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I have recently been selected as a tutor on Chegg for the subject of advanced physics and have recently also been applying to various internship opportunities as I am in my final year of undergrad. I have the experience of being an educator at an Indian organisation, and was wondering whether I can add this new part time tutoring job to my CV. The problem is that I have the opinion that professors don't look at Chegg as something good, so is there any way it could look bad on my resume?

Laurel
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Physiker
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  • Somewhat related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/165912/should-instructors-make-use-of-the-chegg-honor-shield-tool – Daniel R. Collins Apr 23 '21 at 00:07
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    Note that many people (outside the US at least) don't know what chegg is. – einpoklum Apr 23 '21 at 19:45
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    Some extended discussion, mostly about the culpability of Chegg with regard to academic misconduct, has been has been moved to chat. Please see this FAQ before adding another comment. – cag51 Apr 24 '21 at 02:30
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    It's possible to list yourself as 'paid online tutor in physics' without naming which service. It might help if you have any legit client stories/references of who you tutored. – smci Apr 24 '21 at 21:21

2 Answers2

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I would probably interpret "tutor on Chegg" to mean "paid to help students cheat". Maybe this isn't a fair assessment of your job there, but it's certainly the impression I get out of Chegg.

I am only willing to answer student questions on StackExchange and on other sites here like Biology.SE because of strict moderation policies that prevent students from using the site as a homework cheating tool rather than an educational aid. Other sites without these controls, especially those that seem to have a business model based on helping students cheat, leave a bad taste in my mouth.

henning
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Bryan Krause
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  • This is probably true, but I wonder whether some institutions might see value in hiring a "poacher turned gamekeeper"...? – Daniel Hatton Apr 22 '21 at 17:34
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    @DanielHatton Unless applying to a company/institution that hunts cheaters, I cannot see an advantage in looking like somebody that switched sides. – Captain Emacs Apr 22 '21 at 19:07
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    @DanielHatton, only if they hire you specifically to be a gamekeeper and nothing else. – Buffy Apr 22 '21 at 19:13
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    I know that I'm probably the only one here around to think this way, but I'm much more disappointed by the professors who complain about Chegg and don't do anything to change the way in which they administer homework and exams. When I was a student around 30-35 years ago, there were professors who would say: "It's a student's right to cheat, and it's a professor's duty to avoid cheating". Even though this statement is strong, it contains more than a grain of truth. I've also discussed this here. – Massimo Ortolano Apr 22 '21 at 19:58
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    @MassimoOrtolano The problem is that it's much easier to cheat today than when you were a student, and much harder to catch. It's now an industry with thousands working full-time on it, who can go so far as make entire projects and essays for hire. If you think you've made exams that can't be cheated, you are probably mistaken. I myself have written many "creative" problems which can't be found in standard sources, and within minutes they get posted to Chegg, where people like OP solve them. – knzhou Apr 22 '21 at 20:14
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    @knzhou There was already a cheating industry 35 years ago, and even more, and the methods are the same. There were professional cheaters and you could buy projects, essays, dissertations and whatever you wanted to buy already 35 years ago. What changed is just the technological support. But there are other forms of exams, like oral exams, which are less prone to cheating (and this is just one example). I know that many here like to think that nowadays it’s different, but it’s just because they are inexperienced about cheating (and also because it’s sounds a lot like good guys vs bad guys). – Massimo Ortolano Apr 22 '21 at 20:33
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    @MassimoOrtolano How do you know there isn't massive cheating on your oral exams? – knzhou Apr 22 '21 at 20:57
  • @knzhou Because an oral exam is a one-to-one interview. I wrote about the structure of my exams here. – Massimo Ortolano Apr 22 '21 at 21:15
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    This does not answer the title question. – Anonymous Physicist Apr 22 '21 at 22:59
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    @AnonymousPhysicist As you've probably noticed on my other answers where you've commented similarly, I don't really think we should be in the business of telling people directly what to do and not to do except in special circumstances. Rather, we can help supply the information needed to make a decision. As Daniel suggests, there may be some (very rare) situational information that changes the answer, yet we're building a repository of Q&A here meant to help people beyond just one asker. The question that OP ends their body with is more answerable than their title, IMO. – Bryan Krause Apr 22 '21 at 23:02
  • "we can help supply the information needed to make a decision." I do not think you have done that sufficiently explicitly. Michael did; see Michael's fourth paragraph. – Anonymous Physicist Apr 23 '21 at 00:12
  • @AnonymousPhysicist From the Help: "If you have a question about a decision you need to make, please focus on how to make the decision, the pros and cons of a certain choice, or what relevant aspects you should consider. We cannot possibly know or judge all the details of your situation, in particular your personal preferences and the quality of your work and qualifications. Therefore you still have to make the decision yourself." – Bryan Krause Apr 23 '21 at 21:40
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    Even though @MassimoOrtolano as a moderator has closed some questions that I wanted to stay on this site, and made other mod decisions that gave me some bad feelings, I have to say I totally agree with Massimo here. Oral exams are a much better way to evaluate how well the student has studied the material (for a huge class, meeting each student 1-on-1 sounds like a daunting task, but I don't think any of you like spending 6 hours grading exams where you can barely read their hand-writing, either. Plus ... you can do an oral exam to a group of 10 people, 5 times, and you've covered 50). – Nik Apr 23 '21 at 21:47
  • Yes, but your answer does not discus CVs in any way, so it is not explicit enough. You're not really helping the asker, who we can presume to be a novice CV writer, make a decision. – Anonymous Physicist Apr 23 '21 at 21:54
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    The only thing that has changed today compared to 30-35 years ago vis a vis cheating is that the process has become democratized. Now, anyone can cheat using the Internet and other readily-available resources, without needing access to specialized, exclusive resources (like those previously maintained by fraternities, sororities, and athletic "tutors"). Massimo is absolutely correct; the kind of cheating that Chegg makes possible can only be blamed on lazy professors. There were times as an undergrad that I "cheated" on homework by looking up answers. I then learned from those answers. – Cody Gray - on strike Apr 24 '21 at 09:43
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    @CodyGray, I don't think that laziness on the part of professors is always accurate. In my experience, most professors are very hard working, but may be hampered by budgetary restrictions. – J W Apr 25 '21 at 07:36
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Keep your resume to what is relevant, and highlight how your experience has been for positive learning rather than cheating, or leave it out.

