Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Cheating. A growing problem (and the head-in-sand crowd + obnoxious Woketry)


Covid-19 forced colleges to move teaching online, where there are many opportunities for cheating about which faculty are unfamiliar. It seems to many of us that there's lots of cheating going on in our courses, and we need help to combat it. Some faculty have decided to bury their heads in the sand about the increase in student cheating. Indeed, some concerned faculty who draw attention to the problem are accused by some of their colleagues of undermining equity—or simply teaching badly. Good grief. —RB

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Some Students Use Chegg to Cheat

The Site Has Stopped Helping Colleges Catch Them

Chronicle of Higher Education 

By Taylor Swaak 

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 

Chegg is no longer providing student information to colleges conducting honor-code investigations through the platform. The company, along with competitors such as Course Hero and Bartleby, markets itself as a resource for college students seeking homework help and tutoring. These companies have cultivated reputations, though, as conduits for cheating, as some students misuse the platforms to seek answers to exam questions and other assignments. Faculty members say Chegg, which as of August reported 5.3 million subscribers, used to be an industry outlier in its willingness to share user-level data with institutions on a case-by-case basis — including IP addresses, user names and emails of those who had posted exam questions or even reviewed answers — as an accountability tool to deter cheating. 

“Chegg was the only site that was willing to actually engage with me,” recalled Ajay Shenoy, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who used Chegg’s honor-code investigations process in early 2020 to identify three of his students who’d posted his exam questions on the platform. “It made me feel like Chegg might actually care about academic integrity.” According to Chegg’s honor-code policy, which was updated on August 8, the company cooperates with colleges, but — in the interest of student privacy — is now providing only the date and time stamps of when questions and solutions are posted. Chegg officials declined to outline the company’s past disclosure practices. 


Study: online exam cheating is up 

Inside Higher Ed 

Apr 28, 2022  

Rates of cheating in online examinations have hit a record high, according to proctoring data that show one in 14 students was caught breaking the rules last year. 

A global analysis of data on three million tests that used the ProctorU proctoring platform found that “confirmed breaches” of test regulations—incidents where there was clear evidence of misconduct—were recorded in 6.6 percent of all cases. 

This is nearly 14 times higher than the 0.5 percent misconduct rate detected in the 15 months prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which triggered the widespread adoption of online assessments and, with this, a surge in the use of online proctoring services such as ProctorU. 

. . . .

Confirmed breaches included candidates looking at papers or books they should not have had, other people being present in the room during an assessment, or a student attempting to take a test on behalf of a classmate. 

[ProctorU founder Jarrod] Morgan said rates of cheating would likely be even higher at universities that did not use online proctoring, and he expressed concern that such high levels of rule breaking could devalue students’ qualifications.

. . . .

A report from ProctorU also details misconduct that did not amount to a definite breach of the rules. Nearly two-thirds of higher education students (64.4 percent) arrived at exams last year with “unpermitted resources” such as textbooks or mobile phones, while exam supervisors had to intervene to clarify or enforce rules to prevent potential cheating in nearly one in five cases (19.1 percent).

 

Another problem with shifting education online: A rise in cheating 

The Washington Post 

By Derek Newton 

August 7, 2020 

When universities went online in response to the coronavirus pandemic, so did the tests their students took. But one of the people who logged on to take an exam in a pre-med chemistry class at a well-known Mid-Atlantic university turned out not to be a student at all. 

He was a plant. An impostor. A paid ringer. 

Proctors — remote monitors some schools have hired to watch test-takers through their webcams — discovered by reviewing video recordings that this same person had taken tests for at least a dozen students enrolled at seven universities across the country. 

… 

Universal online testing has created a documented increase in cheating, often because universities, colleges and testing companies were unprepared for the scale of the transformation or unable or unwilling to pay for safeguards, according to faculty members and testing experts

Even with trained proctors watching test-takers and checking their IDs, cheating is up. Before the coronavirus forced millions of students online, one of the companies that provides that service, ProctorU, caught people cheating on fewer than 1 percent of the 340,000 exams it administered from January through March. During the height of remote testing, the company says, the number of exams it supervised jumped to 1.3 million from April through June, and the cheating rate rose above 8 percent. 

“We can only imagine what the rate of inappropriate testing activity is when no one is watching,” said Scott McFarland, chief executive of ProctorU. 

