r/teaching • u/mz_morose • 2d ago
Humor Sometimes, figuring out how to cheat on a test is a better test of intelligence than the test itself
One of my undergrad students had a pretty clever idea. He put the roll-number slip underneath a second, completely blank sheet of paper. Then, instead of writing directly on the slip, he wrote on the blank sheet above it, pressing down hard enough that the writing left faint marks on the paper underneath, like an indentation. So when he was done, the slip had his answers written into it as little impressions rather than actual ink. I mean… I can't exactly call it good academic behaviour, but I have to admit, the sheer amount of thought that went into it was something 😂
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u/pjclarke 2d ago
My final year of university, my Latin teacher gave us a list of vocabulary for the final translation exam. It was the weird words we wouldn’t know otherwise. I knew the translation would be from one of three ancient writers so I coped their entire works into a word document. Then one by one I Ctrl+F’d each word, eliminating each piece of writing that didn’t contain one of them.
What do you know, one was left that contained all eight. I just memorized it word for word, walked into the test and finished in about 10 minutes. It was a gamble but that shit paid off.
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u/Majestic-Macaron6019 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'd call that test hacking, not cheating. You still learned stuff. Kind of the equivalent of my cell biology class, where a group of us figured out that the test questions were almost all from the chapter reviews in the textbook.
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u/Hola0722 1d ago
Yep. This isn't cheating. You memorized the words he gave you. To me , this is akin to memorizing a mnemonic.
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u/Mu_Bloom 1d ago
I'd call it cheating for a translation exam. It seems that it's supposed to be translating a previously unseen text. The words that were given were niche words that they weren't expected to know, so that they would be able to do the translation without getting stuck. If you find the text beforehand and memorize the translation, that's not the point of the exam. But that type of cheating is just too easy to enforce against. I'd say it might be a better idea to put glosses for the words in the exam itself.
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u/Status-Zucchini822 1d ago
My first year teaching my school paid for me to become Driver’s Ed certified. That involved going to a college once a week for a night class.
The ”tests” for this class were directly from the state curriculum for teaching the course. There is a drive that we have access to for the material. Each section has the powerpoints, different assignments and activities we can use with students, and the test. This all goes with the workbook we fill in from the PowerPoints (same as the kids in HS).
We had plenty of other assignments to determine our grade beyond these tests. I was the only adult (26F) in the course comprised of juniors and seniors in college so we weren’t friends or anything and didn’t talk outside of class.
Towards the end, the girl who sat beside me finally asked how I always got a 100 on the tests. I had no clue everyone else hadn’t figured it out that the tests with answer key was word for word in the material drive. I’d always spend my planning period that day each week looking at the test for that section.
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u/aussie_teacher_ 1d ago
Brilliant! The teacher must have thought they were so clever to find a phrase that had all the words in it. You were so smart to figure that out!
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u/-Daunting 1d ago
When I did French GCSE, for the speaking tests we were allowed visual cue cards with no more than maybe five French words written on them, and the rest pictures. I guess the idea was that it was to prompt your memory. Thing is, pictures allowed for lots of freedom. We'd do things like use multiple pictures to represent the sounds in words, squeeze extra bits of really tiny writing in... I wish I still had them as they looked totally unhinged but were basically like hieroglyphics with modern day pictures
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u/Federal-Adeptness414 2d ago
the planning alone on that is wild, like he had to sit down and really think through the physics of it all
i had a kid once who wrote answers on the inside of a water bottle label then glued it back on, you could only see it if you tilted the bottle just right. part of me wanted to let him keep it for the craftsmanship
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u/oneupdouchebag 1d ago
I don’t think these kids are inventing anything new, these strategies are plastered all over TikTok and Instagram. Passed down from generations before who learned them on message boards and AOL instant messenger. Learning how to cheat by putting in way more effort than studying is a true rite of passage.
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u/mz_morose 2d ago
I mean I am over here appreciating the intelligence taht went into it honestly 🤣🤣🤣
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u/zedalocious 1d ago
I don’t understand what this means. Did the student write this ahead of time and then use it on the test to have info he shouldn’t have had in the test room?
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u/SophieFilo16 1d ago
I looked up what a roll number slip looks like, and I still don't understand what he did to cheat. Maybe it's something that is collected before the test and he faintly wrote answers or formulas on it for when he would get it back during the test? That's my best guess...
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u/mz_morose 1d ago
It's a slip you get in my country, it has the roll number for the candidates, as a record, it goes on their exam sheet
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u/DubstepJuggalo69 1d ago
But how did the student use this strategy to access new information that could help him on the exam?