Chegg is notorious for student cheating - we actually had instructors scouring Chegg during the exam this year to search for real-time cheating. It was surreal. But that being said, Chegg in and of itself is not bad, and tutors on Chegg can't be held responsible for cheating just because they post on Chegg.

So, if the job requires you to show experience as someone who can handle remote learning, remotely communicating with students, that sort of thing, Chegg could be relevant experience. Now, if the person doing the hiring has reasonable knowledge of Chegg they'll also know that it is used a lot for cheating, so you will have to do some work on your resume to show how you specifically did not contribute to student cheating. This is a big hill to climb and I doubt you'd be able to do it. On the other hand, if it is for a job where the hiring person doesn't really know what Chegg is for you won't have this issue.

If the job doesn't require you to show any of this, I'd leave it off for two reasons. First, Chegg is sketchy and is obviously a cheating mill. Second, it is not worth it to waste the hiring person's time with irrelevant experience. Unless you can swing your Chegg experience to be relevant to the job you are applying for, it doesn't really do much for you to leave it on.

Now, since you asked this question it's pretty obvious that you knew you were likely helping students cheat. Perhaps use that to guide your choices of what goes on your resume...

Michael Stachowsky
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    " we actually had instructors scouring Chegg during the exam this year to search for real-time cheating" This actually happened to questions I wrote. Highly disappointing. – knzhou Apr 22 '21 at 18:55
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    "Chegg in and of itself is not bad" - why not? It seems principally to be a cheating tool. "tutors on Chegg can't be held responsible for cheating" - I disagree; tutors, whether on Chegg, on some other online service, or those having in-person meetings with their students have a responsibility to assist in education rather than to assist in cheating. There may not be ways that an instructor can compel any sanction on the person, but it can certainly affect their judgment of that person. – Bryan Krause Apr 22 '21 at 19:11
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    I think the "hill to climb" is beyond most people. There is no way to document that what you did was ethical. – Buffy Apr 22 '21 at 19:11
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    Students are allowed to collaborate with other students, cheating happens when a student submits work that he/she does not understand good enough to be able to reproduce on his/her own. The responsibility for checking whether a student has stuck to the guidelines happens after the exams are graded. One can see of there is a bog difference in the exam grades and the homework grades. Students with large differences should be invited and ask questions to see if they have actually mastered the subject and done poorly on the exam due to e.g. having been ill, or if they cheated on their homework. – Count Iblis Apr 23 '21 at 01:21
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    So, when profs, complain about chegg, it's actually they themselves who use a bad system for homework and exams, they are then themselves to blame for cheating. – Count Iblis Apr 23 '21 at 01:27
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    @CountIblis This sounds like blaming the victim. I wrote completely original questions for an online exam and they were posted on Chegg within minutes of the exam starting. What's your better system here? – knzhou Apr 23 '21 at 01:34
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    @knzhou You shouldn't give conventional exams online. Give your students projects to work on and hold Zoom meetings with your students about their projects. Let them write reports that you can grade. This way you'll know for sure that the students mastered the subject. – Count Iblis Apr 23 '21 at 01:51
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    @CountIblis Not only does that not scale, the abuses in those cases can be even worse, as you can buy entire projects and reports. It is just the same as the exam cheating except that there's a much longer time window to get it done. When I was younger, I was in a course with a required group project. I saw somebody buy a project and then sell membership in his "group" to others. – knzhou Apr 23 '21 at 01:55
