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Do You Report Cheating?

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David Staples

David Staples

Member
Mar 5, 2024
10
4
541
Fort Wayne, IN
youtube.com
#1
Hey everyone, happy Tuesday! So I was teaching a DataSys+ class last week and there are some security topics in the course. This being a military group, I knew that they had most likely done a Security+ at some point and mentioned that they should have seen some of these topics on their Security+ exam. One of the students relayed to me that he thought the exam was so much easier now than it was years ago when he first took it. I asked when he took it and he said just a few months ago. I asked more about his experience on the exam and he said that these days all you have to do is memorize the questions in the test bank because they're practically the same questions as on the exam. I asked more about the test bank he (and another student who was in his same Sec+ class) used and he went on to describe the VCE Player that is commonly used with braindumps. He also said that when he had a difficult question on the exam, he simply raised his hand and the instructor would sit there and go through the question with him. The instructor was not only proctoring the exam, but also helping students out during the exam.

After the class was over, I talked to the owner of another training company that I knew does business with this group and he said he had already reported it to CompTIA, but CompTIA seems to be saying they can't do anything without any sort of hard evidence and apparently isn't going to do anything about it. So my question is, should I even bother reporting this to CompTIA if they're not going to do anything anyways? All I have is what students told me about their experience. No physical, hard, concrete evidence. Does CompTIA actually care about cheating, or so long as a training company brings them a lot of business they don't really care about how they get the students to pass the exam? What would you do?
 
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#2
David,

Cheating hurts everyone. It lessens the market value of CompTIA and the certifications it offers. It lessens the value of all certification programs. It promotes poor instruction and hurts all of us CINers. But most importantly it hurts everyone who holds or is working to earn a certification.

If a so-called student is brazen enough to admit this to you (another instructor trying to help them learn) you should report their name and the name of the training or testing organization.

Steps to Report Cheating:

1. Visit the Pearson VUE Test Security Page:
Go to www.pearsonvue.com and navigate to the "Contact test security" or "Test Security" section.

2. Complete the Test Security Form:
Find and fill out the designated secure form to report suspected violations.

3. Provide Detailed Information:
Include specifics about the observed violation, including the candidate's information, the alleged inappropriate behavior, the date and time, and any evidence you have.

4. Submit the Form:
Submit the completed form to the Test Security group.

Best Regards,

Brian
 
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#4
I do think that CompTIA cares a great deal about exam integrity - I think we all do. And I personally have had my own run-in's with the braindump chumps and the companies that peddle them (I won't mention them by name in this forum). But yes, the VCE files that we see out there on the internet.

Personally, I wonder if folks at CompTIA could poison those VCE files with fake braindumps of their own, which then would reduce the confidence in using them. Bunky questions or incorrect responses that would signal the candidate perhaps used a braindump to prepare. While that wouldn't provide conclusive, smoking-gun evidence, to me, it brings up that confidence level to making sure the candidates are legit.

I think what we can do as educators is to promote good study habits and techniques that make cheating less of an attractive option and not interact with the kind of riff-raff that doesn't care about skill quality, but rather only just wants the credential, because they see that as the in-road to getting a job. (the proverbial "i have to cheat to even get into the game/get ahead" crowd - you find a lot of them outon the r/CompTIA subreddit.)

And of course, the age old axiom - if you build a better mousetrap, sometimes you just get smarter mice.

/r
 
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#5
Rick Butler said:
Personally, I wonder if folks at CompTIA could poison those VCE files with fake braindumps of their own, which then would reduce the confidence in using them. Bunky questions or incorrect responses that would signal the candidate perhaps used a braindump to prepare. While that wouldn't provide conclusive, smoking-gun evidence, to me, it brings up that confidence level to making sure the candidates are legit.
Click to expand...
On the surface, I would agree, but the student mentioned that as well. That the class went through them together and corrected answers to the ones the instructor said were correct. 🤦‍♂️
 
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#6
Now, the ONLY time I could EVER think of using a braindump for ANYTHING would be in the form of a lab manual - that is, take the question as written, toss out the answers, and model it up in a bench situation. At that point, it's a experiential lab. But, using the question from the exam, as study material undermines the idea of questioning someone's applicative knowledge.

See, if we look at this from a Blooms perspective, a question from a scenario that a candidate has never seen tests applicative knowledge. If the candidate has seen the question, it goes down to Understanding or just Knowlege levels - which is not meet for a certification that is testing applicative knowledge.

So one would hope that if they have modeled things in a lab situation, they've covered the points that might be addressed in a braindump question, anyway. I have seen very few GAS questions that have been so off the wall, as to be purposely evasive. Usually, either you know it or you don't.
 
