339: Australia Closes College For Failing to Curb Online Cheating

Plus, RIP Google Docs and LMS systems as safe spaces for writing with integrity. Plus, nonprofits join with cheating provider for "student mental health."

Issue 339

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Australia Regulator Revokes College License Over Online Exam Cheating

The Sydney Morning Herald has the story (subscription required) of a regulator ordering a major career training college to close over its inability (or unwillingness) to curb cheating on its online exams and certifications.

Here is the first paragraph:

One of the country’s largest training colleges has been ordered to shut down amid allegations that it failed to prevent students cheating, as part of an aggressive crackdown by the vocational education watchdog to clean up the sector.

Just imagine it — an education watchdog and an aggressive crackdown on cheating. It feels like a dream. In the United States, it is. We just don’t care if our education credentials have any meaning.

But back to Australia, which does care. See Issue 314 for just one of many, many examples. The country actually has quality regulators. And those regulators actually do things. Again — imagine it.

In this case, the Australian Skills Quality Authority:

said there was “significant concern” over the college’s use of online assessments, and it believed students had used AI to complete work, pointing to an example which it said appeared “too perfect” and showed indications of being an AI-generated response.

It said the impact of the deficiencies was considerable due to the vast number – at least 16,560 – of students enrolled.

The report included screenshots from websites, some of which are linked to contract cheating, as evidence some of the college’s assessments were compromised because some answers could be found on the internet.

“Answers to the provider’s assessment questions were publicly available on the internet for all students to access and use as their own responses,” the report said, referring to content found on third-party websites and posted by unknown people.

The screenshots included in the news coverage, were from — no, guess. Go ahead. Take a stab.

You got it — Chegg. And one from Course Hero. I know, you are shocked. But as I have said before, for a company that is totally not a cheating company, Chegg shows up in cheating situations always.

Plus, 16,500 is a ton of students.

The head of the school in question told the paper that:

the authority’s findings meant online assessments were “all but dead”, and registered training organisations were liable for the actions of any person who sought answers on cheating sites.

“If a measure of what is available online is a measure of compliance, then there will not be many RTOs, including TAFEs, left standing,” he said.

I agree — unsecured online assessments should be dead. Cheating on them has become so common, so routine that, in my opinion, they offer no assessment value whatsoever.

I also agree that if teaching, training, or certification entities cannot secure their assessments against “what is available online” they should not be left standing. I know, that’s not exactly what he said. But it is not acceptable to build certifications or degrees around online exams while insisting that rampant academic fraud is not your problem. Or, as is more often the case, pretending you don’t notice it.

Education and training providers should absolutely be “liable for the actions of any person who sought answers on cheating sites.” Especially if they were able to use those answers on your assessments.

Schools that allow students to pursue and obtain education certifications or degrees online and do not seriously invest in stopping cheating are part of the problem. They enable industrial cheating providers, end up stealing from their students, and are undercutting the value of all education credentials. Those schools should be shut down. And I am profoundly jealous of Australia for having done it.

Final note, the leader of the closed school also said:

he was “shocked and appalled” by the decision to cancel its registration and believed it had been unfairly targeted.

We’ve all heard that before. It’s not that he’s innocent. His defense is that the practice is so common that it’s unfair to target just him.

I have little doubt that the regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority, is sending a message, and a strong one at that — clean up your exams or get out of education. If you’re a training provider, especially one in Australia, it’s a message you’d do well to hear — and take appropriate action. If you need help cleaning up your assessment security, you’d also do well to get it. Right now.

Game Over for Google Docs, LMS Platforms, and Other Revision Retention Tools?

One of the better tools for thwarting the use of AI-created content as misconduct had been good ‘ole Google Docs and similar platforms that record user progress such as typing, corrections, even keystroke data. With these, if a student created a 700-word writing assignment in 26 seconds and only used the “paste” feature, it would be easy to tell. The solution was elegant and obvious, and I’ve suggested a creation-tracking approach to limit cut-and-paste AI use.

