On that Curious Course Hero Hire
Plus, why Wiley's errors matter. Plus, things about Course Hero.
Issue 92
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More on the New Hire at Course Hero
Major cheating company Course Hero made news in education circles recently when it hired Sean Michael Morris, a known critic of education technology.
Well, more notably, Morris is a critic of anti-cheating technology such as remote exam proctoring and plagiarism detection software. So, his joining Course Hero - that checks out (see Issue 90).
In any case, EdSurge has a new summary and interview with Morris, in which they admirably ask him about Course Hero’s connection to cheating.
A few things from that article. One, in case we were not clear about how well he fits in with Course Hero, Morris said,
My focus has primarily been on things like learning management systems and proctoring services and plagiarism-detection services and that sort of thing
Someone who hates proctoring and plagiarism-detection seems perfectly suited to work for a cheating provider, if you ask me. But we covered that already.
When EdSurge asked Morris about cheating with Course Hero, he answered, in part,
Of course, you know, this was an issue before the internet. … And I remember when the internet became much more available to everybody, educators saying, ‘The students will look at any answers they need. They'll just be able to Google it and find out.’
And there was a huge fear around, around cheating. Then there's always a fear of cheating.
Well, that clarifies exactly nothing.
Cheating was an issue before, so … I don’t know. I guess the talking point is that since people cheated before, there’s no reason to pay attention to the billion-dollar companies that now sell cheating at unprecedented scale.
The final note from the story is that it says:
Close colleagues defended Morris on social media this week.
One of those colleagues mentioned in the story as defending Morris was Jesse Stommel. According to the published agenda, Stommel was a featured speaker at a 2021 Course Hero event (see Issue 29 or Issue 44).
Again, seems like a perfect fit if you ask me.
Things to Know About Course Hero
Cheating facilitator Course Hero has repeatedly said it is not a cheating site (see Issue 90). Cool.
There are a few things about Course Hero that you should know however.
Did you know that you can look up how many “study resources” Course Hero has for your school? The link to do that is right here.
Course Hero has, for example, 278,999 “resources” from the University of Florida. It has 189,965 from the University of Michigan, 23,508 from Georgetown University and 8,976 from CalTech and so on.
And while it’s impossible to say exactly how many of those “resources” are copyright protected, a good many are. They are test questions, assignments, class syllabi and study guides - the intellectual property of professors or colleges that, in many cases, have not given permission for their material to be shared online or sold for profit.
You can also search Course Hero for professors’ names by using the search bar at the top of the Course Hero site.
For fun, I went over to the Harvard College website, which has a section of nice professor profiles. The first profile was on Stephanie Burt. When I tossed Professor Burt’s name in Course Hero, the very first document that pops up is an “anthology” that says “copyright 2017 by Stephanie Burt” but there are several others.
I can’t see that document unless I pay Course Hero. And it’s possible that Professor Burt sold her papers to Course Hero or gave them permission to profit from her work. But maybe not.
The point is that Course Hero is selling the work of thousands of professors from thousands of schools. Many - probably most - have no idea.
Course Hero says it will remove material protected by copyrights.
But the process isn’t easy.
You can find out how to do that right here.
Course Hero will have “tutors” answer academic questions in minutes.
Course Hero is no longer just a file sharing site. It now uses the Chegg model of providing rapid answers to anyone who can type or take a photo of a question with their phones. They say you can “receive answers and explanations in as few as 30 minutes.” The first five questions are even free. How thoughtful.
I used the service to ask whether using Course Hero was cheating. In about ten minutes a “tutor” sent me a 381-word response that starts:
Using Course Hero is not considered to be cheating.
That’s interesting.
It’s also interesting that when I asked my question, Course Hero’s site said, “Your information will not be shared or made public.” Seems like an odd stance for a “tutor.”
Anyway, like Chegg and other answers-for-money services, the Course Hero feature is particularly handy if you’re taking an un-proctored online exam, especially one with a lenient time limit. If you’re stuck, snap a photo and get the answer.
And, getting answers in minutes is especially helpful considering that:
Course Hero bought an AI-powered paraphrasing tool last year.
In 2021, in addition to buying the well-known literature short-cut outfit Cliff’s Notes, Course Hero bought the less well-known QuillBot. It’s an AI-powered paraphrasing tool that will take any text you dump in and spin it into something that’s different, instantly. Seriously, go check it out.
So, if you find and pay for an essay on Course Hero, or get answers to homework, or pay Course Hero for those answers directly, you can - for another fee - have a Course Hero company paraphrase it so you’re not copying someone’s work directly.
That’s a very convenient service for a company that is totally not in the cheating business - wink, wink.
