Researchers have warned universities to prepare for an explosion in cheating after a review of an engineering school’s assessment tasks found more than 1,000 solutions on the homework help service Chegg.
The audit by engineers at Queensland University of Technology found that Chegg had published answers to online exam questions and homework on more than half of the 41 subjects examined.
Nearly 1,200 questions and their corresponding answers on Chegg exactly matched the exam content of the units tested, including nearly 400 from a single subject. “Uploading these (exam questions) to homework help websites … violated the university’s academic integrity policy and is considered cheating,” the researchers explain in the Journal of Academic Ethics.
They also tracked Chegg’s global use for mechanical engineering by analyzing publication dates and the number of questions uploaded to the site. The researchers found that Chegg’s response times were steadily declining. By 2020, half of the questions were answered within about 84 minutes, up from 216 minutes in 2015.
“(This) makes Chegg an effective way to cheat on timed online assessments (such as) online tests or exams,” the researchers write.
“Although Chegg can be used for both learning (legitimate) and cheating (illegitimate), it is an attractive tool in academic misconduct,” the document states.
Chegg criticized the study for using “outdated data from 2020” and disputed the assumption that posting a question on its platform correlates with cheating rather than learning. “The study does not demonstrate that questions were uploaded, viewed and used during an active assessment period,” a spokeswoman said.
She said Chegg has developed “Honor Shield,” a free tool that allows educators to block students from answering exam questions on Chegg during timed grading periods.
“We place a high value on academic integrity because we believe it is fundamental to the learning process,” she said. “Misuse of our tools is a violation of our terms of use.”
The study found little evidence that generative artificial intelligence (AI) ruined Chegg’s business model. Usage declined after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, but remained above 2019 levels.
Campus Resource Collection: Understanding and Protecting Academic Integrity
Generative AI will not replace file-sharing and homework help websites, the researchers predict. “Rather, a new status quo will emerge in which both serve different niche applications.”
Lead author Edmund Pickering said some students preferred homework help websites because they “involve a real person.”
“In some cases, there is a fundamental distrust of AI systems,” he said. “ChatGPT can give very convincing but completely wrong answers.”
The researchers said Chegg had grown into a $775 million (£592 million) “giant” since listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013, with 89 percent of its revenue coming from the US. “If Australia follows the US trajectory, we can expect significant growth,” they warned.
