I gave my students a take home exam over spring break. (This is normal where I teach) One of the questions was particulary difficult. It came down to a factor of three in the solution. That factor inexplicably appeared with no justification on many of their exams. I intend to have the students I suspect of cheating come to my office to solve the problem on the board. What would you do?
Edit: I gave them the Tuesday before spring break until the Thursday after. I didn’t want it to be right before or right after.
When I say normal I mean giving take home exams.
It likely will because they’re cheating and not learning. Whatever they’re shortcutting by cheating, if it’s assumed knowledge down the line, they won’t have it because they cheated instead of learning. The morality of it aside, if you rely on cheating in academia you’re just screwing yourself over, in more ways than one.
You’re only keeping academia in the picture. Academia is worthless for a lot of jobs since you don’t learn anything even remotely relevant in there regarding what you’re going to work as. In that sense, it doesn’t matter at all. A person’s proficiency to learn cannot be judged by them cheating on a small exam/HW. It’s a problem if it’s chronic, but TBH these days most jobs aren’t more than mind-numbing anyway