Easy A's may be even easier to score these days, with the growing popularity of online courses. Tech-savvy students are finding ways to cheat that let them ace online courses with minimal effort, in ways that are difficult to detect. The issue of online cheating may rise in prominence, as more and more institutions embrace online courses, and as…

Hailey Schnorr has spent years peering into the bedrooms, kitchens, and dorm rooms of students via Webcam. In her job proctoring online tests for universities, she has learned to focus mainly on students' eyes. Ms. Schnorr works for ProctorU, a company hired by universities to police the integrity of their online courses. ProctorU is part of a…

Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph--part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act--is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it. The…

Urges professors to organize online courses in ways that prevent cheating and suggests such tactics as asking students for their sources of information, using a camera atop students' computers to send images, having exams monitored by a proctor, using the Internet to identify possible plagiarism, and getting to know individual students. (DB)