To Catch Students Cheating In Exam, Professor Comes Up With A Fake Question Trap & Succeeds!

There are two kinds of students in school - those who are pros at cheating, and those who'd never take the chance of being caught and are mostly well prepared for a test. For the ones who take the cheating plunge, jugaad is what helps them sail through - if they are not caught, that is. More than focusing on studying the subject, they invest more time in coming up with cheating hacks.

From writing in the tiniest cheat sheet possible, to employing technology in a bid to clear the exam, and of course taking bathroom breaks - they do it all.

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Teachers, of course, spite this cheating menace. While some don't know how to deal with it, there are others who take things to the next level. Like this professor who came up with an ingenious hack to catch engineering students cheating during a test.

The professor's trap was shared on Reddit by a user named Mwxh, who is also a 4th-year engineering major at the same college.

Narrating the diabolical plan, Mwxh wrote, 'I took the final for an engineering class this morning. Usually, 1 or 2 people will go to the bathroom during class, however for totally unknown reasons, about half of the class needed to use the restroom during the exam'.

'There was one particular problem that was only barely related to the stuff we went over in class where part A was fairly easy but I had no idea how to do part B. I didn¡¯t fret over it too much though since that part was only 5 points out of 100'.

'Many of the students in this class use chegg (a website that has answers to lots of homework questions if you're not familiar). To be fair, I have an account too though I only used it for studying and checking homework solutions. Anyway, he explained that he was tired of people going to the bathroom and looking up answers on their phones, so he made the question I mentioned earlier as a trap', he wrote.

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'He purposely made part B impossible to solve and about a month before the final, he got a TA with a Chegg account to ask the exact question, which was distinctly worded to be unique. He then created his own Chegg account and answered the question with a bullshit solution that seems right at first glance but is actually fundamentally flawed'.

A lot of people were left surprised that students were allowed to leave the exam for a bathroom break just like that. The professor's plan worked perfectly and 14 out of 99 students had the wrong answer and were given a 0 while everyone else got full marks for it.

The trap, albeit ingenious, led on to the debate about ethics. Was the professor right in naming and shaming the students caught cheating?

¡°I think it¡¯s unethical for sure since it would have been much easier for him to just ban students from leaving the room,¡± elaborates Mwxh. ¡°Though, I don¡¯t know if the department has a specific rule about it or not. Anyway, even if not, I have no sympathy for the cheaters and hope they kicked out of the school.¡±

After posting the incident on Reddit, the debate blew up and Mwxh mailed the professor questioning his standpoint on the method he employed for catching the cheaters. The professor, however, has refused to comment on the same.

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The incident soon blew up online and many started sharing their own stories of teachers employing clever tactics to catch kids red-handed.

One such story reads, 'I once had a Prof hand out 4 copies of a test. One on white paper, one on Yellow paper, one on green paper, and one on pink paper. When we got our marks back, someone asked how he knew which scantron went to which test. That's when he told us that they were all the same test, just the paper was different. This got people to stop looking at their neighbours work. It was pretty clever'.

Students cheating in exams is a menace in institutions across the world. Technology has gone on to make this cheating scourge ten-folds worse, but who is to say teachers won't outsmart all of it?