But as is too often the case, those who sell academic cheating services and those who sell services to help cheaters avoid being caught — which is really the same thing — are happy to trade integrity for cash. And they’ve now developed a way to trick Google Docs, and probably other process trackers and learning management platforms too.

In this example, a company that lets students check their writing for AI detectability and helps them avoid AI detection through AI-powered revisions — the name of the company is literally “undetectable” — also has a tool that will fake the process of human writing.

From their site, it will:

Effortlessly simulate human typing into any platform!

It’s a downloadable browser extension that the company says:

replicates human typing nuances, ensuring copied texts in Google Docs appear as if manually typed.

They describe the product as a “stealth writing tool” that will let you:

Enjoy human-like automated typing that bypasses AI writing detectors.

And it will:

Mimic human typing, complete with errors and natural breaks. - AI Writing Detection Bypass: Ideal for maintaining the originality of your work. - Natural Typing Patterns: Generate organic revision histories in Google Docs.

So, that’s great.

And this is not the only one — other cheating enablers will be happy to sell you or your students similar products designed and sold to deceive educators and incentivize fraud.

The takeaway is that if a written assignment is meant to be done in Google Docs or in an LMS platform to limit AI cut-and-paste, that may no longer work. Students can get answers from AI, have them washed with a “humanizing” tool, and then have the answer typed for them with “natural typing patterns” that are “complete with errors and natural breaks.”

Let me also say while I am here that those in and around the integrity space who complain about the “false positives” of AI detectors are helping cheating companies such as this one. These companies feast on the narrative AI detectors are the problem and sell their cheating services as honorable protection. Here is an example from the same company that now fakes human typing in Google docs:

Safeguard your unique work from false plagiarism accusations, crucial for students and academics.

Be safe, they say. From false accusations. I’m not cheating; I am protecting myself from you thinking I am cheating. What nonsense. The idea that anyone who did not use AI would check their work just to see if AI will be detected, is — well, I do not buy it.

Anyway, Google Docs and other writing platforms are not safe spaces for authentic writing anymore. Fantastic.

Nonprofits Join with Chegg for Global Student Mental Health Week

Major cheating provider Chegg sent out a press release last week hawking the company’s partnerships with groups around student mental health.

To be clear, the release was about the affiliations with outside organizations, not about mental health foremost. The headline of the release is:

In It Together: Chegg Partners With Organizations Around the World for Third Annual Global Student Mental Health Week

The subject is Chegg. The verb is partners.

If you follow industrial cheating providers at all, you know this game. It’s whitewashing — borrowing the credibility of others by standing with them. As such, it’s the “partners” who should really know better and avoid damaging their own brands by being seen in public with the likes of Chegg.

For the record those partners in this press release are:

The non-profits and organizations Chegg has partnered with for this year’s Global Student Mental Health Week include Active Minds, Ayrton Senna Institute, Big Change, Born This Way Foundation, The Jed Foundation (JED), MABASTA, Nivishe Foundation, Our Minds Matter, PAVE, San Jose Earthquakes, Student Minds, and Young Invincibles.

I left the links in, should you be curious.

Also, Chegg’s focus on student mental health is convenient. I’m not saying students are not under unique and acute stress and pressure for the first time in their lives. I am not saying the issue is not important. I am saying that Chegg sells its services inside an envelope of student stress — telling students that college is hard, unfair even, and that using Chegg is the solution. You know, it’s always easier to just buy the answers than do the work.

I am just saying that student mental health is a convenient place for Chegg to care, since it helps sell their product. Just saying.

I also note in the press release that Chegg and a few of these nonprofit groups are hosting events on campus at Albany State University (Georgia) and Clemson University (South Carolina). Like the nonprofit groups in the press release, this is a very bad look for these schools — probably worse, actually. Letting Chegg hang a banner anywhere on your campus, for any reason, is a real problem.