Teacher Designed A Smart Exam Question To Catch Cheaters And Ended Up Catching 14 Students

Cheating has always been a major problem in the context of exams, and the widespread access to the internet has only exacerbated this issue.

Instead of leveraging the knowledge and information they've gathered from their studies to come up with answers, students are now turning to a quick Google search as the easy way out.

While it's true that in daily life, you can Google nearly anything, this habit doesn’t really help when it comes to enhancing your ability to tackle problems and respond to questions using your own reasoning skills.

Furthermore, this reliance on the internet defeats the whole purpose of exams, which is to demonstrate your capacity to work through problems independently, without falling back on cheating.

"How did you figure out question eight?" "Googled it in the toilet, mate." Getty Stock Photo

Now, in an era where the use of AI by students to generate their exam answers is a growing concern, teachers find themselves having to devise strategic methods to catch cheating students.

This led one innovative teacher to develop a clever strategy to expose the cheaters among his students, ultimately catching 14 of them in the act.

His suspicions were aroused when he noticed an unusually high number of students requesting bathroom breaks during exams.

He suspected that these breaks were not really for restroom use, but rather opportunities for students to look up answers online. To test his theory, he came up with a unique trap.

He introduced a deliberately 'impossible' question into the test, a question he was confident the students would not be able to answer on their own.

He then had a teaching assistant post this question online about a month before the exam, asking for help to solve it.

The teacher himself provided a seemingly plausible answer online, which he anticipated cheating students might find during a hurried search on their phones during a bathroom break.

"14 of them fell for the fake question, for f**k's sake." Getty Stock Photo

With this setup in place, all the teacher had to do was wait and see which students would fall for it and submit the incorrect answer he had planted online.

The only way they could have found that answer was by searching for it online, and out of 99 students who took the test, 14 were caught using the planted answer.

As a consequence, those students received zero marks on the test. 

After the teacher shared his approach on Reddit, opinions were divided on his tactics.

Some people thought it was a 'pretty smart and fair move' and applauded the teacher for being 'well played,' while others criticized the approach, calling it a 'dick move'.

Concerns were also raised by some commenters, with one asking, "What if someone wastes their time on this question and doesn't have enough for the rest," suggesting the possibility of students being unfairly penalized.

Another commenter accused the teacher of being on a 'power trip'.