- September 2nd, 2019, 10:10 pm
#2305
I am a graduate student, and I have just been introduced to this system. I also have been an assistant for many online classes in which I had problems with various forms of academic dishonesty. Students can be creative in the ways that they cheat, and many are more tech savvy than even many of us that grew up with computers. I am not sure how to respond to the particular case, but I also think that there must be workarounds for this system for those that must cheat simply because that is the only way they have ever done it (hopefully a small minority of students). There are a few possibilities here that I can think of off the cuff. Students may have access to the test material before the exam, and have been able to prepare materials in advance that they may be able to copy and paste without opening any of the blocked features. Another possibility is running a virtual system in the background which they are able to use to bypass the functions disallowed by the system. I'm not sure if the software has the ability to prevent this.
In my experience text changes or weird formatting tends to indicate cut and paste. Sometimes this is not a problem, because the cut and paste material is genuine work from the student. Still, I take such as an indicator to dig a little further, and often these font/formatting changes do lead to a discovery of some form of cheating.
Respondus is a step forward to prevent this type of behavior, but the most dedicated cheaters are likely to be able to find workarounds. The problem from our side is as it always has been: proving it or having the time and resources to prove it.