… 

Ninety-three percent of instructors think students are more likely to cheat online than in person, according to a survey conducted in May by the publishing and digital education company Wiley. Only a third said they were using some type of proctoring to prevent it. Many colleges and universities moved ahead with online testing without supervision to save money. Others opted instead for less expensive, scaled-down kinds of test security, such as software that can lock a web browser while a student takes a test. 

… 

Online tests have also meant a booming business for companies that sell homework and test answers, including Chegg and Course Hero. Students pay subscription fees to get answers to questions on tests or copies of entire tests with answers already provided. The tests are uploaded by other students who have already taken them, in exchange for credits, or answers are quickly provided by “tutors” who work for the sites. 

Though these sites have been around since before the pandemic, their use appears to have exploded as more tests are given online. Students used Chegg to allegedly cheat on online exams and tests in the spring at schools including Georgia Tech, Boston University, North Carolina State and Purdue, according to faculty at those institutions and news reports. 

At North Carolina State, more than 200 of the 800 students in a single Statistics 311 class were referred for disciplinary action for using “tutor-provided solutions” to exam questions from Chegg, said Tyler Johnson, the course coordinator

… 

The number of students who are cheating is almost certainly higher than the number being caught or reported. Research has shown that instructors believe cheating happens much less often than students do, which means they may not be looking for it. When they do find it, many choose to simply give cheaters an F, without reporting the incidents further. 

“One student with a pattern of cheating is an ethical problem for that student. Multiple students with a pattern of cheating devalues any grade or degree they might be receiving,” said Steve Saladin, a co-author of a study published in the spring by the Journal of the National College Testing Association. “And when cheating spreads to many students in many programs and schools, degrees and grades cease to provide a measure of an individual’s preparedness for a profession or position. And perhaps even more importantly, it suggests a society that blindly accepts any means to an end as a given.” 

Former Cheater-in-chief

The rise of contract cheating during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study through the eyes of academics in Kuwait
 

Inan Deniz Erguvan 

Language Testing in Asia volume 11, Article number: 34 (2021)  

In recent years, violations of academic integrity by students have increased and received attention from researchers, institutions, journalists, and policy-makers. While these violations vary widely, one emerging problem called ‘contract cheating’ has seen a global rise, across all disciplines. This sinister style of cheating has been aggravated “by the commodification of higher education and the increasingly popular sharing economy” (Williamson, 2019). 

The phrase ‘contract cheating’ was first created by Clarke and Lancaster (2006). Contract cheating occurs when somebody other than the student does the assignment, passes it onto the student who turns it in to gain academic credit. Some argue that contract cheating should involve a monetary transaction between a student and a company (paper mill), whereas others define it as a student outsourcing his or her work, without necessarily having to pay anything for it (Eaton & Turner, 2020). It is worth mentioning that over the last decade, an industry, in which some companies or agencies, also known as paper mills, are paid to undertake this kind of academic work has emerged (The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2020). 

Contract cheating can be observed in any kind of written work, such as essay writing, science lab projects, computer-based projects and assignments, or any other technical work. Another point that needs clarifying is the difference between contract cheating and ghostwriting. Although two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, the intention is not the same. For example, unless the celebrity is a well-known writer, it is presumed that he or she will be getting some assistance with their book. It may be acceptable to some extent to pay someone to ghostwrite a book; however, when contract cheating is involved in an assignment or a test, the instructor is deprived of a valuable tool to evaluate the student’s knowledge and score his or her performance reliably (Bretag, 2018). 

Although students have been documented to pay third parties to carry out academic work in their name since the 1970s, with the advent of the Internet there has been a surge in contract cheating. Globally, universities are literally struggling to combat contract cheating. According to Lee (2019), in Australia, 16 universities were shocked by almost 1000 students utilizing a website to ghostwrite essays. The New York Times highlighted the rise of contract cheating in North America, in 2019. The Varsity Blues Scandal also clearly displayed that student were cheating to gain admissions into reputable universities and thus hiring others to complete assignments on their behalf (Lee, 2019). Bretag et al. (2019) stated that 5.8% of university students take part in one or more types of cheating; however, a high percentage of students participate in ‘sharing’ behaviors, such as buying, selling, or trading assignments for others. Studies from various countries have found the prevalence of contract cheating to range from 3.5% in Australia (Curtis & Clare, 2017) to 18.9% in Turkey (Eret & Ok, 2014). Also, a study in Czechia found 34% of students knew someone who got engaged in contract cheating, and 87% of students were aware of paper mills (Foltynek & Kralikova, 2018). 

