👺How to check for potential cheating

Introduction

Although unfortunate, cheating is a rising issue, especially in online activities. Detecting it is also hard when the application you are using has no control or surveillance over what the students are doing in their respective computers.

However, with CodeChum, detecting and even preventing potential cheating has been made possible! In this section, we explain in detail about what we are preventing, tracking, and detecting with the students' actions during an activity.

Steps

To check for potential cheating in CodeChum activities, follow these steps:

1. Go to your class' Activities tab and click on an activity card you wish to view.

   

2. In the Takers tab, look for the Is Likely Cheating column. If it shows Yes, it indicates that the student has likely cheated during the activity. Please note that this column will only show if the activity is in Exam Mode. Otherwise, this feature is not applicable.

   

3. In the Takers tab, click on the student with a Yes on the Is Likely Cheating column.

   

4. In the View Solutions popup window, you will see two tabs on the top navigation: Answers and Issues.

   

a. Answers Tab

In the Answers tab, you will see the students' solutions, scores, results per test case, and executions for every item in an activity.

1. In an instance where a student has a similar answer with their classmates on an item, you will see a Has Issue badge on the item card on the sidebar. Click on the item to view it.

   

2. For all items with the Has Issue badge, there will show a button labeled "Show similar answers" in their solution. Click on the button to open the Similar Answers modal.

   

3. In the View Similar Answers modal, you will be able to view the currently viewed student's solution on the left side, showing how much similar their answer is to the student on the right side, in percentage form.

   

4. In the case that you wish to edit the student's score due to confirmed cheating after investigation, simply click the Edit icon button on the selected student's score to change it.

b. Issues Tab

In the Issues tab, you will see our cheating prevention and detection statistics of each student for the entire duration of the activity. It is composed of three sections: (1) Cheating Actions Detected, (2) Cheating Attempts Prevented, and (3) Action Logs.

1. Under the Cheating Actions Detected section are cheating actions made by the student that are detected by our system. In here, you will see the following statistics:

   

   1. Tab switches - refers to the number of times that the student has switched tabs during the activity. This turns red if the count exceeds 3 times.

   2. Items with similar answers - refers to the number of items answered by the student that has exceedingly similar answers with their classmates. This turns red if the count reaches 1 and above.

2. Under the Cheating Attempts Prevented section are cheating actions attempted by the student but were prevented by the system from happening. In here, you will see the following statistics:

   

   1. Attempted to block network - refers to the number of times that the student attempted to disable our system from detecting their actions during the activity. This turns red if the count reaches 1 and above.

   2. Attempted to copy-paste - refers to the number of times that the student attempted to copy something from outside sources and paste it in CodeChum during the activity. This turns red if the count reaches 1 and above.

   3. Attempted to brute-force answers - refers to the number of times that the student attempted to solve the problem using brute-force method, i.e. manually printing a pattern using deliberate print statements. This turns red if the count reaches 1 and above.

   4. Attempted to use multiple monitors - refers to the number of times that the student attempted to use two or more monitors during the activity. This turns red if the count reaches 1 and above.

3. Under the Action Logs section is a list of all the student's actions executed during the activity that is shown in detail, along with the specific action performed in a specific time and place. In particular, our system tracks all of the following actions performed by the student during the activity:

   

   1. Starting the activity at a specific longitude and latitude, and on which browser

   2. Coding

   3. Running code

   4. Switching between items

   5. Idling

   6. Attempting to block action tracking

   7. Attempting to use multiple monitors

   8. Attempting to brute-force answers

   9. Attempting to copy-paste from external content

   10. Exiting fullscreen mode for a certain amount of time

   11. Switching between tabs

   12. Logging out

   13. Checking code

   14. Submitting the activity

   15. Ran out of time