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Back when I was in college I used to use Course Hero to check my work with some of the content on there. I never copied, or blatantly cheated off of it, just used it to make sure I understood what I was doing, and that all the work I had done was correct. As my professors rarely ever provided feedback, even when asked, which frustrated me to the point of using the service. All the work I did throughout college was entirely my own, I just wanted to make sure I was correct and actually learning.
Now I understand that's no excuse at all, and is very likely still considered dishonest, which I understand. That's not what was found though. What was found was work of my own that I put on the site in order to get access to the documents I wanted. The work I posted was entirely my own, just an assignment name, and the code I made for it. The questions and the like for the code were not put anywhere in the assignment. It's clear others used it however, I hope just for studying like myself, but I find it unlikely.
Recently the professor I had for the class found the work I put up, and me being a complete idiot, I had way too much identifying information on my Course Hero account. She emailed my old student account that I hardly check a few weeks ago, saying it was academically dishonest and asked me to remove it. Which I immediately did.
The major thing here is. I graduated from this college a while ago, and she reported this dishonesty to the dean of students. I've spent the last few hours freaking out about the possibility of ruining my future career, and wasting 4 years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars just because I wanted to make sure I actually knew what I was doing.
I just wanted study materials to help, and I've ended up dooming myself instead. I'm not trying to throw away blame here, I did something that's considered dishonest, and I'm bad for it. I just don't know what I should do next. I deleted everything I put up, as well as my old account on Course Hero. The dean of students has yet to say anything to me, despite the email being sent by the professor weeks ago.
Are they going to revoke my degree? Will they just take away that class on my records? How screwed am I? Is there any way to get a degree back after revocation?
I spent so many years of my life working honestly, I only started using Course Hero my senior year, and again it was only to check my work. I know I was stupid and dumb for using that resource, but I'm so scared that my life is going to be ruined now. Is all that time just gone now? Worthless? All these loans I've put myself into, were they for nothing?
Should I message the dean of students and professor and come clean about using it as a study source? Should I be waiting for something from the dean of students?
I'm just so scared and confused here and just want some kind of advice.
TL;DR: I'm a big dumb stupid idiot who shared my work online and got caught, will my degree be revoked, what do I do?
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It's worth pointing out that this is basically a legal matter, and I'm not a lawyer.
If I were to guess, nothing is really going to happen to you. I think they don't really have enough evidence to revoke your degree, but of course, that will all depend on your institution's rules.
So basic common sense would say this: never admit to anything or volunteer information that people aren't asking for. Same as for the police, once you admit it, you don't have any leverage, and that admission could get your degree revoked.
You're worried that they caught you cheating, and let's be honest: we all know you probably did more than just "check your work." All cheating is cheating, doesn't matter if you came up the the answer first, etc... It's the same in their eyes, so just forget anything about that argument: it's worthless. But here's the thing: it doesn't matter. They are not accusing you of using CourseHero to cheat. They're accusing you of giving your solutions to others.
If I were you I'd just take it down. Then I'd say "you're right! Yes, I signed up for an account at one point and put this up. That was a major oversight and I will of course taken it down as soon as possible." Then, don't say anything else. Don't email them proactively. Don't continue apologizing. Don't do anything. They're not going to call the FBI and get a warrant to search your internet history through your ISP or something like that, and they can't really prove much beyond that you put up your assignments.
They might accuse you of an honor code violation. A first-time offender who put their work on a website doesn't really warrant revoking a degree in my mind. They probably just want a record of it in case (e.g.,) you come back to that school later and cheat again. But to be honest nobody can say how the situation will unfold. I've certainly never seen a degree revoked for this. I have seen someone's degree revoked because they copied a previous student's code and turned it in verbatim. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the scale of this stuff.
I did exactly as you said, and I really hope you're right.
Good reply but I question why it's a violation to publicly share assignments in the first place. In grad school I would often put up solutions to course projects on github. If someone just directly copies without understanding they won't pass the course exams anyway.
Because it constitutes collusion. Imagine it like this: how would you feel if a student made a physical print out of their projects and haded them out to other students after class.
Sure, you can say "oh but if they don't do their own work they just won't pass the exam," but that's not quite fair: imagine that a student using the "notes" now spends 3 hours on the assignment rather than 10. That's not really fair to other students. At its limit, the course would then just being about figuring out how to regurgitate notes.
All of this aside, it doesn't really matter what you feel about this: most universities see this as collusion and will apply their honor codes as such..
