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The Consequences of Cheating Archives

October 31, 2008

Cheating Part 1: Who Benefits from Cheating?

By Paul Sorensen on October 31, 2008 8:42 PM

I seriously don’t understand why people cheat to get certified. In a July 2008 blog post I discussed how certification is a valuable process and not merely a ‘piece of paper’. I’m going to discuss cheating in a few different posts over the next couple of weeks. I’m very interested in the comments that this topic generates. As this series on cheating progresses I will pose some questions please post your stories/comments in the blog comments (please don’t name any names).

In association with this series we’ve created a survey called "Cheating: How Bad Is It?" (completely anonymous) that will help us better understand cheating. I’ll post the results towards the end of the blog series.

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]

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November 6, 2008

Cheating Part 2: Cheating Hurts The Cheater

By Paul Sorensen on November 6, 2008 10:36 PM

The primary goal in becoming certified is to increase one’s credibility (with employer and peers) by increasing his or her knowledge and skills. When someone cheats, they undermine the learning process, which leads to a decrease in their credibility - the exact opposite of their goal! Cheating eventually catches up to them and the damage to their reputation can haunt them for years.

I’m sure that you all know someone who under-performed because they cut corners (like cheating). Cheaters don’t fool people for long.

Do you know someone who you suspect cheated to get certified? How did you know? How did you feel about that person? Would you recommend them to a future employer?

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]


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November 15, 2008

Cheating Part 3: Cheating Hurts Present and Future Employers

By Paul Sorensen on November 15, 2008 1:43 AM

When an employer hires someone to perform a job role they look at several critical factors such as employment history, communication skills, experience, training, certification. Some of these are easily verifiable (communication skills), while others are more ambiguous (level of experience). When someone cheats or lies about any of these (such as certification or experience) and still gets the job or promotion, they harm their employer and peers by consistently under-performing in their job. Someone else has to be assigned to pick up the slack, and then they eventually fire and replace the under-performing person.

I’m sure that many of you have seen this happen first-hand. You may have even seen someone cause damage to critical systems or put a project over budget. It just doesn’t make sense to me that people would put themselves and their companies at risk like this.

Do you have experience with an under-performer who you suspect may have cheated? Who picked up the slack? What did you do?

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]

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November 25, 2008

Cheating Part 4: Cheating Hurts Legitimate Certification Holders

By Paul Sorensen on November 25, 2008 10:53 AM

Most IT Professionals who become certified follow the intended process (study, train, practice, test) and in doing so – increase the breadth of their knowledge and their skills. When someone cuts corners and cheats to get certified (i.e. using dump sites, seeking answers in online forums, etc.) they undermine the process and almost always under-perform. Sadly, in the mind of their employer – the employee’s poor performance sometimes gets erroneously blamed on what the employer perceives to be to a useless certification.

This unfortunate misperception not only negatively affects the employer and cheater, it can also deflate the value for those who have legitimately put in the effort to earn the credential (which they will attest was not an easy task). Over time, this can even begin to erode the value of a credential, lead to the devaluation of a specific certification, and even certification in general.

Do you know someone who cheated to get a certification that you legitimately earned? How did that make you feel as a true certification holder? Was there anything you might have inadvertently done that helped facilitate their cheating?

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]

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December 15, 2008

Cheating Part 5: "Cheating Hurts the Oracle Certification Program"

By Paul Sorensen on December 15, 2008 9:45 PM

The effort and cost that goes into building and launching a single exam is tremendous. Building a certification involves many resources, including subject matter experts, exam project managers, psychometricians, beta testers, marketing/launch coordinators, customer service reps, and vendors. All of these people take great pride in their work and Oracle puts every effort into making sure that each exam is a good measurement of the knowledge and skills associated with the intended level and job role. Cheaters cheapen the value of the associated credential and undermine the efforts of the people who worked so hard to build the exam. In other words, cheating is a direct “slap-in-the face” to the Oracle Certification Program.

Your opinion: Are cheaters conscious to any degree of the individuals who plan, develop and deliver the exams?

