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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1542167" data-attributes="member: 143">I was a TA at a University of California campus for five years, and an instructor at various state and community colleges for four more years after that. Cheating is an endemic problem.  I worked at several schools where the faculty had stopped assigning take-home exams and/or papers because it was just too much of a hassle.  Depending on your dean, it could be virtually impossible to discipline a student for cheating.  I was lucky in that most deans would back me up, but as I was an adjunct with virtually no standing, I had to document EVERYTHING in detail (it got to where I would photocopy dozens of papers each term as part of my investigations). I caught numerous students by simply doing a google search.  Take four uncommon words in sequence from a student's paper, put them in quotes, and search.  One student turned in a paper on the book we'd used the previous semester (we were using a different book for the current term). I caught two young ladies when one turned in both her paper and her friend's together; they were virtually identical.  Apparently the friend had asked student #1 to turn in her paper for her; she did, but only after copying large parts of it into her own work. I would often create make-up quizzes where the questions were moved around, and sometimes would get them back where the answers were in the correct order--for the original version of the test. I miss teaching, but cheating was a pain in the ass to deal with.  Still, it was amusing to see how stupid some of the students could be in their attempts.  I'm sure there were many more who were at least moderately clever and were never detected.</blockquote>

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