Platforms like Chegg and Course Hero provide students access to the necessary academic support they need in their studies. Students looking to revise concepts they’ve been taught or would like to learn, no longer need to worry about difficulty getting the help of their lecturers or busy friends. These platforms exist to make this easier for students.
While in times past students had to pay considerable amounts for extra tuition at home, Chegg makes it easy for students to get the same kind of help by leveraging the resources available on the platform.
With the success of the platform comes the unending moral debate on its usage and implications. Educational institutions have concerns about students leveraging these platforms to cheat while students are also worried that Chegg and Course Hero would notify their schools when they use them.
The usefulness of the platform is undeniable as it provides an easy way for students to acquire the necessary resources for their studies and for tutors to also make money solving questions. Students on Chegg can leverage the resources available on the platform to better understand any area of interest, generate ideas, and also rent and buy books at affordable prices.
Chegg is a platform that empowers college students by equipping them with essential resources including digital and physical textbooks, questions and answers, and homework help.
The idea for the company stems from the founders’ experience after graduating from college, where they were faced with the classic chicken and egg problem. They couldn’t land a job without experience and they couldn’t get experience without a job. The contraction of chicken and egg led to the name Chegg.
While students looking for further clarification in their course would ordinarily have to either contact their teachers, peers or even pay a tutor to come to their homes, Chegg solves this challenge by making the necessary resources available at the convenience of the student.
Students can ask for help anytime and even leverage the questions and answers on the platform to better understand any concepts they want. College students no longer needed to spend ridiculous amounts of money on textbooks either, as textbooks were available on Chegg for rent.
Additionally, online tutors are always available to provide the necessary support to students looking for information or tips to better understand their assignments or any other academic deliverable.
While Chegg tutoring was a major part of their services and one of the reasons why students like the platform, Chegg has discontinued its online tutoring service in January 2021 as a result of continuing copyright infringement complaints from teachers over questions and answers in Chegg’s answer bank.
Also see:
Educational resource platforms like Chegg have a strict honor code they expect their users to adhere to and they’re willing to work with educational institutions should an investigation be opened about a student’s academic integrity.
That said, the student’s privacy is key to Chegg and they don’t easily provide information on their users. Students should therefore leverage these platforms as study aid instead of copy-pasting solutions to assignments provided on the platform.
No, Chegg adheres to a strict privacy protection policy and does not notify schools unless your school, complying with Chegg’s guidelines, appropriately submits an honor code investigation request to access information about any particular student.
It is worth noting that platforms like Chegg encourage content monitoring tools including plagiarism checkers to crawl available content to identify and flag possible plagiarized content.
No, students cannot be tracked on Chegg unless they use the school’s internet to access the platform or they copy-paste solutions from Chegg and submit them as their own resulting in getting flagged by plagiarism checkers.
With students misusing Chegg for cheating, using the platform can be questionable even when you intend to genuinely use the platform as a study resource. Students are now worried about being tracked on the platform.
While students cannot ordinarily be tracked on Chegg, some schools with a policy against the use of the platform can track students who visit the platform on the school’s Wifi.
Some teachers have also resorted to posting wrong or intentionally tweaked solutions to answers on the platform to enable them to identify students who copy-pasted without using the solution as a guide to help them better understand.
Educational institutions and teachers can request an honor code investigation to determine users or accounts responsible for posting a particular question, or students who accessed the question and solution.
This can be done by filling the necessary investigation request form. In order to file for an honor code investigation, the requester must meet certain conditions.
While Chegg is an invaluable asset to any student, the platform and its resources should be used as a study aid to better understand your subject area. Content available on the platform shouldn’t simply be copy-pasted and submitted as this violates the academic code of conduct, punishable by suspension, assignment cancellation, or even expulsion.
Although users can browse Chegg anonymously, it still pays to take certain precautions to avoid any possible repercussions.
While some universities have no issues with students using platforms like Chegg, others oppose its usage and ban its usage. It is, therefore, necessary to read your institution’s policy governing these platforms before registering to use them. Getting a good grade on a single assignment is not worth getting suspended or dismissed from the program.
Content available on Chegg shouldn’t be copy-pasted for submission. Users can use paraphrasing to reword sentences and ideas to make a new and personalized assignment. Additionally, students can leverage the multitude of paraphrasing tools available online to reword their assignments. Paraphrasing enables students to get some idea of the content they copied before submitting it.
Educational institutions with strict policies against the use of Chegg and other such platforms can detect and sometimes block access to these domains on their network. It’s advisable to refrain from connecting to Chegg on the school’s network.
While some VPN connections are blocked by Chegg, some users have successfully leveraged VPNs on Chegg. VPNs have become common in recent years and can be very useful to mask a user’s IP address online. Although Chegg’s policies do not allow them to misuse user data, including their IP address, using a VPN would provide an added level of security.
You can access Chegg using mobile data to hide your Wi-Fi IP address if it’s your primary means of connectivity recognized by your educational institution. For this to be successful, you should ensure that the school’s online platform is only accessed through your WiFi connection while Chegg is also accessed using your mobile data.
Resources on Chegg should only be used as a study aid to enable a better understanding of the subject matter. Students should leverage the textbooks, questions, and answers to gain a better understanding of concepts they find challenging.
While this may seem extreme, it’s still one of the most effective ways to avoid your primary computer getting detected. Students can remotely access Chegg by leveraging remote access applications like TeamViewer and a computer on a different network. Simply log in to a remote computer and then access Chegg through the remote computer.
No, questions posted on Chegg cannot be deleted when they’ve received an answer. However, questions that have not been answered can be deleted on Chegg.
Students who opt for Chegg study pack get full access to questions and answers available on the platform. Chegg tutors on the other hand can edit or delete answers they’ve provided to a question.