Dream...