Teacher catches 14 cheaters with fake question technique

Cheaters never prosper goes the old adage. After all, dishonesty can only take you so far before things come crumbling down. But that doesn’t often stop students at every level from gaining an advantage in academic situations through unfair means. One college professor got so tired of the issue in his own class, that he decided to take matters into his own hands. His tactic? Use a fake question to trick 14 cheaters into exposing themselves during an exam. A user on Reddit has chronicled the incident. The ingenious professor was teaching an engineering class and had previously conveyed to students to not use unfair means to look up answers during exams. But seeing that some students were still possibly cheating, the unnamed professor put his plan into action.

The professor had added a seemingly random question to the exam. The two-part question was not in the syllabus covered in the class and only accounted for 5 marks out of 100. The first part of the question was fairly simple but part b stumped the students. The question seemed impossible to solve but with so low weightage most students just made a cursory attempt before moving on.

However, the professor knew that his students used one particular website to search for answers during toilet breaks in the exam. A month before the exam, he had made a Teaching Assistant (TA) make an account on the same website and ask the very same question on the website. The question was uniquely worded. The professor then made an account of his own to answer the question. The idea being that those students who would write the same answer would be exposed as cheaters.

You might be wondering, what about students who stumbled on the correct answer on their own? Wouldn’t they be accidentally punished as well? Well, the crafty professor thought of that as well. The answer that he gave was not only wrong but wrong in such a way that wasn’t immediately obvious. His fake answer was also fundamentally flawed in a way that students wouldn’t make the same mistake on their own.

The plan worked and after the exam, the professor announced that of the 99 individuals who had taken the exam 14 had cheated. The professor had marked them 0 on the exam and reported them to the University for failing to uphold the academic honour pledge they had signed at the time of admission.

So when you think of cheating, maybe decide otherwise.

Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .