Cisco: Course Hero is "Academic Fraud" Provider

Plus, cheating increases in Wisconsin. Plus, another survey shows cheating more likely in online classes.

Issue 42

Cisco and the “Academic Fraud” List

As that Course Hero “academic summit” is going on, and as several professors and education professionals have inexplicably agreed to participate, I wrote an article for Forbes on Cisco’s impressive effort to block access to “academic fraud” websites such as Course Hero.

The skinny is that Cisco - one of the world’s largest network security providers - has a list of more than a thousand websites it has reviewed and considers to be “academic fraud” providers. Surprising no one, Course Hero is on that list. From the article:

Probably unknown to many, one of the categories in the Cisco portfolio of types of sites is an “academic fraud” bucket. In it are companies such as Course Hero, one of the largest sites to profit from the unauthorized, often banned sharing of academic content. “Course Hero definitely provides straight up answers to textbook questions - click on this, see the answers. I don’t think there’s any dispute that it could fall into that category,” Schultz said.

Schultz is Jaeson Schultz, Technical Leader at Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. He also has this great post on academic integrity, which I touched on in Issue 37.

Candidly, what Cisco is doing is amazing and important in the fight to stop academic misconduct, especially those who profit from it.

If you’re reading this and you’re at a college, please ask if your institution uses Cisco for its network - more than a thousand schools do. If your school does, ask your IT department to block the websites that Cisco has flagged as “academic fraud” sites. It really is that easy.

Cheating in Wisconsin Colleges “Increased Substantially” During Online Learning

Wisconsin Public Radio has the report of big upticks in reported cheating at the state’s universities. From their reporting:

Reports of cheating and other forms of academic misconduct increased substantially at six of the University of Wisconsin System's 13 universities when classes were moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

At those six schools, WPR says reports “nearly doubled.” In one example, the state’s flagship:

UW-Madison reported 608 cases of academic misconduct for the 2020-21 school year as of April 27. During the 2019-20 school year, 317 total cases were reported. 

As has been observed at other schools dealing with similar steep increases in misconduct, the schools say the spikes were driven by “unauthorized collaboration between students taking online exams.” And school leaders blamed student “stress.”

The WPR report also says that:

At most of the system's other seven universities, academic misconduct cases declined, some significantly

Put me down as laughably skeptical about that.

Survey: Students Twice as Likely to Cheat in Online Exams

I missed this when it came out in June but a report in Times Higher Ed, says that, according to survey of German students, cheating is “twice as likely” in online exams as it is in on-site exams. From that article:

A survey of 1,608 students in higher education institutions across Germany found that 61.4 per cent said that they had used “unallowed assistance and/or engaged in direct exchange with other students” during online exams over summer 2020.

For on-site exams taken over the same period, 31.7 per cent admitted to this sort of behaviour, according to a preprint published on PsyArXiv.

One of the study’s authors told the paper,

Online examinations without additional safety procedures may have provided students with the sense that they can cheat without being detected

True.

Thomas Lancaster, a senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London and noted academic integrity researcher, said the results from Germany were not surprising.

Also true.

See Issue 36 for another survey showing that cheating is more common in online classes.

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - an international survey says cheating is the top concern with online exams. Plus, a look at that great series on assessment in Times Higher Ed. Plus, I may finally get to that “white paper” commissioned by Course Hero. Plus, more cheating.

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