A bigger picture may be; why is sending kids home for break with homework. It is my opinion, that people learn better when they actually have a break during their break. in my opinion, this is a tactic to prepare kids to think its normal to work all the time. That breaks are never actually breaks.

I gave my students a take home exam over spring break. (This is normal where I teach)

If this is normal, that just means a lot teachers have no respect for personal time.

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.

So? Are you saying a lot of them cooperated on it? Did they copy work from a separate source? Where is the problem?

You assigned graded work during a vacation, which I would assume means you can use any material you have access too, including teamwork and the entire internet. Does it not?

I intend to have the students I suspect of cheating come to my office to solve the problem on the board.

And if they fail, what does this prove? That they can’t reproduce an answer constructed over (potentially) many days of work with references on hand, in a few minutes of high-stress with their teacher breathing down their neck?

What would you do?

Not send graded work home with students if you don’t expect them to cooperate. Procter an exam if you want them to use only their brains.

In fact, you should procter an exam during your vacation, because they didn’t get one either.

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If you don’t want students to work together and learn from each other don’t give home assignments. It’s not like they won’t be able to work together irl

Nothing.
Having any homework for the holidays is already enough. Of course most of them would just want to have that gone ASAP.

First of all, school or uni?

As many others have said, don’t give a take home exam during a break, however ‘normal’ it is considered in your community.

Second, have clear guidelines on what is allowed and what is cheating. We never had take-home exams in school, and in uni every take-home exam was open book, open internet and open discussion. In the absence of any statement to the contrary, your students would also be justified in assuming so.

Asking someone to repeat the answer is fine, but it doesn’t really prove anything - they might have simply forgotten all the formulae over their break.

The best option at this point would be to cancel that question and conduct future tests during class hours, under your supervision.

Of course they cheated on a take home exam. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

Proctor your exams if you don’t want them to be able to utilize any of the resources at their disposal. Making them do it again in front of you sounds like bullshit imo, but I am certainly not an academic.

Leave it. Life’s hard enough, just let em have the W before the real world bursts their bubbles more.

Wait, you gave them work over their spring break? What the fuck?? Let them have a damn break!

What does cheating mean in this context? What did they have access to that you wish they hadn’t? And if that’s the case, then why did you make this a take home exam?

Yeah you have a take home test over the holidays, fuck that

Hold an in class quiz with essentially the same problem but with different values. The students that actually worked through the problem should be able to do it again with the changes. Those who didn’t understand and just put down what their peers got will struggle with a quiz. Bonus points if you can restructure the problem in a way to elucidate which specific aspects you think the students were skipping over with help from their peers. Feel free to have specific requirements assigned point values in the problem statement.

Don’t call them into your office and put them on the spot. That will make this adversarial. Your job is to teach them how to solve problems and communicate their methods in a clear fashion. You should reevaluate your problem writing and grading policies if just looking up answers can earn a passing grade. If you give a quiz, be up front with them that you have concerns about some students skipping the work and copying answers. Reiterate that the point of the exam was to make sure they can solve problems, the correct answer is merely a byproduct.

I will add speculation that there is a difference between what your students think you expect from an answer and what your expectations actually are. Mismatches in expectations are immensely frustrating for both parties. So don’t leave your students guessing. Give them specific examples of work of different quality and what aspects earn full points and what things might lead to point deductions. Some of the best professors I had would publish all the prior year exams with their solutions. That gave everyone the opportunity to mimic the workflow and match the level of detail expected. That also elliminates the concern of students finding the answers online or from prior year students for exams as the teacher will have had to avoid reused questions entirely.

You will probably get better answers if you ask this in a community dedicated to teaching/professors. Posting on general asklemmy seems like you’re going to get flamed a bit.

I gave my students a take home exam over spring break. (This is normal where I teach)

That is rough. Nothing you can do about it this time, but, in the future, I wouldn’t recommend giving work over break even if others are doing so. Breaks are there for a reason.

It came down to a factor of three in the solution. That factor inexplicably appeared with no justification on many of their exams.

It’s hard to say without seeing exactly what you mean, but this sounds a little flimsy. You want to be pretty sure before you accuse someone of cheating. You can always just mark the answer as wrong if they didn’t prove to you that they understand it.

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?

If I strongly suspected cheating, I would probably do something like that. Just be aware that the environment is different from a paper exam, so you need to be lenient. They are not used to standing in front of a board and working while someone watches. Also, a problem on a take-home exam could be worked on for hours, whereas you presumably expect them to do it quickly. You may need to give them the solution they wrote and see whether they can explain it to you. Or, give them most of the solution, but have them fill in some missing details that they should know if they actually did the problem.

Also, as others have said, there was no cheating unless you were very clear on what resources were allowed and not allowed on the exam.

FWIW, I do strongly disagree with the folks who are saying that any take-home exam should be open-everything. The argument that you will be able to do it in your career doesn’t hold water. School isn’t the workplace. Students are working on simple problems to build up skills that they can use to solve more complicated problems later on. If people want workplace rules about collaboration in the classroom, then the problems need to be scaled up accordingly. In many schools, that does happen later in the curriculum with things like senior projects or some project-based upper-level courses. But, teaching that way from the start wouldn’t give students the time and support they need to gradually improve, so allowed resources need to be scaled back accordingly to account for the deliberate oversimplification of the problems.

On a more personal note, sorry that you have to deal with this. Everyone can appreciate that the situation is tough for the students, but a lot of people don’t realize that dealing with cheating is also very stressful and disheartening for teachers.

Do nothing, first of all any homework is open book, no buts

Second of all it comes down to not being a dick

You do realise that even if they do cheat, since its a take home you likely won’t face any negative consequence, its just a win win in general

That’s a terrible thing to be considered normal. Those students were on break, on vacation. I didn’t do work for my job when I was on vacation! I hate cheating, but I hate that you made them take an exam on break even more.

Edit: “Class, I see some of you did not understand the way I require work to be shown. For this reason, I will reteach my requirements. Those of you who did not understand will be given an opportunity to retake the exam.”

Did they cheat? You were lazy & let them take an exam at home. Sounds like you should’ve expected them to use any resources available. Just because something is normal, doesn’t mean it’s right.

I’m sure your students love you…