Can statistics PROVE cheating? Online physics quizzes, with hard problems, done with 100% grades in 17 min, then 8 min, then 4 min. Four minutes, first try.

[u/uttamattamakin]

I have/had two jobs, one at Hell Community College and the other at Heaven State University (a PBI that has made me feel very welcome in comparison). Very VERY unlikely I'll ever be assigned a class at HCC ever again. The probability is only non-zero due to this turn of events. I'm out of the classroom there but still in the loop. I can see the results. Those students make/made me feel like Denzel at the end of Training Day!

Four hard questions, one with two parts, in circuits and electronics that involve multiple mathematical steps. Even if one has the formula sheet at hand solving, and combining more than one formula, to get the answer would take time.

The first person was done in 17 minutes. Plausible that the student has good math skills.

Second person 8 minutes :/ Pushing it. This person deleted 1/2 of the graph data on a prior lab to make it look perfect.

Third person 4 minutes 🧐. 4 minutes 🧐 how dumb do they think we are? That is possible if one has the worked out and fully simplified formulas for the answers from some external source.

All scores first time out 100%. No 80%, No 95%, No one rounding wrong even.

Ok, maybe I am dumb? Maybe if you have a super great teacher, this can happen? So, I phrase it as a question. Can statistics like this prove cheating? This classic video from U. of Central Florida implies that it is possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbzJTTDO9f4

When I was primarily in charge, online proctoring settings were in place, and the students claimed it was so passive aggressive and scary and unfair ... that even though I said in class it was open book, and the system showed a link to the book ... that they were afraid to click it. I was too harsh in telling someone who deleted 1/2 of the data off a graph to make a best-fit line look like a perfect-fit line. I was told my reprimand was too harsh. I stood my ground in no uncertain terms because I knew I was right to.

Now, over the weeks since then, I have noticed suddenly the same scared, "confused", helpless 20-25-year-olds can get 100%, 100% of the time, on the first try, in timeframes that are physically impossible IF they are doing their work with integrity.

Am I missing some way this could be legit? Tell me how this could be legit.

I feel that with my kind of discipline and guidance, this would not have happened. Discipline is what we do to avoid having to punish someone.

[u/oakaye]

The way your post reads (at least to me) in conjunction with this comment makes it seem like you’ve been relieved of your duties but still have access to the course and are continuing to keep tabs on what’s going on in the course. Accurate, or am I misinterpreting?

[u/uttamattamakin → u/oakaye]

You could say that. You could even say it is none of my business. Kind of like witnessing a bank robbery at a bank you used to work at. What is it right to an ethical to do in this situation? To blow the whistle or to just move on?

By the way, did you catch the part of my story where one of the reasons I was relieved was because the students thought that my use of online proctoring was mean? That's basically what they fed the administration.

Then miracle of miracles... they all get 100% on everything.

Somehow, you know, call me crazy, but I think it's right when you see something very wrong occurring to be concerned by it.

Then there is a little detail that my name appears on the schedule as team teaching the class since I taught a sizable portion of it. If someone is going to be said to have a perfect A in a class I taught I think I have a right to know what in the hell's going on.

[u/Cabininian → u/uttamattamakin]

Can you bring it to the attention of the other instructor/“team” teacher?

[u/uttamattamakin → u/Cabininian]

I sent an email it's out of my hands now. I've done probably more than the minimum ethics require by doing that. Especially when you read some of the responses on this forum there's some who would think I'm wrong for seeing that there could be cheating. That my ability to see this is a violation of FERPA. My freaking name is still on the class on the homework system for Christ's sake they surely know that I'm around.

The brazen audacity of having two different teachers watching while they do this.