Researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered that some users of massive open online courses (MOOCs) are using multiple accounts to figure out the correct answers for tests so that they can get perfect scores on their main account.

The institutions discovered cheating after noticing that some users were answering test questions “faster than humanly possible.” They found that some users would register multiple accounts so they could take the test multiple times and figure out the correct answers. The method was dubbed CAMEO cheating, which stands for “Copying Answers Using Multiple Existences Online.”

Researchers Isaac Chuang and Curtis Northcutt of MIT and Andrew Ho of Harvard published a paper on the new cheating method, writes Laura Krantz of the Boston Globe. Chuang, who is a professor of electrical engineering and physics and a Senior Associate Dean of Digital Learning, and Ho, who teaches in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, analyzed 1.9 million students from edX, a MOOC platform by Harvard and MIT, between 2012 and 2015.

Ho said that CAMEO cheating is systematic and egregious: - (READ HERE)

This is a] method of cheating that allows you to acquire a certification for a course in an hour, which is not possible through conventional cheating approaches. This is cheating of... Read more..