For some reason, I immediately thought of that popular video: "Don't talk to the police." Today, I'd probably assume that if you're fishing for a confession, then you don't have any evidence, and your "boss" doesn't exist. For instance, when I was an adjunct, I didn't have support like that from my department.

What I don't know is how I'd have reacted as a college student with less confidence and street smarts, and with a possibly justifiable fear of antagonizing a teacher.

Absolutely. Never talk to me either. Never talk to the professor. Tell them "an investigation is better as it will prove your innocence and resolve the issue more quickly then my explanations will" and walk away if you did cheat. If the prisoners dilemma all over again especially since it takes 2 to cheat in most cases.

> For instance, when I was an adjunct, I didn't have support like that from my department.

I'm different in that I'm not a professor, I help teach and grade a class so I work underneath a professor who allows me to lecture some times and help guide the class but it's not "my" class. As a grader I see all the students work and as an attentive grader I memorize the students names and styles. When I catch a cheater I email my boss and the professor I work under and they advise me on what to do (which is usually to allow me to write my strongly worded letter of doom that anyone who's done something iffy on the internet has received once or twice). The policy in this programming class is that it's not cheating if you credit each other with parts of the work you've done but the less astute observers won't remember that and will try and hide their work.

> What I don't know is how I'd have reacted as a college student with less confidence and street smarts, and with a possibly justifiable fear of antagonizing a teacher.

Some of these kids are in other classes I'm taking and they are still afraid when I bring it up. It's the fear that I will involve the administration that works here. The carrot or the stick. They assume I'm the carrot and I'm going to just mark them zero if they fess up. They assume that the school is the stick and they will get the full penalty.

If it were up to me any cheating would be handled officially through the university but that isn't our SOP. We find cheaters usually fail. As such we just tell them "we know and we are going to give you a 0 for this and next exam". That usually deters cheating as they need to retake the class then.

While in college, my writing style changed from week to week, as I was influenced by professors, my readings, and so forth. That was in my humanities courses. I didn't take any programming courses while in college.

I'm kind of glad that I finished college before the Internet age. I never cheated, but am glad that I didn't have to work in such an adversarial atmosphere.

I'm sure it's not your intention, but "stop and accuse" sounds a lot like "stop and frisk." It sounds like a recipe for abuse.

    > This morning, my professor handed me back a paper (a literature review) in front of my entire class and exclaimed “this is not your language.”

I try not to get mad and I try to be as objective as possible but after I know for sure it is very disappointing. It's a reflection of my abilities I feel.

Everyone cheats in some way. What I am concerned about is disingenuous cheating where a student obviously is preforming poorly in non-adverse conditions and decides to take it upon themselves to rectify the situation in a non-productive manor.

So the next time your write an HN comment and don't misspell "hand" we will know that you've plagiarized.

Unfortunately some people don't seem to understand that there is a correlation between vocabulary, work flow, word choice, and the writer.

Whether they wrote it themselves comes out pretty quickly, even if they won't admit to cheating. If a student can't explain his or her work, then you have a basis for giving a lower grade or pressing on the cheating accusation.

After the recent midterm we gave out for one of my students I received two copes of the exam, one had a 20pts higher grade. Due to errors made on our side of the line it seemed as if the student had taken the exam, left a room, and taken it again at another room to score higher. We thought as soon as we saw him that he was a nice kid and so we should go lighter on him. All it did was freak the kid out. He couldn't make full sentences without stuttering because he thought we knew he was cheating.

I think this falls on a fault of our own. We didn't ask the right questions--the professor and I. We asked "did you take two copies of the exam" and he said yes, we then asked "did you change rooms" and he didn't respond, he just looked confused. We took him to my boss and my boss just gave him the exams and said "can you explain this". After that the kid went and explained exactly what happened.

I don't know if it's coming across correctly but basically we lead him into telling us he cheated. We "knew" that he cheated when it was really an error on our side. My boss was level headed and just said that we would start an investigation into cheating if he cannot explain himself and tell us what happened that day. When given the change rather then asked leading questions he was better able to articulate himself. It's my opinion now that asking any questions is a horrible idea for confronting a cheater. You just need to tell them what information you have and how this is going to be bad for them and they can fill in the blanks otherwise you will have accidentally lead them into a trap where they say they did something that they obviously didn't do as in the case of this student.

The professor did the first and evidently only the first.

If the student does nothing then I'd assume they did copy.

I'm sure people will be mad about these assumptions but from my experience--and from what I've seen my colleges fall into after wrongly accusing someone of cheating--I'd definitely say this is an appropriate average model. I'd also say it's lived to fruition in this case. The author got mad and wrote a fantastic expose on this situation. If I was the professor I'd correct what was obviously my mistake at this point.

The student is usually happier to have that it seems since they get to say "I fought the law and the law didn't win" to their friends and classmates. The teacher does look like an idiot to the class after that though.

It may well come a time when I make the same mistake but at that point I'll be excited to admit I was wrong and restore credit. I'm not ashamed at failing myself, only know-it-all-do-nothings are afraid of ruining their street cred.