To preface, yes I do agree that you need to follow the honour code if it says not to share coursework.
I guess this just comes down to differences in teaching style. At least in my ideal course structure, I don't see any of those things as issues. We actually keep a repository of student reports and share them for exam preparation. I assume they would all be shared anyway behind the scenes. The problem sets are optional and exams (both oral and written) count for the bulk of the grade. If a student can pass the individual exams then I am satisfied that they understand the material. It doesn't really matter to me how this happens, what material they use, or how long it takes. People all learn differently so I trust them to work it out themselves.
I see what you're saying, but it reduces to the fact that you're now only grading exams. It's cool if you're ok with that, but I don't think most people are.
Just to be clear for yourself and also for other students who may see this:
Looking at Course Hero notes to get ideas from past students about what they understood from the course and their study/revision notes etc is not misconduct.
Uploading your own study notes you have from a course is not misconduct.
Ideally that's what the site is for: sharing your own study notes and practice questions you've tried to answer.
The misconduct part is:
Looking at past student's assignment or test answers (so you now know them and can use them)
Uploading your own assignment or test answers (giving others the chance you use your work)
Uploading your instructors materials (assignment questions, presentation slides, tests, test answers etc) (uploading content that is not your intellectual property)
It is collusion to provide other students with access to your work which was submitted for assessment.
For some hope:
Story 1:
When I was a student I was working on a group work project. When our project was complete other group members forwarded me emails containing 3-4 other groups (their friends) work asking me to check our work against there's to make sure we didn't miss anything. They had also sent these groups our assignment. I was mad that they sent our work (including MY work) to other students to copy. We had worked hard, their friends had not, why would it be right that dozens of others should get to benefit from us doing work they were not prepared to do? I reported this to the university, I forwarded the email chain which identified the other groups and all their members names (all over the assignments) and showed my group members requesting that I assist in the collusion.
The university response: did nothing, 'can't prove the other groups used content from our assignment' (ridiculous if the email had the original drafts you could compare those to what they actually submitted).
Reality: cheating was endemic due to a large international student population who were A) non-native English speakers and who struggled with writing assignments in a language that was not easy for them. and B) 95% came from a collectivist country where there is no concept of collusion/stealing ideas, and the university didn't want to deal with the issue and have to fail a whole pile of students. While I understand WHY they all wanted to share the assignment, they DID NOT understand why that was considered wrong in this country. No one seemed to want to help them understand, so instead (as you can see from comments below in this thread) I am ‘the bad guy’ and the many students who never learned that individual assessment exists for a reason ( to show your future employer what YOU can do, because they are not employing your friends to work with you!).
Doesn't affect u, and U gotta make someones life harder, u have no idea what that person is struggling through, absolutely disgusting
Does affect me, I paid the same full fees, and I needed a good quality degree to get a job just like they did. Letting people cheat ultimately means people who don’t know shit get degrees and then no one wants to hire people whose degree doesn’t represent them actually having learnt anything. Cheaters cost other students jobs in the long run. What makes you want to defend cheaters? Do you want to defend criminals who steal from others too? People who have legit shit happening in their lives can get help, including extensions or withdraw from subject and get fees back. They just have to apply and show their evidence. Cheating is never the only solution to a tough spot.
reminder that you’re still a fucking loser
reminder that you’re still a fucking loser
You’re over invested in this
It is misconduct. Any idiot that needs to check course hero and stu doc shouldn't be in college. A good quality degree? LOL It's way too easy to go to college now. Kids are lazy.
I would never touch on course hero and stu doc. I am also highly concerned about the ai, they going to pop with much clear answer to the most struggle student.
Rat
Damn, you really snitched on someone and tried to ruin their life? What was it to you what they did? Were your instructors too incompetent to realize on their own, without you telling on someone? Tattle-tale!
Triggered much? People who cheat ruin things for everyone. If getting caught ‘ruined’ a life it was their own actions that caused the consequence. Take some responsibility.
Lol...maybe.
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Based on your grammar and spelling, you don’t sound like much of a winner yourself. Maybe you should try doing your own assignments so you can improve your English enough to be taken seriously by adults.
Ha ha ha, misconduct is something else. This guy has committed a crime, which is violating intellectual property and copyright. These are different from what you said and your comment is misguiding this student.
Intellectual dishonesty is covered in Australian Universities under their own individual Student Misconduct policies. There are often specialised staff that such issues get reported to who investigate the case. Copywrite, if that’s the issue, is only a criminal law issue if the person makes and sells copies (ie makes money from the copying).
