Students Buying and Selling Course Materials

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.  In the last few years, there have been 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 written for them, which they then submit as their own work.

Cornell students have also captured and removed course materials, even exams, from course learning management system sites, such as Canvas, and sold them to internet sites.  Some of the vendors facilitated these transactions by falsely conveying 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 students’ posting or accessing course materials, such as follows:

You are prohibited from posting, submitting, or acquiring  course materials or content through online “study” platforms such as Chegg, CourseHero, and Slader.  If you acquire or otherwise access course materials through such a platform, you face a charge of “Unauthorized Assistance,” thereby violating the Code of Academic Integrity.  Please note that Cornell can trace posts from internet sites, including identifying the individuals who provide content and those who access and/or use the content.

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 share or sell course materials or lecture content, even your own class notes summarizing lectures, without my authorization, you are subject to a charge of “Classroom Misconduct.” You may also be participating in copyright infringement. Original course materials are copyrighted intellectual property of the creator of the content and are not a student’s property to share, distribute, or sell.

Although not legally required to protect your copyright, you are 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 [©][author’s name][year], you put students on notice that the material is intellectual property belonging to you, the holder of the copyright, 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 or an authorized agent 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.

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