The current state of cheating

[downer]

Long account of cheating students by Matt Crump, CUNY
https://crumplab.com/articles/blog/post_994_5_26_22_cheating/index.html

He does computational cognition. Maybe his students are not typical. It is striking how routine cheating is for his students.

Cheating continues to be an issue. I'm not sure that is at crisis level in many areas.

But it is getting to the stage where I'd recommend potential employers be aware of what steps a program takes to prevent cheating, and if it takes no steps, to do some independent testing of job candidates before employing them. Similarly for graduate schools accepting students to graduate programs.

[secundem_artem]

The current state of cheating is alive and well and living in a college or university near you.

What to do?  If you are teaching Chem or Bio 101 in a 400 seat lecture barn, I guess you are pretty much stuck with multiple choice tests that are not that hard to cheat on.

My classes are 8 to 30.  Daily small scale written assignments that take 2 minutes each to grade.  Presentations that allow for questions that show pretty quick if a presentation has been bought.  Lots of group work - bigger assignments that take longer to grade, but a class of 32 with groups of 4 = only 8 assignments.  10% of a grade is peer grading to discourage free riders (and students will definitely use it).

I've not given an exam in a decade.  In most of my fields, you can look up facts on your phone so I don't care much what they "know".  But I try to create assignments that make them engage with the course and use/apply the material.

Of course, YMMV.

[Sun_Worshiper]

They cheat, we catch them, they find new ways to cheat, we find ways to catch them, and so on. I'm sure the cat and mouse game will play out forever.

[mamselle]

It's a bit like computer viruses.

A friend in IT once said he strongly suspected that the folks who sell anti-virus protection have buildings with two sides and two entrances.

On the one side are the hackers.

On the other, the folks who come up with the discovery software to disable them.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

There's a lot of cheating at my institution. I've done what I can, but I still catch exam questions being posted to cheating sites in real time. Past a certain point, I give up.

I have a friend at an R1 down the road who caught well over one hundred students cheating in one class last year (somewhat fewer the year before, probably the same number again this year). They've been doing it for ages--one of his colleagues, who teaches two sections of that course, just doesn't bother--but he can't bring himself to let it go. And it makes him miserable, because each instance requires not just paperwork but individual meetings.

The real solution, on my end, would be in-class quizzes, exams, and essays. But between COVID and the marking load, it's just not worth it.

[Anselm]

I believe it is beyond what we can handle and schools need security professionals to identify the cheating and then penalties need to be applied to get the word out that we are watching you and you will pay the price. 

[RatGuy]

I had more cases of academic misconduct in the Fall 2020 (when we were "distanced") than my previous 10 years of teaching the same sorts of classes. That was on par with what my colleagues saw, and was a major factor in the university deciding to move to in-person classes in Spring 2021.

My students tend to use GroupMe instead of What's App, though I don't think many of them are using it during in-person exams. I do think it helps the worst students remember when stuff is due, and I have a lot fewer Fs due to non-attendance and assignment-flaking than I once did.

I suspect, though I have very little actual proof, that the biggest category of academic misconduct in my classes is "hiring the honors student to ghost-write my essay." I can see some of the names and info in the submitted Word documents. Also there are times that D+ students submit B+ papers that almost-but-not-quite match the weird parameters of the assignment (meaning that it's not copied from online sources). Such borderline cases are hard to prosecute, but the associate deans who investigate those cases are interested in what looks like a growing trend.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I've caught several cheaters lately with exam answers that overlap word-for-word (in parts) with essays turned into other schools. I can catch some of this with Turnitin, so long as the other university is also in the Turnitin network.

I suspect that students are having a professional cheating service write their essays for them, but instead of actually writing a fresh essay, the service is recycling portions of their old essays. The students get away with it sometimes, because they aren't just plagiarizing something directly from the web, but they can get caught if both schools are in the Turnitin database.

[ergative]

I've caught several cheaters lately with exam answers that overlap word-for-word (in parts) with essays turned into other schools. I can catch some of this with Turnitin, so long as the other university is also in the Turnitin network.

I suspect that students are having a professional cheating service write their essays for them, but instead of actually writing a fresh essay, the service is recycling portions of their old essays. The students get away with it sometimes, because they aren't just plagiarizing something directly from the web, but they can get caught if both schools are in the Turnitin database.

I wonder whether this would be grounds for a credit-card chargeback. If you buy something with the expectation that it's new, and instead get something partly used, that's surely some violation of sales laws, yes?

[Caracal]

I've caught several cheaters lately with exam answers that overlap word-for-word (in parts) with essays turned into other schools. I can catch some of this with Turnitin, so long as the other university is also in the Turnitin network.

I suspect that students are having a professional cheating service write their essays for them, but instead of actually writing a fresh essay, the service is recycling portions of their old essays. The students get away with it sometimes, because they aren't just plagiarizing something directly from the web, but they can get caught if both schools are in the Turnitin database.

I'm sure the same thing used to happen when there was just some student who made extra money writing papers. I would imagine those people often did some recycling.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I've caught several cheaters lately with exam answers that overlap word-for-word (in parts) with essays turned into other schools. I can catch some of this with Turnitin, so long as the other university is also in the Turnitin network.

I suspect that students are having a professional cheating service write their essays for them, but instead of actually writing a fresh essay, the service is recycling portions of their old essays. The students get away with it sometimes, because they aren't just plagiarizing something directly from the web, but they can get caught if both schools are in the Turnitin database.

I wonder whether this would be grounds for a credit-card chargeback. If you buy something with the expectation that it's new, and instead get something partly used, that's surely some violation of sales laws, yes?

I'd demand a refund if I was the student who paid for an original, untraceable essay, and then got busted because the same essay was turned in to another university.

[downer]

At least they should give a negative review on RateMyCheatSite.

[ergative]

I've caught several cheaters lately with exam answers that overlap word-for-word (in parts) with essays turned into other schools. I can catch some of this with Turnitin, so long as the other university is also in the Turnitin network.

I suspect that students are having a professional cheating service write their essays for them, but instead of actually writing a fresh essay, the service is recycling portions of their old essays. The students get away with it sometimes, because they aren't just plagiarizing something directly from the web, but they can get caught if both schools are in the Turnitin database.

I wonder whether this would be grounds for a credit-card chargeback. If you buy something with the expectation that it's new, and instead get something partly used, that's surely some violation of sales laws, yes?

I'd demand a refund if I was the student who paid for an original, untraceable essay, and then got busted because the same essay was turned in to another university.

I mean, for sure, yes. But suppose the cheating service doesn't comply? That's why I asked about a credit-card chargeback. Would your credit card company agree to take your side if you tell them 'Hi, I tried to do an academic dishonesty and got dishonested in turn, please help me recover my money.' ?