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    @CountIblis In my opinion the best option is still tough exams with unique questions and tight time limits. It's still cheatable but it's much harder -- the examinee really feels the minutes tick by as they wait for a Chegg answer. It would work fine, if not for dutiful people like OP. – knzhou Apr 23 '21 at 01:57
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    @knzhou That's why you need to hold regular Zoom meetings. If a student buys entire reports, the student won't be able to explain what he/she has been working on. – Count Iblis Apr 23 '21 at 01:58
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    @knzhou I've seen students offer $300 for exam help on reddit. They hire entire teams of online tutors. If you give a 3 hour exam with a tight time limit, 3 tutors will work on the different questions simultaneously and be done with your 3 hour exam in just one hour. – Count Iblis Apr 23 '21 at 02:01
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    @CountIblis That's crazy! All of the many comments on this Q/A are just leaving me more and more depressed... – knzhou Apr 23 '21 at 02:05
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    @CountIblis "You shouldn't give conventional exams online." In the pandemic environment, an online take-home exam with no invasive proctoring measures is the best option for honest students. I use this model, even though I know some students will cheat, because I don't want to punish the honest students for the dishonesty of others. I do my best to catch the cheaters, but some go uncaught, and that's the price I pay. –  Apr 23 '21 at 18:24
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    @MishaLavrov If the students are working from home then you can just as well give a take-home exam in the form of a small project that takes several days to complete. If you make it more technical e.g. computations involving many pages of equations that has to be done using Mathematica or Maple then it becomes much more difficult for students to cheat. Such projects are also much more interesting for students to work on. – Count Iblis Apr 23 '21 at 19:41
  • @knzhou You shouldn't be depressed, but you should realize that you (and all the others who think alike) have two choices. You can either continue living with the illusion that a long time ago cheating was more difficult, blaming sites like Chegg, criticizing those who tell you that you're losing a battle, and not changing the way you administer the exams. Or you can accept that in certain types of exams it is way too easy to cheat, and change the way you administer the exams, maybe listening to those who have more experience and don't have a massive cheating problem in their classes. – Massimo Ortolano Apr 24 '21 at 17:23
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    @MassimoOrtolano Well, that's a bit harder for me because my main experience for exam writing is a competition with 5000 participants... – knzhou Apr 24 '21 at 17:36
  • @knzhou An exam is something different from a competition, but this tells you that if your university wants to propose a competition it should change the format and the maximum number of applicants. – Massimo Ortolano Apr 24 '21 at 17:53
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    @MassimoOrtolano But that's begging the question. The whole point of a screening exam is to lower the maximum number of applicants for the next round; how else can you fairly do it? You might be okay if you only ever deal with small groups of students, but that's only because somewhere earlier in the process, somebody had to do the initial screening that turns 5000 students into the 20 that you end up meeting. That somebody is me! – knzhou Apr 24 '21 at 18:23
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    @knzhou If your university really wants to do such a competition, it can subdivide the 5000 applicants in 5 shifts of 1000 applicants each, with 50 proctors monitoring the applicants through video for the duration of the test, each shift receiving a different problem and each student using two cameras, one from the computer and one from the phone positioned from another point of view to cover the whole room. If the university cannot afford this, they can reduce the pool of applicants on a first-come, first-serve basis. It may not be fair, but you cannot have everything. – Massimo Ortolano Apr 24 '21 at 18:35