There are many ways to cheat in the digital world.
Earlier, students used to hide chits with answers in their pockets. Now, all they need to do is ask to visit the rest room, use their phones hidden there, and search the answers.
What did the teacher do to catch cheaters?
On a 100 mark paper, the teacher created a question with two parts. The first part was relatively easy, the second part of the question (this part was worth 5 marks on a 100 mark test) was really tough to solve. It was also worded in a very unique way.
One month before the exam was due, he asked one of her assistants to post the question online on a discussion website.
Then, he created an account and provided an answer to that question. This answer appeared ok at first glance, but was, in fact, untenable and incorrect.
So, any student cheating on the exam would find only one solution to that question and reproduce it.
If the student wrote that exact incorrect solution, we would know that they have cheated.
What happened next?
99 students gave that paper. 14 of them reproduced the answer given on the website. These 14 students got a 0 on the overall paper and their names were reported to the university for violating the Academic Honour Pledge that they had signed.
The names were also shared with other teachers.
The students who did not cheat were given full 5 marks for the question.
The teacher explained this to all students via an email sent after the exam was conducted.
Not the only smart teacher
This post was made on Reditt 3 years ago.
Some of the responses of what other intelligent teachers did were also amazing. We bring you a few.
Buy the answer key, then get a tougher question paper
One teacher used to prep his Teaching assistants to “sell” the answer key to students who approached them for this service. After that, the prof would be given the names of these buyers.
The buyers would then get a special question paper, made individually for each buyer. Obviously, the students who followed only the answer key failed the test.
Four sets of question papers? No, it just looks like that
Another professor handed out four different sets of questions papers – yellow, green, pink, and white. Students assumed that these were different question sets. They weren’t. But this prevented the students from looking at each other’s answers to copy.
You can read the interesting stories here. The platform is Reditt.