#7
There's not much we can do about brain dumps, apart from reporting the site.

As for the student and their proctor, this could've been captured in the camera. To my understanding, all proctored exams in a Pearson test centre is equipped with a camera. Unless, if the exam is taken on a secured site where Pearson simply relies on trust and integrity of the people.
 
#8
David Staples said:
Hey everyone, happy Tuesday! So I was teaching a DataSys+ class last week and there are some security topics in the course. This being a military group, I knew that they had most likely done a Security+ at some point and mentioned that they should have seen some of these topics on their Security+ exam. One of the students relayed to me that he thought the exam was so much easier now than it was years ago when he first took it. I asked when he took it and he said just a few months ago. I asked more about his experience on the exam and he said that these days all you have to do is memorize the questions in the test bank because they're practically the same questions as on the exam. I asked more about the test bank he (and another student who was in his same Sec+ class) used and he went on to describe the VCE Player that is commonly used with braindumps. He also said that when he had a difficult question on the exam, he simply raised his hand and the instructor would sit there and go through the question with him. The instructor was not only proctoring the exam, but also helping students out during the exam.

After the class was over, I talked to the owner of another training company that I knew does business with this group and he said he had already reported it to CompTIA, but CompTIA seems to be saying they can't do anything without any sort of hard evidence and apparently isn't going to do anything about it. So my question is, should I even bother reporting this to CompTIA if they're not going to do anything anyways? All I have is what students told me about their experience. No physical, hard, concrete evidence. Does CompTIA actually care about cheating, or so long as a training company brings them a lot of business they don't really care about how they get the students to pass the exam? What would you do?
Click to expand...
I am suspicious of the “hard evidence” claim. I sat SecurityX two weeks ago. My audio and video were recorded. I sincerely hope CompTIA is not too lazy or overworked to request audio and video from that testing environment.
 
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#9
jarrelrivera said:
As for the student and their proctor, this could've been captured in the camera. To my understanding, all proctored exams in a Pearson test centre is equipped with a camera. Unless, if the exam is taken on a secured site where Pearson simply relies on trust and integrity of the people.
Click to expand...
That's part of the problem here. The training company is also the testing center and has a couple of "mobile sites" that allows them to offer proctoring of exams onsite. My understanding is that they are supposed to send a proctor, but that they have been letting the instructor input another proctor's information and credentials and just proctoring the exam themselves, so the instructor ends up being the proctor. And being a mobile site, that they can set up in a hotel conference room / ball room / etc.... there's no cameras. They're relying on the trust and integrity of the people, which in this case... well... you be the judge. 🤷‍♂️
 
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#10
Mark Anthony Germanos said:
I am suspicious of the “hard evidence” claim. I sat SecurityX two weeks ago. My audio and video were recorded. I sincerely hope CompTIA is not too lazy or overworked to request audio and video from that testing environment.
Click to expand...
See my response to jarrelrivera. This company is a testing center and also has a couple of "mobile sites" where there is not a camera with audio and video. It's basically a hotel ballroom or conference room where they set up laptops as the Pearson Vue server and testing stations and allow the students to test in the classroom where they had the course on the last day of the course.
 
#11
I advise anyone preparing for the exam to be extremely cautious, as cheating can result in a lifetime ban. That makes them ineligible for some jobs that require certifications. I try to scare them into not cheating. In the past government employees who cheat could lose their job if the certification gets pulled.
 
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#12
Braindumps have existed since the early days of IT certification, dating back to when vendors like SCO and Novell first introduced exams.

While the widespread use of braindumps is disheartening - undermining the credibility of certifications and devaluing the efforts of those who earn them honestly - it ultimately harms the individuals who rely on them the most. Candidates who use braindumps often fail to develop the skills necessary to perform well in interviews or succeed in technical roles, even if they manage to obtain a certification or land a job.

This issue is well recognized in the hiring community. Interviewers who are familiar with certifications can often detect when a candidate has relied on shortcuts. When certified individuals underperform during technical screenings, the blame typically falls on the use of braindumps rather than the certification itself.
 
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#13
I've told this story a few times regarding 'braindump chumps'.

We had an instructor who was teaching for us once who was teaching connectorizing RJ-45/Cat5e cables. A relatively simple task for someone with A+ and Net+ training and certs - which, this person had (which we found later, he was a 'chump'). When a student came to him and asked about how to do it, the instructor's response was "I don't know - go look it up on YouTube."

Yeah, he was summarily terminated.

So +1 to Jason's comment - because while the braindump helped him get the job, the braindump also prevented him from keeping it.
 
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