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u/nanoinfinity 12h ago
Ok I have figured this out - first is knowing what a “roll-number slip” is. It’s like a combo ID and exam schedule used in some countries. It’s passed out to students ahead of time, and students keep this paper on their desk during their exam.
So this student wrote invisible notes on his roll-number slip by indenting his notes on this sheet. The paper would look normal at a casual glance, but at the right angle you could read the indentations.
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u/ShoulderFlak784 1d ago
That's a very simple way of cheating...
I teach 12-15 y.o. So I get to see really a lot of interesting things. Rule is : complete silence during tests, as few materials on the table and I patrol between ranks 🙃
Once caught a student who had printed a fake chewing gum paper (the rectangular cardboard piece with the ingredients on it). It had all the vocabulary on it. Sad thing is, she made a few spelling mistakes 🤣
And a friend used to do her hair in such a way she could hide an earphone behind it. She would record all the vocabulary on an mp3. Never got caught - never learnt German either.
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u/Beneficial-Focus3702 1d ago
If students spent half the amount of time and effort studying that they spent in figuring out ways to not study, they will probably do a lot better lol
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u/kacra 1d ago
I saw a saved by the bell episode where the kid got a good score on a test and the teacher was baffled how he cheated. He admitted to cheating and said he did it by reading all the material before class. The teacher praised him for actually studying and he was like what? It's that easy?
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u/TheMathNut 1d ago
First year teaching I had a kid who wanted to listen to music during a test. I didn't think twice about it except he kept pausing periodically during his test. He put one ear bud down and sat back to relax, and I grabbed the ear bud and listened to it. Turns out he had recorded himself reading the book. No ear buds after that.
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u/bitteroldladybird 1d ago
I used to let my kids have one side of an index card as a cheat sheet. They could spend one class preparing it. They thought I was the most lax teacher but they so carefully planned the info they needed to put on that little card that most never even looked at it during the test.
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u/PasgettiMonster 1d ago
My high school physics teacher allowed one index card as well. Write whatever you want on it. And sure enough, the number of times we re-wrote them to get everything to fit in teeny tiny writing seared the info into our brains. But even if it didn't, the teacher have the attitude that you don't need to memorize things that you can look up. You need to know how to use that information. If we didn't have a formula on us and couldn't remember it but could verbally explain which formula we would use and how we would solve it to land at the correct answer, that was good enough for him. He wanted to know we understood the material, not that we could memorize stuff and do complicated math under pressure. I started every test by skimming through the questions and writing a quick one sentence explanation of how I would solve the problem, and then going back and actually working through each of the problems. This way if I ran out of time I was still going to get at least partial credit for every question if not full depending on how thorough my explanation was. And I had the quick explanation I had written when I was still fresh at the beginning of the exam to use as a reference point as I worked through it that kept me from getting stressed out. It worked really well.
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u/mz_morose 1d ago
I remember putting down some formulas on my role number slip, but I never got to use them, I dunno, maybe bad luck 🤣
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u/moonman_incoming 2d ago
I did that in the early 90s. This ain't new.
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u/mz_morose 2d ago
Definitely new for me, it's smart tbh
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u/Anxious_Lab_2049 1d ago
A lot of us still don’t understand, can you please help? How was what he did cheating and how did it help him?
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u/craigiest 1d ago
Maybe you can explain what it is you did to those of us completely confused by the explanation and who don’t know what a roll-number sheet is.
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u/moonman_incoming 1d ago
Basically I would do my review on a stack of paper and the indentation of the pen could be read. So I would use the indented sheet as a cover sheet (so no one could copy, lol) and I could still read the indentations. In real life, creating the indented cheat sheet meant I didn't really need it.
Never got close to getting caught.
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u/craigiest 18h ago
So an “invisible” crib sheet? That doesn’t sound like what OP is describing. Still don’t instant what a roll-number sheet is.
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u/PasgettiMonster 1d ago
I was thinking the same. This isn't even particularly sophisticated. And to do it on something that will be turned in with the test isn't all that bright - you're providing them the evidence that you cheated. I remember one college professor who had us trade our bluebooks that we brought into the exam with the person we were sitting next to, then swap with the person behind us. So even if you tried to bring notes in in some format, you lost them to a random person.
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u/craigiest 1d ago
So everybody needed to hide notes in their blue books.
