LogFAQs > #937797828

I actually dealt with something similar a year ago when I was TAing. In that case the cheating was on homework which they were allowed to collaborate on, but which was worth 75% of the grade for the class. The psets were quite hard, and we used some problems whose solutions (with substantial effort) could be found online. I caught them basically because these solutions from another professor used some really weird and distinct notation which I have never seen anyone write before and it showed up in a bunch of their answers.

Anyway, if the class had had exams I probably would have just let it slide other than maybe being a hardass about grading their psets, but since we didn't I had to tell my advisor. We ended up giving them zeroes on the problems they copied and my advisor made me call them all in for meetings to tell them about it and that cheating is wrong/could have considerably harsher consequences/etc (which kind of sucked and my advisor should have dealt with that himself...)

I'd probably give them zeroes on the exam and tell them that if they can either accept that or take their chances with the university's formal academic dishonesty process; it's up to you if you also want to talk to them about it one on one.

Of the 7(?) only one of them claimed he had no idea what I was talking about and that he didn't cheat, only admitting to working with one of the other dudes I caught (separately I suspected these two guys of straight up copying each others' psets for the duration of the class; while you could work with others, you had to write up your own solutions). I told him that he could take it up with the professor if he really wanted to (don't think he did).

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