e-CHEATING EXTREME
Head-in-the-sand?
Eyes wide open?
“Oh? No, I didn’t know you have a part-time job. What’s your job?”
“You won’t like it.”
…and then she proceeded to tell me that she takes online courses for other students, from beginning to end. My jaw dropped. I said, “…okaaaay…” then I stuck my head in the sand. She’s a professional cheater.
The next day I was “eyes wide open” and dying to know more.
So I asked. And she told me.
The Cheater— Not a Big Deal
She’s smart. She likes learning. She’s efficient and doesn’t procrastinate. She savvy. These skills make it so she can do well in her courses, plus do well in the additional course she takes on the side. She’s interested in a lot of different topics, so the “man she works for” offers her choices in courses. But she is picky and only works as a cheater for the courses she thinks will be interesting.
As I see it, she’s got the upper hand in this game.
The pay is good at $1,000 per course. She lives in China so that kind of money is like gold. She has a reputation for pulling As. And “As pay” more. For a 25 year old Chinese female with no work experience, she’s a rock star.
I asked her how she got started in this gig.
She told me she lost her iphone. Her parents couldn’t afford to buy her another one, and they didn’t want her working. As with Chinese culture, school is a priority in her family. Initially, being a cheater allowed her to buy a new iphone, with money left for things like….oh yeah….dresses! It wasn’t long before she got hooked on expensive designer dresses. That’s when the idea of earning a little money to get out of trouble turned into earning money to support a lifestyle. She has a lot of dresses.
How it works.
Because I am an Ed Tech professor, the fact that Internet and technology drives this e-cheating business draws me in.
During a long conversation with the cheater I learned that the cheater never interacts with the student who is registered for the course. The “employer” owns a restaurant and brokers cheaters for student as a side business.
Once a cheater is hired, the textbook is drop shipped to him or her. The student’s login to the online learning system is provided. Then the cheater works through the course from beginning to end, as if they are the student who is registered for the course. The deadlines are met, the written responses are consistent from beginning to end, and there is no evidence left behind.
This is a job of convenience. As long as the cheater meets the assignment deadlines, this “job” can be done from anywhere, any time of day.
I asked her if she is scared she might get caught.
It all fits in her life like a puzzle, and she doesn’t have to let anyone in on this — not her parents, not her roommates, and not her boyfriend. She said she’s not scared about getting caught, and I sensed that she was telling the truth. This baffled me. Does she lack morality? Is it that she is young and feels invincible? Is she oblivious to the fact that this is illegal? Is she starved for money?
Could she really get caught? And if she were to get caught, what would the consequence be? I sensed she felt getting caught would have limited impact on her.
Foreign students cheat more.
According to the Wall Street Journal, of the reported cheating incidents in more than a dozen large U.S. public universities, foreign students account for more than 5 times the number of cheating incidents than U.S. students. This is a dire situation for online programs that are trying to attract international populations.
Another story that fired me up.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs), are online courses with unlimited enrollment and open enrollment. Harvard and MIT are pushing this innovation and are getting lots of airtime as a method for course delivery to the masses. But researchers have found that 25% of students who have taken 20 or more MOOC courses have cheated. Students create two accounts: one “harvest account” to garner correct answers, and a “master account” to submit the correct answers. This poses a serious threat to the trustworthiness of any MOOC certification.
Is this a Big Deal?
I am a professor at a major university, and I teach online. I also manage an online program that is one of the largest programs in the university. The idea of my students hiring an imposter to take their course struck me hard. Really really hard.
I reached out to a few colleagues. “Am I overreacting?” I heard things like…
“Of course it’s a big deal, but cheating happens, always has…. This is not a new phenomenon.”
“OMG. I never thought about cheating that way before. It would be so easy to do!”
“[head shake] [jaw drop] Seriously?”
It’s wrong!
I would venture to say that every higher ed institution has some sort of Academic Integrity Policy to which students must adhere. The policy at my university has very clear sanctions for cheating of any sort, including visible implications that appear on the student’s transcript.
Technology solutions.
There are technological solutions to deter and sometimes detect cheaters. For example, SafeAssign is a plagiarism software tool connected with the learning management tool we use, Blackboard. It detects passages of text that are the same or similar to text from peers who have submitted the same assignment. It also compares a student’s submission to text on the Internet. The instructor can review any identified text to see if it was a quoted citation or was plagiarized. When assignment submissions are set up using a SafeAssign submission link, students are able to review the plagiarism report. This is a proactive measure to help promote originality. When a SafeAssign submission link is not used, faculty still have the option of running student work through the SafeAssign process.
Turnitin produces a tool called Feedback Studio. This tool scans a submission for similarity to existing assignments in its database, then allows instructors to score a student’s work based on a rubric. Investigations of cheating by Turnitin demonstrate plagiarism is not a black-and-white issue. Through an in-depth look at over 800 instances of cheating, where instances were reviewed and categorized, 10 categories emerged. Categories were ranked ranging from “re-tweeting” where proper citation is used but the text is too close to the original wording, to “cloning,” which is “an act of submitting another’s work, word-for-word, as one’s own.” Instructors who experience any level of cheating and are faced with determining an appropriate consequence might find this list to be useful (see p. 4).
Some colleges at my university track IP addresses to identify (for example) students who log on to a bunch of computers from the same location and work through the tests together. Scale of this method is an obvious concern.
Cheating is multi-faceted; it seems that when technological solutions are applied to one concern, another type of cheating ring crops up. I’m certain we will never be able to keep up, but I am committed to try. I want my students to graduate with a degree that means something.
NOW what? Now WHAT?
I have thought about the ease for cheating, especially online cheating, since I coordinate an online program in my college.
I believe cheating is not a new phenomenon, although the growth of online programs (and technology) have exacerbated the problem. But if X percent of students cheat in a course of 30 students, how many cheaters are there in my courses, which have unlimited enrollment and currently sit at near 150?
There are many known kinds of cheating that take place online — students take the papers of others and modify a few things and resubmit as theirs, students purchase assignments from web sites, students who XXX. (I NEED MORE EXAMPLES HERE)
My new position on curbing e-cheating.
I cannot prevent cheating in my courses, but I want to do everything possible to keep honest students honest. Here is a list of some of the course revisions I have made since this ah-ha experience:
- I use SafeAssign assignment submissions where it makes sense.
- SafeAssign has additional features that allow the instructor to leave comments directly within the paper, and at strategic spots. It also has a voice message system where the instructor can personalize a comment to the student. It would be interesting to study the level of emotional connection with students produced by these tools and the level of cheating in a course.
- I use multiple choice testing as a low-stakes comprehension check for the readings. I set them up with no timer. I tell students they are “open book.”
- I have created several “off line” tasks for students to explore (or practice) course ideas in their local environments. Examples include interviewing of local experts and writing a reflection about it (but submitting their audio recording), collection and analysis of local data relevant to the topic, and creating multimedia that includes THEM.
- My students’ introduction post to the class discussion board is a selfie video (no editing done). They tell their classmates some interesting things about themselves, and include their career goals.
Cheaters are always going to be a half step ahead of this game.
Knowing this, going forward I will be mindful of developing creative ways to keep things honest.
I know each course is unique and my ideas may not be fitting to all courses. I would love to hear about your experiences and ideas for solutions, and I would be happy to include them here.
#EdStudiesASU #drt_ech #echeating