I have since heard other stories like the one I witnessed.
So I've got to ask, will programs like Georgia's have safeguards in place to prevent cheating? A simple safeguard would be to require participants to report to a secure location with valid ID to take exams. Do the work on-line, but take the exams in person.
Somehow I think universities won't bother to do that. And the result will be that, eventually, all on-line degrees will be suspect.
Brick and mortar degrees are also suspect because people don't show up for class and pay others to test for them now.
I had a small sideline business writing term papers when I lived near a university.
Brick and mortar ain't majikal.
/johnny
In which case, they will have caught up to big education degrees of today......
I got my degree through on line work. I spent about 30 hours a week studying, doing problems for turn in, collaborating via skype or online meeting rooms (with video, sometimes with the prof present) etc. Every three weeks I had a proctored exam at the local university where I had to show ID, turn in my phone, and sit under the watchful eye of an acceptable proctor while I took the exam that was sent directly to the proctor from my school, and turned into the proctor for returning to the school with a copy of my ID.
I can tell some anecdotes too. My sister is a Nursing Director at a large hospital system. There is a huge business for test takers for nurses and Dr’s - the test taker gets a fake ID with the name of the person they are taking the test for, gets a couple thousand dollars, and takes the test. Voila - instant DR or Nurse without having to learn a thing.
If someone is going to cheat, they will do so online or on campus. A cheater is a cheater.
The point is for the free market to handle this.
Which is how insurance licenses are usually done. Train on your own, with or without assistance, and then test at a monitored testing center.
While I haven’t done a Microsoft certification test in a long time (14-15 years), there used to be quite a number of places set up to administer them, and similar Cisco tests. GA Tech could be using a place like that.
When our son was in school, occasionally he’d have an online class (this was during his BA days, all Master’s classes were in person.)
I asked him was there anyway that the online classes inserted any safeguards into their online tests. As to someone taking it for you, no safeguard exists. But as to a student who was taking their own tests, the profs, knowing they could be open book tests, packed a lot of questions in a short time frame. He felt this was to ensure that the student knew the info, instead of spending time just looking it up at as the question was asked.
Other than that, there are no safeguards.
Problem with higher education, I saw, was the practice of “groups” and “group projects.” You always had one or two slouchers letting everyone else do their work (because it was needed to complete the project) then being rewarded for the work of the other members.
Of course, that seems to be a good preparation for a lot of workplaces these days :)