My professor accused me of cheating on a exam I took a few months ago by accessing the exam before I was supposed to (I had arranged to take it later than the other students in the class.) His sole evidence of this was the tracking statistics feature in Blackboard which purportedly shows that I accessed the exam multiple times before I was supposed to. I know for a fact that I did not do this. I was then told by the integrity council that unless I can show that these statistics were faulty somehow that I would be convicted. Does anyone know if there are any bugs or limitations with the tracking statistics feature that I can use to prove my innocence?
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2@GoodDeeds It seems like those similar posts involve a good deal more inference, though - I suspect this will be significantly harder to argue against than those two. (Just a hunch.)– Aaron MontgomeryJun 3, 2021 at 22:37
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2This seems tricky. Do you have roommates that are using your computer or similar? What was happening on your various devices (phone; computer) at the time of the test? Did you have the test site up on a browser for use later when you got home?– DawnJun 4, 2021 at 19:25
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2What was the reason you had arranged to take it later than the other students in the class?– NobodyJun 5, 2021 at 13:51
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3@CaptainEmacs: As a long-time Blackboard user, the default case is that the test is available generally to the whole class (e.g., incl. OP), and maybe the instructor adds a password for access after that time (distributed to a subset of students). There is the capacity to change availability time entirely for individual students, but it's buried way down in a series of menus, and very few instructors know about that (I've never used it myself). So the don't-access-early likely appears to be on the honor system to the student.– Daniel R. CollinsJun 5, 2021 at 16:25
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3@CaptainEmacs Agreed, and one could also perhaps click on it accidentally, without intending to (I am not familiar with Blackboard's UI, but in general this could happen).– GoodDeedsJun 5, 2021 at 17:35
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1 Answer
I'm a college computer science instructor who's been using Blackboard to deliver tests for about ten years at this point (and used the platform generally ten years before that). I frequently scan the testing time logs for various bits of information on student performance.
I've never seen any outrageous time logs that failed to synch with the actual time of the test availability. I'm not aware of any system bugs in that regard, nor have any theory about how such could happen.
If your instructor has actual time logs showing such a discrepancy, then I don't see any way to argue that away.
answered Jun 5, 2021 at 13:36
