Buying and Selling Course Materials Through Internet Sites
We have known for many years that Cornell students have been using internet sites to buy and sell course materials, including exams and exam answers, lecture notes, problem sets and answers, and student papers. However, the proliferation of online courses during the pandemic appears to have increased students’ abuse of these sources.
In spring 2020, there were repeated instances of Cornell students engaging in “contract cheating” – students subscribing to or paying fees to internet sites, so-called “study sites,” such as Chegg, CourseHero, and Slader to get answers to exam questions or course assignments and to have essays produced for them, which they then submit as if this were their own original work.
Cornell students have also removed course materials, even exams, from course learning management system sites, such as Canvas, and sold them to internet sites. Some of the vendors falsely conveyed to students that an instructor had approved the sale of course materials.
If you wish to discourage your students from engaging in such behavior, you are encouraged to state in class and include in your syllabus an explicit prohibition against buying and selling course materials, such as follows:
You are prohibited from buying and selling course materials through internet sites such as Chegg, CourseHero, and Slader. If you buy or otherwise access course materials through such a vendor, you face a charge of “Unauthorized Assistance,” thereby violating the Code of Academic Integrity. Please note that Cornell faculty are able to trace posts from internet sites, including identifying the individuals who provide the original posts and those who read or download the posts. At various junctures during the course, I intend to monitor such sites.
Remember, too, that materials for sale may contain errors. There have been occasions when students have done poorly on exams and/or their unauthorized use of purchased work was discovered because the materials they purchased contained errors.
If you sell course materials, even your own class notes summarizing lectures, without my authorization, you are subject to a charge of “Academic Misconduct.” You may also be participating in copyright infringement. Original course materials are intellectual property that belong to the author and are not a student’s property to sell.
You are also encouraged to include a copyright notice on any course materials (including class notes and exams) that you author and post on Canvas or distribute in hard copy. By including such a copyright notice [(C)[author’s name][year], you put students on notice that the material is intellectual property belonging to you and not the students’ property to do with as they wish. If students were to remove a copyright notice, that behavior would create a higher level of culpability. Such a notice would also make it easier for you to take down materials from internet sites. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), to have materials removed from a web site, the copyright holder must personally request the removal. For instructions on how to locate and request removal of copyrighted course materials sold on internet sites, go to https://copyright.cornell.edu/course_material.
Finally, while course materials produced by a student, such as lecture notes, might belong to the student as the owner of that material, a faculty member may nonetheless impose conditions on students’ use of such derived works, such as prohibiting distribution on internet sites of notes derived from the faculty member’s lectures, such as recommended above.
Use of Turnitin:
This “plagiarism-detection” software is activated by default in all Canvas courses. It scans student submissions for matched text by comparing the work to a large database of other student submissions, publications, and materials on the internet.
Instructions for using Turnitin, as well as tips about its role as an educational tool, are available at https://teaching.cornell.edu/learning-technologies/assessment-tools/turnitin. To learn more about Turnitin and get started using it in your class, contact the Center for Teaching Innovation’s academic technology support at acadtech@cornell.edu.
Faculty who use or anticipate using Turnitin must provide notice to students, substantially to the effect of the following:
“Students agree that by taking this course, all required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to Turnitin.com for the detection of plagiarism. All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers. Use of the Turnitin.com service is subject to the Usage Policy posted on the Turnitin.com site.”
This notice should be included in the course syllabus. If Turnitin is instituted after the syllabus is distributed, faculty should provide written notice at that time.