Yeah, you're a fucking loser dude.
dude you are such a loser
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Think you might need to go back and study cultural competence because it’s not that same as racism.
Guy, your grammar is shit. And yes, you a hundred percent ARE racist, stop being butthurt about these ESL students who are undoubtedly destroying your GPA and find a new hobby
Guy, your grammar is shit. And yes, you a hundred percent ARE racist, stop being butthurt about these ESL students who are undoubtedly destroying your GPA and find a new hobby
Nobody here can tell you. You need to post your school's honor code or whatever they call their policy on academic dishonesty. That's the "law" you'll be
evaluated against. At my school, you could have your degree revoked. If you were my student, I'd probably argue against that consequence but in favour of a notation of dishonesty on your transcript.
I could be persuaded, however, that you should have learned about plagiarism in Composition and you should have learned about cheat sites in UNI 101 and you should have learned that no site would ever offer you anything "for free" unless they were benefitting much more from whatever you were giving them. That should have been covered in the "critical thinking" outcome of any number of gen ed courses like philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history...
Schools have different policies and different consequences. We can't guess what your school's are. This is like find-an-attorney level bad. You should consider countersuing your Uni for letting you graduate without learning why this was bad.
I’d put money on the Dean doing absolutely nothing. And if I were looser with my money, I’d side-bet that the professor never contacted the Dean in the first place. I didn’t not know that I’ve ever heard of a college running down a single honor code violation well after a student graduated.
Well every prof to ever exist is lazy. They use those exact same sights to generate tests and answers. She found your work because she was looking to steal material for her own use. All profs are in as much or more hot water than you if anyone was to ever be able to fully prove their bs.
Any update on how things panned out?
not OP, but the same thing happened to me except I was still attending the school/not graduated. The professor from a class I took the previous semester emailed me and said she found my essay on there and said if I did not respond and take it down within 5 days, she would report me. I took it down and profusely apologized for how stupid I was for uploading it, said I would never do it again, etc. I had to email her proof that the paper was removed since coursehero doesn't allow you to just take down assignments but, other than that, I did not get in trouble. Scared me though.
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I wasn’t gonna argue with her over it.
I feel you.
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This is what I'm going through right now. I can't just take it down from course hero but I did email them and ask them to contact me. My Prof want to meet with me on Zoom on Monday. What do I do? I', an A student that has never done anything wrong ever. I swear I only looked at course hero to get some ideas for a research paper I'm doing, and I didn't even get to use all the credits because time ran out. So now she's saying this is very serious and I don't know how to fix it. BTW everything I uploaded was my own work that I typed except for the pre-made study guide that she made but it was a fill in the boxes with the info type thing. I like So I typed all the info except for the keyword she put in the first column. Anyway, I know that was her study guide but I filled it out so I didn't know that I could share that with ppl to help them out... with studying. How were you able to get your stuff off course hero?
I had to wait for them to remove it after I emailed them. They did it within 24-48 hours. Check your syllabus to see if it mentions anything about uploading things to coursehero. From my pov if you uploaded all your own work and didn’t turn anything in that she can trace back to CH then you can’t get in that much (or any) trouble. Hopefully they remove all of it before you meet with her on Monday and you can tell her it’s all been taken down. Apologize for being dumb (even though I disagree with that, you should be able to upload it if you want it 🙄) and say you won’t do it again.
what if you deleted your account? can you still find a way to get it deleted?
You can take it down?
Yes. You have to email their support.
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But can't the university still discipline you for violating their policies?
See that's what I was worried about. I didn't steal anything or cheat in any way but if it gets reported to the Dean or whatever (if further action was taken from the Prof) how hard would it be on me to prove that I'm right and they're wrong. It's best to air on the side of caution. Plus, if I did dispute it, what happens to me and my grades in the meantime? I still have to go to the school and see the Prof... I mean in my case. So, thank goodness I was able to get them to remove it very quickly, but I thought it was going to be harder than that.
If it's a good school they would bounce you. However, in a good university, people do not look at stupid crap like course hero.
It's wrong. It's misconduct and against the school's code.
Colleges have lowered their standards so much. It's sad
First of all, are you a lawyer? No
I'm glad you're not my lawyer.
Glad I came across this post. I literally just had the dean call me re my cousehero posts, all original btw, not sharing my info or the professor. After a beating over the phone about how dishonest this is, etc, I was told to take the document down and send over a screenshot as proof that it was in fact deleted in order to prevent not graduating this summer. As of now I simply wait for coursehero to get back to me about deleting this, which can take up to 24h.
