Exam Cheating More Than Tripled at University of Sydney
Plus, the most ironic and implausible development in academic integrity - Chegg wins a legal challenge claiming a company stole their content. Plus, surprising no one, students use Chegg to cheat.
Issue 255
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Exam Cheating Tripled at University of Sydney, Up Elsewhere Too
According to a September editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald (subscription required), some schools in Australia saw “unprecedented attempts” to cheat the system when they moved to online assessments.
From the coverage:
At the University of Sydney, the number of students caught cheating in exams more than tripled in 2022 over the previous year. The University of NSW reported a 79 per cent rise over the same period. In one case at UNSW in 2022, 194 engineering students were caught online during a 2½-hour exam discussing each exam question.
To start, none of this should be surprising. We’ve seen similar, multi-x increases at universities worldwide, directly and undeniably linked to online assessment delivery during Covid, and after.
As such, the article continues:
Given the huge rise in detected cheating, it is unsurprising that since the University of Sydney returned to pen-and-paper exams, it recorded a 45 per cent drop in attempts to trick and beat the system. In the second semester, just 5.5 per cent of exams will be online and international students are required to be on campus.
No question — closing the gap between assessor and the assessed reduces cheating. A reality that some schools are willing to overlook, according to the SMH:
However, other tertiary institutions are sticking with online testing. UNSW will focus instead on how to design assessments to minimise the chances of misconduct.
Stating the obvious, there is no form of assessment design that eliminates cheating. None. Changing assessment design only changes the way students cheat. If your assessments are going to be online, you must protect them. I mean, if you care.
But the best part about the editorial, in my view, is this bit:
Australia’s universities owe it to themselves, their students and the nation to publicly adopt a zero-tolerance policy on “academic misconduct”. They should make it clear they charge fees but are not, in any way, for sale.
And:
Cheating only undermines the credibility of the student, the institution and the qualification.
Preach.
What I especially like is that the paper puts the reality of cheating in the context of a national threat, chipping away at the nation’s industry, education reputation and competitiveness. Cheating is a national problem. And schools do absolutely owe it to the nation to address it quickly and comprehensively. Which I mention on the off chance that anyone in the United States is paying attention.
Absolutely Outrageous Irony Alert: Chegg Wins Lawsuit Claiming a Different Site Stole It’s Intellectual Property
No, really.
It’s not April.
I think this actually happened.
Spotted by a reader, Bloomberg Law has reported that cheating flagship Chegg has won a lawsuit allowing it to seize the website Homeworkify, because the latter used and apparently gave away Chegg’s answers to homework questions and tests.
I cannot read the whole story because it requires a subscription and it’s expensive. But it seems to say that Chegg sued Homeworkify for stealing its intellectual property — the bread-and-butter of its cheating empire, answers. This appears to be the story:
Online learning platform Chegg Inc. may seize the internet domain of Homeworkify, a competitor that allegedly provided free homework answers to students after stealing them from Chegg, a federal court ruled.
First, “online learning platform.” Spare me.
But I see why Chegg is upset — no one can give away the cheating services they’re trying to sell. If only they could sue ChatGPT.
Come on. Chegg being upset that someone used their intellectual property without permission is chef’s kiss proof that Chegg is entirely devoid of self-awareness. And that we live in a world where irony may be dead, but it will occasionally rise from the grave and punch you square in the mouth.
I mean Chegg and Course Hero and their investors have made an absolute living by marketing and monetizing the intellectual property of schools and professors and students — for years. But the moment someone lifts a loaf of bread from their basket, they’re wounded and outraged and out for justice.
Chegg is, right now, being sued by Pearson for — wait for it — stealing their intellectual property (see Issue 55). Technically, I guess, they’re accused of using it without permission and compensation, but tomato tomato.
That works better when you say it.
Anyway, it is terrible when people take the work you’ve done and give it away or sell it for their own profit. That’s why it’s usually illegal. And why these cases win, when people file them.
Research: College Accounting Students Used Chegg During Exams
According to new research, and some news coverage of it, as many as one in four students in an intermediate accounting course accessed Chegg during lightly secured online exams.
The research is by Jenelle Conaway, an accounting professor at George Mason University.
I’ll review the full research in a future Issue but, from the abstract:
In periods of fewer online exam safeguards, 13–25 percent of intermediate accounting students are identified as using Chegg during exams. Corroborating evidence shows an anomalous improvement in student performance in online exams with minimal safeguards, which is attenuated by an increase in mitigation policies.
Let me get this right — as many as 25% of students used Chegg during an exam, but Chegg does not sell or support cheating.
Now, as we’ve outlined many, many times, Chegg could stop this, but they have not been inclined to do so.
They could delay the giving of answers — nope. They said that’s unfair to students who, we imagine, really need the answers during the exam (see Issue 10). They could require students to use an official school e-mail to access their site. They say that’s too complicated. They could cooperate with teachers when they ask for information about student misconduct. But they quit doing that (see Issue 152).
But they’re not a cheating company. Not at all. They know people are cheating on their site. They could stop it. They don’t.
That students were using Chegg to cheat on an unsecured online exam is not news. At least it should not be. Nonetheless, the news coverage gives more details of the research findings:
their study shows that, in the spring 2020 semester, nearly 13 percent of students were identified as using Chegg while taking final exams. The number of cheating students increased in the summer 2020 semester, where nearly a quarter of the class used Chegg during an exam.
Conaway, the researcher, told the press:
none of the faculty that we spoke with were aware that a student can submit an instructor-created question and get an answer in real-time during a live exam.
Probably true. But, again, getting answers to exam questions during an exam is what Chegg does.
Moreover, Conaway says her stats — 13% and 25% — did not count students who found similar questions and answers in Chegg’s database or used another service to get real-time answers. Course Hero, for example, offers this same service. So, the numbers are real baselines.
From the coverage:
Conaway comments that these startling stats likely don't tell the whole story. Chegg users are able to look up a test question by searching just a phrase or a sentence, or even taking a picture of the question. "Chegg has a very large collection of academic material," Conaway says. "If students do not find their exact test question, they can usually find something very similar. We didn't look into that kind of website use at all because it is very challenging to identify."
Yes, students can get answers to exam questions by sending Chegg a photo of the question.
Continuing from the media story:
Conaway's research highlights Chegg and other academic resource websites as a significant challenge exacerbated by adopting online learning and assessments following the COVID-19 pandemic. Professors had to find ways to adapt to these changes; however, student monitoring has been difficult since switching to an online format.
Conaway explains, "We just don't have the same level of monitoring online as we do in person. It is really challenging for faculty members who are in a position where they have to deliver their course, or their exams, or their graded assignments online."
Conaway suggests securing exams and revising questions frequently to limit cheating. I’ll get into those details when I get to the research itself.
I should also mention that the news coverage quoted above is from Phys.org, which has absolutely spun gold in its coverage of cheating. They are, in my view, among the best on the topic, if not flatly the best.