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]

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December 18, 2008

Cheating Part 6: "The Lone Beneficiary" (And It's Not You)

By Paul Sorensen on December 18, 2008 11:47 PM

Isn’t in ironic that the only real beneficiary of cheating are those who steal test content (test questions) and sell or give them away. And for what…to earn money from ad traffic on their website?

Because these people operate outside of the law, Oracle does pursue prosecution of the authors, operators, and distributors of dump sites and illegal information-sharing. This unfortunately can be a lengthy process, as these shady operators will often move their sites around attempting to outrun legal prosecution.

Have you ever submitted real exam questions to a forum or dump site? Would you agree or disagree that this devalues your own efforts and credential? Did you know that when you agree to Oracle’s Candidate Agreement you agree not to share exam content?

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]

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December 19, 2008

Cheating Part 7: What Can You and I Do About Cheating?

By Paul Sorensen on December 19, 2008 3:30 PM

Oracle has implemented a number of strategies to help curb cheating and continues to work on even more. We realize that - in spite of all of our efforts - that if people are bent on stealing, sharing and using illegal content, that we can't effectively police each and every specific transaction to stop them. However, there are several interesting technologies emerging that may accurately allow us to determine whether or not someone has had access to illegal content before the test. One major certification program is implementing this now, and we are looking at it very closely.

There are four things that you as legitimate certification holders can do to help preserve the integrity of your justly earned certification:

  1. Strongly discourage the sharing of content among candidates. Don't post test content in forums, upload items to dumps or help others using real content.
  2. Don't point people to brain dumps or even encourage them. Don't support illegal content thieves, distributers, and seekers. Let them fend or themselves. Avoid any actions that enable a short-cutter to circumvent the real process of actually getting certified.
  3. Become an evangelist - tell both your success and horror stories. Share with people how following the correct process has paid off in your career and in your life. Share examples of where you seen or heard of people who have been burned by cutting corners and cheating.
  4. Report specific instances of cheating and fraud to Oracle. Using Oracle's fraud reporting email address, you can report instances of fraud and cheating to the Oracle Certification Program. Don't worry - your submission is anonymous. We investigate these reports vigorously and take action wherever legally possible.

We can't completely eliminate cheating or cheaters.  But we are making significant strides to curb and discourage it.

In summary - we need to remember that in the long run, cheating doesn't help anyone and instead actually causes harm to everyone involved.

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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[UPDATE January 8, 2009: survey period ended, URL removed]

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January 19, 2010

Oracle Exam Security Update

By Paul Sorensen on January 19, 2010 5:39 PM

Oracle Certification Security UpdateHi Everyone,

I've gotten a few questions related to exam security lately and wanted to discuss this briefly. The Oracle Certification Program is very concerned about cheaters, content theft, proxy testing and similar activities. These activities hurt the value of our credentials and hurt those who legitimately work to become certified. We are taking measures against such fraud and are implementing some new strategies this year which include several new back-end tools.

As you know, we recently switched to Pearson VUE for the delivery of our worldwide proctored exams, and one of the key components of that switch is Pearson's ability to help us detect cheaters and stop content theft. We are working closely with Pearson and will be taking advantage of some great new technology. I'll post additional information on the blog next week.

Some of our most recent security actions include:

  • Just last week, we instated a three-year ban on a candidate in Korea who accessed written notes during a test. The results of two exams were canceled as well.
  • We implemented a six-month ban on a candidate in the USA for attempting to access notes on his phone during the test.
  • We issued a formal written warning to a candidate for having notes outside of his bag (and potentially accessible) during the exam. As you can imagine, this candidate's future exam activities will now be closely monitored.

Additionally, we are investigating a group of candidates in Nigeria that may have attempted to falsify their score reports. If this is validated, we will be banning them for (at least) three years from participating in the Oracle Certification Program.

Look for additional related to security and cheating next week here on the Oracle Certification Blog.

Paul Sorensen

Paul Sorensen,
Director, Oracle Certification

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