Now, who had their documents successfully taken down? I uploaded 20 documents and have the reason above as to why I needed them down.
Needless to say, I am scared as shit...
Do you think I can use your account or if you can unlock this link for me today please? You would save my life!! Please consider and thank you
https://www.coursehero.com/file/34241979/kurra-part4pdf/
I do no longer have an account.
i know its been three years and you probably wont reply but this is worth trying, right now my school is putting me through hell for the same thing and the fucking coursehero website makes it sound legit like it's fine to do ?? ive sent screenshots and everything and they removed most of the ones i uploaded except two and my dean is threatning to dismiss me over the last two, mind you this is my first time ever getting in trouble so like i don't know what to do, what happened with you?
I sent an email saying there was a lawsuit involved (not true) and needed to be taken down as part of the agreement and they did
Was it ever taken down by courehero? & how long did it take?
I would have recommended your dismissal. You uploaded 20 documents? WTF
nobody asked you. you're a trash teacher.
I would and I stand by it. That's a crappy student.
Well, I also uploaded super high-quality lecture notes to GradeBuddy's docs section - I wasn't aware it's an issue but I guess it's safer there :)
From my understanding, even the work is completely your own but you still want to check peoples work or on web like chegg, coursehero to ensure your work is correct or your work is not your own, that would be an example of plagiarism and constitute as collision work or contract cheating.
your fucked
First off, I just want to thank this reddit thread to contain literally all the information to do this. Awesome Thread
I uploaded documents, regrettably my freshmen year. None of it mattered, it was all BS documents, but i had some important papers in there i didn’t even realize i had (as i was just uploading random things to gain tokens) and even connected them to the wrong school, purposely so for most of the them. The problem was if you looked my name up these papers came up.
Now, my name is still there with those papers online, but the links are thankfully deleted.
Here is exactly what I said: 1st: email:
I am reviewing my account and would not want these (# of) documents linked my name, and my school.
All of the documents are my own original work, but some were collaborative and containing sensitive information fellow classmates, and from class lectures. I am no longer comfortable with my private information and the private/sensitive information of my colleagues and school to be in these documents. I would like them removed as it was inappropriate for me to upload the files under the data privacy act, my schools privacy acts.
The private information is very sensitive to the school and I, and would appreciate any help possible. I plan on deactivating my account as well, for the privacy of my school.
Then I made a list of each document with its link, and listed these exact bullet points for each one.
-This document maintains my private information -This work is confidential and will cause great damage, and my university -This document has personal, private information of my colleagues
(This was edited for if a document had colleagues work in it, or another reason like private lecture material or wrong class number) Which were all very legit reasons for my case.
They responded within a few hours and had it down that night, im truly thankful.
I want to thank you for posting the email you wrote to Course Hero. I sent them the email modified to fit my predicament and it work in like an hour. I sent it left the room for like 20 mins came back wrote to my Prof saying that I was in process of fixing it. Then I went to show a friend what the Prof was saying I did wrong, and that fast the uploads were already gone. This relieves so much stress. Thank you!
How long exactly did it take for them to reach out to you,,? cuz Im in that same predicament now.
As per CourseHero its not legally considered cheating...
https://support.coursehero.com/hc/en-us/articles/200350894--Is-using-Course-Hero-cheating-
LMAO. You think course hero cares? IT IS CHEATING
It is. Have you ever taken a college class? Have you ever looked into CourseHero content and how it is used by students in your very own class? I watched three people rewrite the same discussion post: same organization, same structure, topic and major points stated but different terminology and synonyms. I was tempted to copy from CourseHero myself once in an English class, but my instructor scared the shit out of me with Turnitin checker. So, I never did. But I have browsed it enough to see how others have cheated and stolen content. And I am glad the only documents I uploaded were my own discussion posts and not projects or papers/essays. The discussions, in my opinion, aren't that important. No one reads them anyway. Just reply to the first two available with that "I agree" bs.
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This was 5 years ago y have u replied to like 18 comments
To like 18 comments. I see why you used Course Hero, you can't write correctly
I didn't know that I was writing an essay. Next time I type ON REDDIT, I will be more formal, and make sure I have the correct spelling and grammar.
Good luck.
You used course hero to check your work?
Well, I'm sure you've learned and moved on. Never put anything on these worthless websites. Everyone needs to do original work
Any update on how this unfolded?
I'm literally so curious lol
haha same