Cheating by group chat

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Thanks, everyone.

I emailed my dean about this, but haven't heard back. I'd like to think he is still considering it. My gut is that everyone has given up at stopping the cheating.

My exams use a question bank and pull from them, so everyone's questions are in a different order. The answers for each question are also shuffled.


I once had my house broken into. Having an entire class of students (or mostly the entire class) cheat feels very similar. I still have lecture with these people, help them individually with concepts, and have to give and give as though they never cheated. Feels gross.

I hope you get some support from the Dean.

In the future you might want to consider an additional assignment which is a substantial part of their grade. A term paper would be a good example. Each student would be submitting an assignment that is somewhat unique and if your online LMS has a plagiarism check (Blackboard for instance uses Safe Assign) you could check for plagiarism.

Of course, it does make for more work for you but personally I would rather spend more time grading than spend hours with students who I can’t look in the eye. That is depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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"

Really? Most universities don’t allow the class average to be 60%? Wow!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Throw out those grades. Don’t let them benefit from the grades. Let them know why.

That is a great solution!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Thanks, everyone.

I emailed my dean about this, but haven't heard back. I'd like to think he is still considering it. My gut is that everyone has given up at stopping the cheating.

My exams use a question bank and pull from them, so everyone's questions are in a different order. The answers for each question are also shuffled.


I once had my house broken into. Having an entire class of students (or mostly the entire class) cheat feels very similar. I still have lecture with these people, help them individually with concepts, and have to give and give as though they never cheated. Feels gross.

Tell them that. They need to hear it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP you are a college professor with this problem and your best source for an answer is DCUM?

I call BS. Total troll.

OP, you some like a parent hoping to get her kid’s rival busted.

[Anonymous]

OP If you are real- my daughter is a freshman at UMD and saw multiple kids cheating on an exam- she’s a Biology major. She finds it incredibly frustrating and thinks the TA doesn’t care. It was an in person exam too and the kids were looking over at each other’s exams.

[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP If you are real- my daughter is a freshman at UMD and saw multiple kids cheating on an exam- she’s a Biology major. She finds it incredibly frustrating and thinks the TA doesn’t care. It was an in person exam too and the kids were looking over at each other’s exams.

Tons of cheating in biology at my DC’s school too. My DC saw kids with their phones out on their laps during the exam, sharing answers, etc. and DC also said she thought the monitors just didn’t care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Throw out those grades. Don’t let them benefit from the grades. Let them know why.

I can’t unless I have proof.

The exams are mixed multiple choice, short answer, and essay.

I was probably too lenient on essays - the answers didn’t flow well but technically the information was correct. I think they were Googling each part of the essay.

Honestly, I think it was almost everyone in the class. When everyone gets a 90 and the only missed questions are from the essays, it’s hard to show cheating. It’s much easier to prove cheating if they miss the same answers. If they don’t miss anything, it’s a lot harder.

You give an inch, they take a mile. High schools have looked the other way at cheating and students have become used to it, so I am not surprised it’s made its way to college. Shame. But good on you for cracking down. Take it seriously.

[Anonymous]

The joke will be on these stupid students when they’re unable to pass their entrance and exit exams for graduate school and their profession. Let the chips fall where they may. Idiots weed themselves out in the healthcare profession. Thankfully they can only get so far when cheating.

Maybe consider oral examinations, or projects that are the biggest chunk of the grade.

On the bright side, I appreciate the teamwork, collaboration, creativity and communication of this cheating group of students. Pure arbitrage, lol.

[Anonymous]

How many students do you have? Can you do 5 minute oral questioning of each one, asking them 10 questions? You will find out quickly who knows the material and who doesn't.

Or if not each one, a random sampling of kids for each exam will be subjected to an oral exam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a HS teacher. Lot of cheating in high school too. Very frustrating situation.

My DC reported that there is someone who cheats on every test with a phone. The teacher can't see this person from his desk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
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 was my kids during Covid with online school. A huge percentage of kids were cheating, which threw the curve off and my kids got Bs. When the kids had the option to go back to in-person school several neighbors admitted that their kids didn't want to go back because it was so much easier to do well when they were at home. I'm proud of my kids for not cheating, but it's hard to stomach all the grade inflation during that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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 has happened to my kids in our FCPS high school. Lots of cheating that throws the curve.

[Anonymous]

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

Bring back Blue Books