Cheating by group chat

[Anonymous]

I’m a professor teaching two virtual classes and one in-person class. For exams, my college approved Lockdown Browser but not Respondus Monitor.

One of my virtual classes has remarkably high scores. After two exams with an average of 90, my dean gave me permission to use Respondus Monitor and the average fell to 50%.

I just heard from a student that for the first two exams, someone filmed the exam and posted it in their group chat.

Is there some way to get on the student group chats to see who did it?

These are pre-health students. Your future nurses and doctors.

[Anonymous]

There is no way to see student’s text messages. This is why college needs to happen in person and not online, but I think they may have won this one because you won’t have proof.

[Anonymous]

Make the exams open book and make them much harder and longer. Make them at least put effort into their cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a professor teaching two virtual classes and one in-person class. For exams, my college approved Lockdown Browser but not Respondus Monitor.

One of my virtual classes has remarkably high scores. After two exams with an average of 90, my dean gave me permission to use Respondus Monitor and the average fell to 50%.

I just heard from a student that for the first two exams, someone filmed the exam and posted it in their group chat.

Is there some way to get on the student group chats to see who did it?

These are pre-health students. Your future nurses and doctors.

You have to seek permission from the group administrator to become a member of the chat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Make the exams open book and make them much harder and longer. Make them at least put effort into their cheating.

Yes.
I am a big proponent of complex problems for which you can't just memorize or lift answers straight out of the lesson notes.
Open books seems like it helps, but actually it doesn't for such problems, because you don't have the time to leaf through the book and figure out something. You need to have studied beforehand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Make the exams open book and make them much harder and longer. Make them at least put effort into their cheating.

Yes.
I am a big proponent of complex problems for which you can't just memorize or lift answers straight out of the lesson notes.
Open books seems like it helps, but actually it doesn't for such problems, because you don't have the time to leaf through the book and figure out something. You need to have studied beforehand.

The problem I have had this semester is that one person does study, but films themselves taking the test and uploads the video to the group chat.

I give clinical questions that require students to think critically about what they have learned. Someone is able to do it well and then upload their answers.

[Anonymous]

You give all three classes different exams, with different questions.

[Anonymous]

Make different exams? I suppose that would be considered unfair. But SATs have different problems.
All of the cheating is so sad. We value the wrong things.

I had a kid screwed by the cheaters in the first semester of remote. They threw the curves (science). She felt like she let prof down bc she was genuinely interested in the class, but her relative grades made her look indifferent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You give all three classes different exams, with different questions.

It can take 8+ hours to write a good exam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Make different exams? I suppose that would be considered unfair. But SATs have different problems.
All of the cheating is so sad. We value the wrong things.

I had a kid screwed by the cheaters in the first semester of remote. They threw the curves (science). She felt like she let prof down bc she was genuinely interested in the class, but her relative grades made her look indifferent.

This is sad and so wrong.

[Anonymous]

Tell all groups you are very disappointed by what has happened because you can see by the scores that someone disclosed the exam content to other sections. Remind them of the university policy re: academic dishonesty.

Then tell them you don't like grading on a curve, but you are considering doing so for the next exam, which means that if the first section to take the test chooses to disclose the results to other sections, they are hurting themselves/their own grades. Explain what grading on a curve means.

[Anonymous]

You need to discourage people sharing by de-incentivizing the person to share. I had a friend who the professors had an different way of grading things.

For her it went like this—they were graded “on a curve” but not the way most people would think. So you grade the papers, then rank them from high to low. Then you evenly distribute the grades. So if you have 100 students— the first 20 get A’s, the next 20 B’s, 20 C’s, 20 D’s and 20 F’s. If you want to be kind, you could do 25-25-25-15-10.

For a tiebreaker, give them a choice of 5 opinion questions. So if you have 30 students get the same exact grade, who gets an A or a B will be decided by the opinion question.

Tell the students that get a C, D, or F they can pull up their grade by doing XYZ (come up with something).

This dis-incentivizes the person who is giving out the answers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to discourage people sharing by de-incentivizing the person to share. I had a friend who the professors had an different way of grading things.

For her it went like this—they were graded “on a curve” but not the way most people would think. So you grade the papers, then rank them from high to low. Then you evenly distribute the grades. So if you have 100 students— the first 20 get A’s, the next 20 B’s, 20 C’s, 20 D’s and 20 F’s. If you want to be kind, you could do 25-25-25-15-10.

For a tiebreaker, give them a choice of 5 opinion questions. So if you have 30 students get the same exact grade, who gets an A or a B will be decided by the opinion question.

Tell the students that get a C, D, or F they can pull up their grade by doing XYZ (come up with something).

This dis-incentivizes the person who is giving out the answers.

Also forgot to add, the professors made the exams so difficult most students got less than 60%, so using this method actually benefited students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to discourage people sharing by de-incentivizing the person to share. I had a friend who the professors had an different way of grading things.

For her it went like this—they were graded “on a curve” but not the way most people would think. So you grade the papers, then rank them from high to low. Then you evenly distribute the grades. So if you have 100 students— the first 20 get A’s, the next 20 B’s, 20 C’s, 20 D’s and 20 F’s. If you want to be kind, you could do 25-25-25-15-10.

For a tiebreaker, give them a choice of 5 opinion questions. So if you have 30 students get the same exact grade, who gets an A or a B will be decided by the opinion question.

Tell the students that get a C, D, or F they can pull up their grade by doing XYZ (come up with something).

This dis-incentivizes the person who is giving out the answers.

Also forgot to add, the professors made the exams so difficult most students got less than 60%, so using this method actually benefited students.

Most universities don't allow this because...you know... the "customers"

[Anonymous]

Which schools are not back in person? Or are these just online degrees or such?