Anyone aware of technology that students use to cheat on exams by connecting with outside experts in real time?

I'll get to the point up front.

Are there any common ways (e.g., phone apps) that connect students with "experts" in different subjects areas so that they can cheat in real-time during an exam?

I teach at a small college in the US and I (and some of my co-workers) have had episodes of students who were clearly^† cheating during the exams, but it was not the type of cheating that I had grown up with. When I was a kid, you just stuffed a crib sheet up your sleeve and hoped for the best. It's pretty clear that the new strain of cheaters are using phones (or small cameras) to broadcast the exam contents OUT and then using their phones to receive answers back IN.

The circumstantial reasons in support of the explanation described above are:

• I make up new exams each semester. The students could not have had advanced access to the exam. This is also true for my co-workers.

• The most recent episode involved a student in one of my classes (chem) as well as a biology class. The Biology instructor thinks the student had a camera in her bra. Student used the bra-camera (I can't believe I'm even typing this) to broadcast the exam to an "expert" and then the student had her cell phone hidden between baggy pants. Student would perform this weird ritual of not looking at the exam for several minutes at a time--then she would fidget with her legs, and then there would be a burst of answering, which was followed by another long cycle of not looking at the exam and scanning the room.

• This student essentially failed all smaller quizzes / assignments. i.e., This is not a case of me (or my colleagues) underestimating the student's talent. I've had a few episodes similar to this in recent years (i.e., students who clearly have no idea what they are doing, and yet they get the highest scores on the exam), so I feel like this is a technological trend that I need to get in front of.

What is most fascinating to me is who is feeding the students the answers?

This feels like a situation where there is a phone app that connects you to someone who actually knows the material in a 3rd world country (probably for a fee). On the one hand, this explanation makes the most sense to me because I have detected this type of cheating with a number of different students over the past three years (i.e., This is not just an isolated incident of someone who had a really smart boyfriend/girlfriend who was willing to help out-- these are incidents that suggest there are groups of domain experts selling a cheating service). On the other hand, if there is such a marketplace for remote cheating, why haven't I heard of it in the news or from other students (other than the fact that I'm an old geezer)?

†I caught three students in the act of doing this about 3 years ago, but I never bothered to see HOW they were doing it because I thought it was a technological aberration. But the fact that there are more students who appear to be doing the same type of cheating is making me think more seriously about the issue.

Submitted April 24, 2019 at 08:52AM by 1-800-AVOGADRO http://bit.ly/2W5HRTo