Do professors know when you cheat (Professor answers)

How do professors know if you cheated?

Most professors know that students cheated because of their experience, but how they prove that a student cheated depends on what methods they used to cheat. Most professors can easily tell that a student cheated.

As a former professor, I can tell you exactly how professors identify cheaters in class. Because despite what most college students think, we know the most popular ways students cheat.

And let’s be honest, professors were college students once too, and some of them might have cheated themselves or known people who did it. It is not a HUGE secret that students cheat.

When I was a college student, classmates would get the test questions and answers from students in other sections of the class who had already taken the exam. So to deal with this as a professor, I just create a different exam for each section.

Some would write answers on their hands, or leave the classroom to pretend to go to the bathroom and read over their notes or lookup answers. I just ask that everyone use the restroom before class, and I pay close attention to student’s behaviors.

You name it, professors have seen it.

I will also let you in on a SECRET. Most colleges offer professional training on detecting cheating and will have opportunities for professors to get better at detecting cheating and how to handle it. It is something that is on professors’ minds because they want to prevent it as much as possible.

So, most professors will be able to tell that you cheated, without having to go to elaborate lengths, just by their own experiences. If a professor has caught students in the past, they’ve learned what to look for.

Plus, lots of professors will talk with other professors on the latest methods students are using to cheat. It is not uncommon for professors to talk amongst themselves about ways students cheat and what to look for. While professors are NOT sharing the names of students who have done this, they will definitely share ways that students have tried.

Most often, professors need to be able to articulate why they believe that you cheated and need to have some proof.

But the proof doesn’t have to be absolute.

It’s NOT like they need to have a videotape of you cheating. They can just explain why they think you cheated, and if its convincing enough, it can lead to trouble for students.

However, it is NOT usually up to a professor alone to find you responsible for cheating. It will have to be reported to an office, within the college, and they will investigate it. That’s typically how it works at public universities in the United States.

If you wanted to learn more about getting kicked out of college for cheating, you need to check out my article where I go into great depths about this entire process.

During this formal process, most students WILL ADMIT to cheating and that’s how we find out for sure that if you really cheated. While we might think you cheated, we don’t know for sure. But while you are being investigated for cheating, students will typically come clean.

Since this isn’t a criminal offense, we don’t have to go to great lengths to prove you cheated, but professors will need to have pretty good evidence to support it.

I have never heard of innocent students getting accused of cheating before. But if you are accused of cheating, and YOU DIDN”T do it, you need to read my article that discusses how to deal with being accused of cheating.

Ways professors know you cheated?

Professors know students cheat because of their experience and they’ve probably seen many students cheat in their classes and have started to learn their processes. Professors may also have graduate or teaching assistants that can be their eyes and ears to detect cheating.

The evidence needed to support their claim will vary based on the type of cheating used.

Exam

If a student cheats on an exam, they will need to be able to explain how they witnessed it, if the exam is in person.

For example, if you were looking at your phone during the exam, or looking at your classmate’s answers, they will just need to say that they saw you doing some suspicious things during the exam and be able to describe why it looked like you were cheating.

If the exam is online, they will probably have software that helps detect cheating and they can simply use that to support their allegations.

As a former professor, I actually had a student who cheated by glancing at their phone during the exam. But they had tucked their phone under their leg to try and hide it. They were looking up answers the entire time and it seemed really suspicious because they were looking around the room and looking up at me too often.

I was able to submit a report and they were found responsible.

Just know that professors are looking around the classroom, during the exam, to look for any suspicious behavior. Maybe they are looking at you and your technology devices to make sure you aren’t using them to cheat. Or they are looking for any weird vibes you are giving off.

When students are guilty of cheating, they usually act different than the other students. They are typically more nervous and it’s easy to tell something is off. It is not overly complicated to notice.

Written Assignments

If a student cheats while writing, most professors can tell just by reading it. We know how students write, and when someone doesn’t write a paper themselves, we can immediately tell.

Before all the fancy applications that detect plagiarism were popular like Turnitin.com, I would just take a few sentences from a student’s paper and put it into a search engine and matches would pop up.

It is OBVIOUS when students use someone else’s work and pretend it is their own.

It can especially be obvious if you wrote any other previous work on your own and then you submit an entirely new paper that sounds nothing like your previous work. A very common way to detect plagiarism is to check your work with other things you’ve submitted in the past.

However, the most popular way professors can tell that you didn’t write the paper yourself or copied someone else’s work is using plagiarism detection software.

If you want to know all about plagiarism, I have the RIGHT ARTICLE for you where I outline how professors will know and I also answer students’ questions about plagiarism.

But don’t stop there, you will also want to know exactly how to handle this plagiarism accusation by reading this article too.

For instructors to prove this allegation, they will need a little more evidence. There is more support than just suspicious behavior like I noted before with exams.

Do professors know you cheated on an exam?

If students cheat on an exam, professors will know because students who cheat are typically more nervous and act suspicious. Or the professor might have a student who snitches on another student who was cheating during an exam.

As a former professor, I had students who acted strangely and their behavior seemed off. I watched them more closely and realized they were reading answers off their hand, and I just approached them and asked to talk them after class. And they admitted to me that they cheated.

But don’t underestimate your classmates. I have had students email me after an exam to let me know that their peer was cheating. Other students may tattle on you so I wouldn’t risk it and think that they aren’t going to tell the professor that you cheated.

Sometimes professors will be able to tell you cheated on an exam, if it was online, and they have some software that detects it.

However, students can slip under the radar and may never get caught their entire college career.

Do professors care if you cheat?

Yes, professors absolutely care that college students cheat because it undermines their college and the degree the student may earn. Professors want to catch students cheating so that they don’t earn academic credit that they didn’t rightfully earn.

Think about it for a moment. Consider your doctor, dentist or lawyer. What if they cheated their entire way through college? Would you trust their advice? Would you want them operating on you or representing you during a trial?

I doubt it.

Professors are no different. They don’t want students getting a degree they didn’t earn. One day, you will be in the workforce and professors are responsible for giving you an education and making sure you honestly complete their coursework.

No one wants to just GIVE a student a grade if they didn’t work hard for it.

Do colleges take cheating seriously?

Yes, colleges take cheating allegations very seriously because it hurts their reputation and they don’t want to give out degrees that students didn’t honestly earn. Colleges will appropriately discipline students who are caught cheating.

When someone commits academic dishonesty, the university will formally handle it per their policies.

While a first offense might not result in a severe sanction, the second or third offense can be serious. Colleges want to make sure students get a second chance if they cheat once. But if it’s a reoccurring thing, they could kick a student out of their college.

If a student graduates from their university and cheated their way through, colleges could get a bad reputation because those students may not have really learned the material. Then they go out into the workforce and perform terribly. Employers would start questioning the degree they earned.

You can see just how seriously colleges take these matters into consideration by reviewing the student code of conduct and the handbooks for their policies. They will outline their disciplinary process and you can see just how much they care about students cheating,.

It isn’t just hurting the student when they cheat, it hurts the universities too.

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