New Tool Can Pinpoint Collusion Cheating

Plus, an education magazine goes undercover on contract cheating. Plus, cheating at West Point causes policy change and 50+ cadets held back. Plus, more cheating.

Issue 20

Researchers Develop Free Tool to Detect Collusion in Online Exams

As I wrote over at Forbes, Mark Biggin, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory along with graduate student Guanao Yan and Professor Jingyi Jessica Li at UCLA, developed Q-SID, a tool that can detect when students are colluding, sharing exam information and answers. Q-SID, they say

has a 0.3% false positive rate for placing students into Collusion Groups while identifying 50% to 90% of the students who have colluded on a given exam

Collusion is one of the most common types of cheating as students use remote chat apps and co-working tools to complete exams together, outside the watchful eyes of professors or exam proctors. Collusion cheating is incredibly difficult to detect and stop, making Q-SID a potential breakthrough.

But what’s most striking about Biggin is that he developed Q-SID after finding 50 of his 256 students had cheated on one of his online exams. And after he’d followed the direction of his academic center, shifting his exams to open book and clearly reviewing what resources were permitted. He said

I have tried following the advice given by the academic center, including things they say work, like open book tests and those suggestions are not effective. We’ve shown that. We measured it.

Biggin also said that the idea that simply talking to students would stop cheating is “just wishful thinking.”

He’s right.

EdTech Magazine Discovers Contract, Essay Mill Cheating

In what it says will be a two-part set of stories, EdTech Magazine went “undercover” to show what students do on contract cheating sites. Spoiler alert: they’re cheating.

The magazine quotes one insider, an “academic ghost writer who currently works at a homework help site” saying

Specifically, there has been an increase in the number of students posting that they want full online classes done for them. Most of the time, students have no problem finding a contractor.

I’m cynical about this not because it’s not true or accurate but because I wrote about this exact thing - paying someone to take an online class for you - more than five years ago in The Atlantic.

Nonetheless, the continued spotlight on the hiring of academic fraudsters is important and this EdTech Magazine piece does add two new pieces of information.

The piece says, for example, that

To avoid legal liability, some homework help sites are using automation tools to edit the language of posts. Whenever students submit a post, the first line always says something like “I need help understanding the assignment,” or “Help me learn.”

Honestly, that feels dubious. Mostly because it’s unlikely that adding that line to a request would relieve anyone from liability. But it’s interesting.

The article also says that cheating “tutors” are offering discounts to students who give them direct access to the online course - access they use to solicit other students in the class. Sneaky.

Curious what it costs for an imposter to take an online class for a student? Taking the entire online class costs between $300 and $700, EdTech Magazine quotes a source as saying.

51 West Points Cadets Will Repeat a Year, Eight are Expelled Over Cheating

Multiple outlets reported this week that 51 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point will have to repeat a full year of instruction due to cheating. Eight cadets were expelled, though three of those may apply for readmission after a year. In all, 73 cadets were implicated; six resigned.

In addition, the Wall St. Journal reported that, as a result of the cheating, the Academy is ending its policy of “willful admission” that granted leniency for those who admit the misconduct. The policy blocked the cadets from being expelled if they admitted wrongdoing. The WSJ reports:

The superintendent said the decision to end the willful-admission process came after a review of the cadet honor system in October. He said it hasn’t worked and is viewed by cadets as a plea-bargaining tool, while limiting his disciplinary options.

“I would have evaluated things differently,” he said.

South Africa Schools Deal With Chegg Cheating

At least four universities in South Africa - the University of Cape Town, University of Witwatersrand, University of KwaZulu-Natal and Wits University - are dealing with student cheating on Chegg, according to news reports. Those include that

a Wits lecturer noticed that about 200 to 300 students had answered questions in an applied mathematics paper in the same way and raised suspicions that alleged cheats got the answers from the same source, a tutoring platform called Chegg.

The school said fewer students were involved, but confirmed the incident.

UKZN spokesperson Normah Zondo said

“The university is aware of the website/app. The existence of such a website is extremely worrying for any academic institution.”

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - Course Hero hosted an event on academic integrity. No, seriously. And cheating is so bad in Greece, they’re dealing with what they’re calling “corona degrees.” Again, seriously.

Don’t miss it - share and sign up below.