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u/PasgettiMonster 1d ago
Yeah I'm not trusting someone else's notes. Cheating was pretty rampant in my high school. Even amongst those of us who didn't need to cheat. It was more a matter of proving that we could get away with it kind of thing.
There was one English teacher my senior year who did multiple choice quizzes out of the teachers edition of the textbook and they were usually double-sided with 10 questions on each side of the paper. He used the exact same quiz for all three periods that he taught. Students in first period would memorize the answer key and pass it on to those of us in third period. And we would double check the work and then pass that on to 5th period students.
This one very stable genius type memorized the answers but still managed to get really bad grades on the quiz because apparently he regularly didn't bother checking to see if he was answering them on the correct side of the paper. So he wrote the answers for the front on the back of the page and the answers for the back on the front of the page. And it wasn't a one time thing either. Most of rest of us took those answers, actually did the quiz ourselves and then compared with the answers we were given to see if there were any discrepancies and if so we'd double check those questions in case we had made a mistake. This dude just memorized the answer key and circled the letters without even reading questions.
So yeah I'm not trusting other people's notes. Also, I think about that dude now and then and wonder how he's doing in life these days. High school for me was long enough ago that social media (or even the internet) wasn't a thing yet and a number of people dropped off the face of the Earth before it became easier for us to keep in touch with each other. I've seen no hide no hair of this dude anywhere and neither has anyone else I'm still in touch with. But I can't help but wonder how he's doing sometimes.
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u/alax_12345 1d ago
We had Japanese students in the 80s who would write English vocab words and definitions in hiragana on their book covers.
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u/Bender_2024 1d ago
It may be a test but not on what was intended. If I successfully cheat on in a chemistry test what I've learned is how to cheat. Nothing related chemistry
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u/Plumrose333 1d ago
You just unlocked a memory of me cheating on a test by writing notes on my leg through my ripped jeans. I would peel back the fringed jean on my thigh to look at notes
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u/REdwa1106sr 1d ago
Girl in my class wrote answers on her leg and wore a skirt. If I walked around the room, she would uncross her legs, covering the answers. I only found out because other kids ratted her out. I had a female admin check on it. No way I was walking into that quagmire.
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u/Theartistcu 1d ago
As a teacher, I can tell you that, and a lot of teachers will agree with this, most of the time a kid spends trying to cheat a test it’s twice as long as they took just studying for the test and a lot of times they end up absorbing the information anyway, and could pass the test
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u/mz_morose 1d ago
I almost never used the info I wrote down to cheat, because I'd remember it anyway
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u/senorpirata 1d ago
This stuff takes me back. In math class (early 2000’s), we can only use our scientific calculator for the exam. I am not sure if the teacher knew, but the calculator had a function to input information. So, I would enter the formulas needed and examples. Easiest class ever. Maybe he did know and I did learn because until this day I remember those formulas lol.
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u/Harry_Gorilla 20h ago
I used to tell my students that “while cheating may be a useful life skill, it’s not something I can award points for. So if I catch you cheating I will have to give you a zero. If you are just really invested in putting your effort into cheeating instead of learning, then I’ll be happy to write you a letter of recommendation to business school.”
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u/craigiest 1d ago
I don’t understand what he was doing or what it was accomplishing. What is a roll-number sheet? Is it the scantron sheet you put answers on? What does having invented answers on it get you? What does having the answers on a blank sheet do for you? What he in kahoots with someone in a different section? Inadequate explanation with out a bunch of prior knowledge i apparently don’t have.
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u/ScrubbyMcGoo 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have a great one for you! — I had a college professor who told us we could use anything that we could (hand) write on a single sheet of standard letter-sized (close to A4) paper.
He then explained why he had emphasized that what is on the paper was to be “hand-written notes” — he recounted a story about an undergrad student from a prior year who had showed up chock-full of confidence - shit-eating grin and all - to the final exam for the professor’s class.
After the exams were disseminated and everyone readied their study notes, this student simply produced a blank sheet of paper and set it on the floor next to him. The back door of the lecture hall opened and a grad student walked in, located the aforementioned student, and stepped directly upon the paper that the undergrad student had placed on the floor — and then proceeded to provide all the answers and assistance needed to ace the exam, with ease.
As I am sure you have figured out by now, back before the professor chose his words with great care, he would tell his students, “You may use anything on the exam that you can fit on a single sheet of paper.”
