In a recent piece for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, Méadhbh McIvor (Arizona State University at Tempe) describes the experience of having “ghost students” in her class. In McIvor’s asynchronous online class, several “students” were plagiarizing in a way that indicated that they were bots rather than real people. In the process of having them removed from her course, she found that they were “ghost” students: people whose identities had been stolen and who had been enrolled in courses so that scammers could collect loans or financial aid after the semester had begun. The author writes that these kinds of scammers necessitate a different kind of course design, and concludes that instructors must become familiar with the signs of bot activity to support the victims of identity theft.
