Thursday, September 10, 2015

EdX Users Cheat Through MOOC-Specific Method, Study Says - C. RAMSEY FAHS, Harvard Crimson

Roughly 1 percent of certificates granted by Harvard’s and MIT’s school-specific edX platforms were earned by users engaging in a form of cheating never before possible in traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms, according to a working paper released by researchers from the two schools. The paper—authored by MIT Ph.D. candidate Curtis G. Northcutt, MIT professor Isaac L. Chuang, and HarvardX research committee co-chair Andrew D. Ho—studied a previously unexamined form of cheating known as "copying answers using multiple existences online," or CAMEO. Users engaging in CAMEO register for a given course with multiple accounts, one of which is designated the “master” account. They then use non-master “harvester” accounts to click through assessments as quickly as possible until the grading tool provides correct answers. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/9/3/cameo-cheating-method-mooc/