Why Wiley’s Mistakes Matter
In two recent Issues (Issue 89 and Issue 90) I’d pointed out the obvious and embarrassing errors Wiley made in publicizing their newest academic integrity survey. Wiley partly corrected a few of those.
Unfortunately, Wiley’s errors and intentional misinformation matter because people report on things like surveys and cheating and those news outlets don’t always read the actual report or understand what they’re writing.
The Good
Inside Higher Ed reported on the Wiley survey and did a pretty good job, getting the narrative right. Concerns about cheating were down among teachers, but still quite high, with “plenty to worry about,” IHE said. The publication interviewed an actual expert on academic integrity, David Rettinger, and even got the 77% number right, even though Wiley left it out of their press release:
The research and education company found that 77 percent of instructors surveyed last year believed students were more likely to cheat online than in person
IHE did quite well, putting the report in context and teasing out the actual news.
EdScoop also covered the survey and, likewise, did pretty well with it. It too got the 77% number and noted that the decline in concern was 16% instead of the much larger drop that Wiley implied in their press statements. EdScoop also gets credit for citing facts as facts, such as that cheating:
increased with online and hybrid learning during the coronavirus pandemic
True.
The EdScoop story did mess up one thing when it reported that more than two-thirds of students said that use of remote proctoring would make them less likely to cheat. That’s correct. But the story added:
Online proctoring has raised ethical concerns about bias, privacy and false accusations — software monitoring user activity during exams sparked protests at Dartmouth Medical School after a rash of cheating accusations.
Concerns presented as news - pointlessly appended to a section about proctoring being a strong cheating deterrent.
Moreover, lumping online proctoring with the Dartmouth issue is misleading and incorrect. The issue at Dartmouth was that they did not proctor their exams, causing the school to use data from their learning management system as evidence of cheating. The “software monitoring user activity” was not proctoring and was not designed to detect misconduct (see Issue 33). For some reason, EdScoop put them in the same sentence.
Still, EdScoop got it right.
The Ugly
Where IHE and EdScoop got the Wiley survey right, coverage in University Business manifestly did not.
It’s pretty clear that UB wrote their story based on Wiley’s misleading and manipulative press release and not the survey itself.
For example, UB says:
At the time, more than 60% [of faculty] expressed worries that they would be unable to control deceptive practices and students taking advantage of being in online environments.
Nearly two years later, those tensions have eased. According to the new study Is Concern About Academic Integrity Falling? released by Wiley, only one-quarter of 2,860 college instructors surveyed said they have those same fears now, buoyed by their positive impressions of virtual spaces.
That is more or less what Wiley said, true. But that’s the problem.
The “one-quarter” number that Wiley highlighted and University Business repeated is the share of faculty who said online cheating was “significantly” more likely - not the share who said it was more likely. That number, as correctly reported by others, is 77%.
Big difference.
Again, Wiley never included the 77% in their press release, preferring to highlight the much smaller number instead. To find the level of overall faculty belief, you had to actually read the report. UB simply took Wiley’s slant from the press release and repeated it - inaccurately at that.
Moreover, Wiley never even asked teachers about "impressions of virtual spaces.” At least no such question is in their published report. Wiley did imply that familiarity and comfort with online teaching were the reasons for the observed drop in cheating concerns, but the company was careful to say they were making a supposition. Since they never asked, they had little choice. But in their story, UB just stated Wiley’s nuanced inference as factual causation.
That’s inexcusable.
Then there’s this gem from further on in the UB story:
Only half [of the students] said online learning makes it easier for them cheat
Only half.
Also, it was 59% - not half.
UB also said:
instructors say they aren’t catching any more students cheating online than they do in person
Also, not true. Here, the difference is not major but the survey unquestionably showed that more teachers were catching students cheating online than in-person.
This is why what Wiley did is dangerous. Intentional misinformation gets repeated, stretched, distorted and printed as fact, either deliberately or carelessly. University Business and Wiley can do better. They should.
ICAI Appoints Directors, Seeks Award Nominees
The International Center for Academic Integrity announced three new directors this week. They are:
Eric M. Anderman, Ph.D., professor of Educational Psychology and of Quantitative Research, Evaluation, and Measurement in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University
Greer Murphy, Ed.D., director of Academic Honesty for Policy and Education in Arts, Sciences, & Engineering at the University of Rochester
Blaire Wilson, associate director of the Honor Council and Deputy Title IX Coordinator for Emory College of Arts & Sciences at Emory University
The ICAI also announced this week that it is seeking nominations for various awards. The list and nomination information are here.
Notes: In the last Issue, I wrote about an article by retired Cal State University, East Bay professor Loretta G. Breuning. I neglected to include the link to it. It was an oversight and the article is here.