There are some strong indications that the potential for academic cheating has become even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic when universities all over the world had to shift to online learning. This shift has allowed more opportunities for students to complete assignments with online assistance; as a result, contract cheating has emerged as a real threat to academic integrity. Students believed that cheating in online exams was easier than the ones held in person; therefore, they tend to cheat more during online (King et al. 2009) 

… Contract cheating is a serious academic misconduct that threatens the academic integrity of the student’s grades and their qualifications. The consequences are not limited to individuals, as contract cheating also raises suspicion about all the degrees awarded by an institution. The effects of plagiarism and cheating continue even after formal education is completed (Williamson, 2019). Some studies demonstrated that undergraduate students, who engage in academic misconduct, are more likely to display inappropriate behaviors during their work life and there is a strong correlation between self-reported academic dishonesty and the level of corruption of a country (Guerrero-Dib et.al. 2020; Orosz et al. 2018). According to Bretag (2019), contract cheating is a threat to public safety as future doctors, engineers, and social workers who have outsourced their learning could pose a serious risk for the society. When researchers and scientists purchase their theses, publications, and qualifications, they will even endanger the credibility of science. 


Cheating on the rise in UK universities during Covid, say researchers 

The Guardian UK

Call for student essay-writing services to be outlawed to preserve academic integrity 

10 Feb 2021


UK researchers are warning of an alarming rise in cheating in universities since the Covid pandemic hit, after detecting a tripling of requests to a major “homework help” website and an increase in the number of “essay mills” as courses and assessments have moved online. 

Researchers at Imperial College London (ICL) studied requests to Chegg, a US-based homework support website, and found students were using the site to ask for help with exam-style questions and receiving answers live, potentially within exam time limits, raising concerns about the credibility of online assessment. The warning came as the former universities minister Chris Skidmore introduced a 10-minute rule bill in the Commons seeking to outlaw essay-writing services in the UK, saying they threaten to “damage academic integrity beyond repair”.

… Skidmore also cited the ICL research, which focused on requests submitted to Chegg by students in five subjects – computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, physics and chemistry – and compared the number of requests between April and August 2019 with the same period in 2020. 

The analysis found the number of requests had increased by 196.25%. “This increase corresponds with the time when many courses moved to be delivered and assessed online,” the paper said. “The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities.” 

The paper, written by Prof Thomas Lancaster and Codrin Cotarlan and published in the International Journal for Educational Integrity, calls for academic institutions to put interventions in place “to minimise the risk to educational standards posed by sites such as Chegg, particularly since increased online teaching and assessment may continue after the pandemic”.

… 

Essay mills have been a growing source of concern in the UK higher education sector in recent years, but the threat has been magnified by the pandemic as students reach out for their services on “a mass scale”.


Reports Of Cheating At Colleges Soar During The Pandemic 

NPR 

August 27, 2021 

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077 — more than three times the previous year's number. At the University of Georgia, cases more than doubled; from 228 in the fall of 2019 to more than 600 last fall. And, at The Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before

. . . .

Unauthorized collaboration was a big factor in reports of misconduct at Virginia Commonwealth, says Karen Belanger, the university's director of student conduct and academic integrity. "They were so desperate to connect that they were using — or in some courses being encouraged to create — group chats," she says. 

"Those chats then became a place where they may talk about homework or talk about exam questions."


Students Cheat. How Much Does It Matter? 

Chronicle of Higher Education 

OCTOBER 21, 2020 

As the pandemic continues, the debate grows louder....

 

Cheating, Inc.: How Writing Papers for American College Students Has Become a Lucrative Profession Overseas 
New York Times

Sep 7, 2019

Amid the college admissions scandal, another type of cheating was overlooked: Students already in college who pay others to write their papers.

1 comment:

Bob said...

Having worked with AP Lit and later AP Language as a reader and later as a table leader I and others began to be aware of some cheating going on: posting questions that others might read before they took their AP exam. I also noted this when I read the AWPE for the UC system. I did over 30 years of readings for AP and about 10 for AWPE.

IN these systems you can cheat, get caught and take the tests over but tell students that that does not work in the business world. Get caught and you are usually OUT.

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