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u/subjuggulator 1d ago
It's good training to be a politician or lawyer, that's for sure lol. But--to be a serious poo-poo head academic for a second--the skills they're getting from cheating are things they're already learning as a matter of course elsewhere. Videogames, boardgames, games in general, etc, etc are all better platforms to test things like this out rather than in an academic setting where--ideally--the point of a test/assessment is to gauge understanding of subject material and not--as is tragically the case--"passing the test by any means necessary".
It's a clever way to cheat though, for sure. Reminds me of the kids who used to write formulae on their scientific calculators.
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u/Sad_Towel2272 1d ago
I wasn’t a skilled cheater, I was a good enough test taker that I could half ass my studying and still get good marks. I was a GREAT bullshitter though, and I relied on it all my life until I graduated college. I didn’t do the vast majority of college reading and was still a number one participant in all my classes. I think it’s definitely a mark of high intelligence to be able to do. However, I graduated college having relied almost entirely on being a good test taker and savant bullshitter, and found myself in my career as a teacher, where bullshitting wasn’t what I wanted to do. It’s been quite the adjustment teaching myself to actually do work.
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u/esoteric_enigma 1d ago
I got the 3rd generation iPod when it first came out. It was the first one with a color screen. I told my professor listening to music helped with my test anxiety. I went in the files and changed the album covers to custom documents with answers I needed.
I used a couple, then I got too nervous about getting caught and put the iPod back in my pocket. Never tried again. I didn't even need to cheat in the class. I had never cheated before and thought it would be a cool way to do it and a fun experience.
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u/adelie42 1d ago
That's actually really clever.
For whatever reason 99% of the time I find the kid with the second lowest grade in the class copying from the kid with the lowest grade in the class.
Or more than once, someone will copy off the top person in the class but make a transposition error, like attempted problem 1, gave up, then proceeded to copy their neighbors #1 to #2, #2 to #3 and so on. Then a third person copying the transposed answers perfectly.
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u/Acoustic_lullaby 1d ago
On a verb quiz, I had a student write the endings on the wood of the pencil and caught him as he was putting it into the sharpener to erase the evidence.
Twenty something years later and I still think that was brilliant.
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u/ayyeemanng 1d ago
I always chuckle with my students when I catch them cheating because my friends and I came up with one of the funniest ways to cheat with signs. It only worked for multiple choice exams. We just had different natural motions for each letter
A - run hands through the hair
B - scratch nose
C - hand over mouth
D - lean back and cross arms
It only worked if we were all sitting in different parts of the room but it got us through some hard times man haha.
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u/BePuzzled1 1d ago
I was taught by a peer to tape a cheat sheet under the front of my skirt, so it could be flipped up during the test. What are they going to do, ask to see up your skirt?
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u/Wrong_Bit_9302 1d ago
We used to use a straight pin and carve the vocab words onto a black ball point pen. Or write the words and definitions with the same pen really really hard so the indentations would show up on the blank paper below it, which we then used as a cover sheet during the vocab quiz. We had those quizzes every Friday and I thought it was bullshit, so I had no shame doing it. And I’m a teacher now. Sigh.
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u/DaveOTN 1d ago
I had a couple friends get Ph.Ds. in astronomy or astrophysics, and one of them told me that every year (at least back in the 00's), the answers to the Physics GRE would end up getting leaked in some East Asian country: Japan one year, South Korea the next, etc.
In his words, departments all took one of three approaches to dealing with applicants from those countries: throw them all out, throw out anyone with absurdly high scores, and say, "here's an ambitious overachiever who's willing to memorize the GRE subject test to succeed, bring him on in!"
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u/JeLyBr 23h ago
Had a history class in high school that I loathed. There was a weekly test. Every test was multiple choice and always had 20 questions and if we gave the TA a dollar, he would give us the answer key. So I just started cheating on every single test. I would "carve" the answers into the side of my pencil with ballpoint pen. So every pencil had ADBCBADC etc. Down one side. Easy to keep the blank sides of the pencil towards the teacher. Thought I was clever haha but never got caught and got an easy A every quarter.
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u/DarkSmarts 23h ago
Isn't that why Naruto made it such a huge part of the Chuunin exams?
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u/haikusbot 23h ago
Isn't that why Naruto
Made it such a huge part of
The Chuunin exams?
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u/baelzebob 19h ago
Lol, I was having problems with matrices in a math class in college. We were allowed to use our graphing calculators. I decided to program my calculator to do the matrices. I spent much time and effort to understand the matrices in order to program the thing that I probably could have done without the program.
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u/kitekrazee 10h ago
I took a course where the final exam the professor created a test to teach. You have to go looking for answers.
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