To all those claiming "entrapment" or why didn't the teacher just disallow phones/bathroom breaks - I would argue that the teacher is TEACHING by doing this. He's doing the cheaters a favor by allowing them to learn this lesson while the stakes are relatively low. Well done.

I remember 3 students suddenly not being there in our pharmacy school class one day. They had worked out a nifty way of cheating on their A&P lab practical where the whole class rotated through stations - they wrote down the answer on the black lab bench surface with pencil (almost invisible except from a certain angle). Problem was the last one forgot to erase some of the answers off the bench. Not sure how the professor sorted it out but BOOM - they were gone. The kicker is this was grad school! Why roll the dice when the stakes are so high?!?

Each semester, I had 4-7 sections of a Humanities Studies course, which included critical thinking skills. Final was take-home: a week to work on multiple choice and essays. Study groups allowed--I couldn't stop it, had planned for it. I wrote four different versions, changing question/answer order, rewording, taking from different parts of the text--all designed to build on the material and skills. I collated the versions and numbered the tests; sections got a mix and I actually knew who had which test. None was easy--students had to work for answers. The groups had it harder because they'd discuss but couldn't agree . . . because they found they didn't all have the same test.  Pay-off: I collected them, asked if they noticed anything, and saw the looks of those who had simply copied friends' tests. I said, "if you have been in my class all this time, and still think that I am dumb enough to give the same take-home to 300-400 people, you deserve your "F".

A lot of commenters seem to have missed that the students had signed an "academic honor pledge", which is common in some universities. It is simply a legally binding contract that says they will not cheat and usually sets out that if they do cheat they will be expelled. That's the reason that they are allowed to leave the room during the test, they've contractually agreed that they won't cheat. This is a bit like not making your car payment and then having your car repossessed. If you sign a contract you had better be willing to stick to it - that's what contracts are about. Count this as an important educational experience.

The ethics surrounding shaming the cheaters?? How about this? Just don't cheat. This happened in America right? The only place where no matter what someone does, they seem to always be treated as a victim. They were caught and then called out for cheating? Diddums ^rolls eyes^

Cheating is a problem, but so are exams. There are very few real world situations where you need to be able to churn out vast quantities of knowledge from memory without being able to look stuff up or ask someone else for an opinion. Finding answers and information is a more important skill than rote memorization. We need to change the way we learn, teach and test.

I'm in nursing school and we can't leave the room during a test. You'd have to turn in the test, however far you got, and that's be your score. We're not allowed to have drinks near us AND the teachers hand out alternating exams so two people sitting next to each never have the same format exam.

just wanna say that in my school we weren't allowed to go t the toilette during exams. Also phones should be handed in to the teacher

Had a teacher one time that required everyone to wear short sleeved shirts for exams and that, when using a graphing calculator, we had to pull them out of our bags, raise them over our head, take the cover off and put it in our bags, zipping them up, then we had to press a series of buttons that cleared the memory so we couldn't cheat by storing formulas. I was so disappointed later when my MIL (a math teacher) told me that the parents had petitioned and the school agreed to require multiplication table being taped to every desk for kids to reference.

Do practical exams. Highlights what they really know and if is a second chance to pass class

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These are engineering students. One day they will have access to sensitive intellectual property. Maybe their own. Will they be willing to post that data on Chegg as well? Probably so.

Maybe be less concerned about cheating and more concerned that your forcing people to memorize stuff they can just search in a phone for, we don’t need to memorize all this junk anymore, technology has advanced maybe our way of teaching and learning should too

I have a far worse story. It’s the story of absolute freedom. As a law student I took an evening law school course called FIT. Intro to federal taxation. I heard from graduating 3Ls that the professor did not give a c**p and handed out a cheat sheet outline to his course. “Just follow the outline and take his test (he only gives one at the end of term so it’s 100% of the grade).” Easy peasy. So like most of the class, we somewhat paid attention, read thru the outline and showed up for the exam. Guess what? It was Multiple Choice. D. Was “All of the Above”. E. Was “None of the Above . Every so often, there was an F. (Who does that!) that would give a combination of letters. The bile in my throat nearly choked me when I realized that I severely deluded myself. The test was a labyrinth of Hell. The sweet freedom of a professor made outline nearly murdered me bc I needed to know how to quickly APPLY it! By the kindness of the bell curve I eeked out a C+. Ugh, just do the work people.

I think it should be a crime to cheat. Because it is so incredibly harmful. Do you want engineers in the world that didn't actually learn what they should have learned? Do you want your kids' grades to go down the bell curve, possibly missing out on scholarships and other opportunites, even jobs because other kid's cheating? Do you want an unethical person working for your company? I despise cheaters. Despise them. I don't know how they live with themselves. I have WORKED with cheaters, and they have caused me to work extra hours months on end, caused a lot stress, software defects that could affect someone's life, and caused us a lot of wasted time. Despise them. Shame on them.

I've had the job of checking known places during first minutes of exams. Was disappointed that the engineering student hiding his notes in the toilet cistern was unable to engineer a waterproof plastic cover! I kindly(?) kept the alcoholic porter's stash of lemonade-laced-with-cheap-spirits in place. So yea, the "hand in your phones" strategy is nonsense, they'll stash others elsewhere; I've found a laptop shared between a bunch of students and other stuff.

If seen it happen, it's pretty obvious when you're going to the bathroom multiple times only on days you have an exam.

I knew a lecturer who would put some a fake info on the Wikipedia page relating to essay questions so that if someone used that fake he knew they were using poor sources. I was taught that people who cheat only cheat themselves as they don't end up with the knowledge or the skills they should have if they do the work thus making it harder for themselves later. Think stopping cheating is nearly impossible as some people think it's being clever but if harsh penalties are dished out, it becomes less attractive. I Know someone who thrown out of uni in his third year for cheating in his finals; he struggled to get a job as no one wants dishonest employees!

Why didn't he just refuse to let the students go to the bathroom until they were finished with the test?

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I solve this issue by letting them do tests together. Granted, my tests mostly involve insight into processes, and they'll need to have learnt how to solve those processes in the first place, but it really works. I do have one final exam that they have to do strictly individually (because it's nation-wide and I don't make the rules there), but by then they've either scored well on their previous tests & they're more than ready for it, or they'll fail no matter what. I don't really believe in individual tests. My students are in college, when they enter the work place they'll be expected to ask colleagues when they can't do stuff. Well, in my tests they can ask colleagues, they can use the internet, they can go and ask other teachers for all I care. Just get the right info before the deadline.

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While I applaud the professor, maybe an idea is to make the exams so people don't feel the need to cheat. Not everyone learns in the same way.