anybody use Chegg???

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

Wow! I think I fell in love tonight! 

 

Haha... So I'm taking Calculus 3, and we have a weekly quiz based on assigned problems from the textbook (Calculus Early Transcendentals 7E). Anyway, the professor assigns us about 40 problems a week and quizzes us on 4 random problems of the assigned. Like in most textbooks, only the answers to the odd questions are in the back of the book (and the answers are useless if you have no idea where to start on the problem). So I was racking my brain on one of the problems. I looked at the answer in the back but had no idea how to come to it. I ended up doing a google search and couldn't find anything. Then, out of a shot of desperation, I googled "answers to Calculus 7E" and a link to Chegg showed up. 

 

Long story short: it gives answers and in-depth explanations to every problem in almost every college textbook you can think of, from math to science to liberal arts, etc. It's $14 a month and $72 for the year ($6 a month if you do the year). I got the free 7-day trial and wasn't sure if I wanted to pay for the month/year, but then...... I found out that they also allow you to buy or rent almost any college textbook that comes in e-book format for like 1/5 of the usual price. For example, my Calc book is $200 (print) brand new, $120 (print) used, $160 (e-book) to own, and $100 (e-book) to rent. On Chegg it's only $30 to rent. That's insane. 

 

Anyway, I don't work for Chegg and I'm not trying to promote their site. I'm just shocked how amazing this site is. It's almost 7 a.m. and I haven't slept yet, so I may be a bit delusional. 

 

Has anyone ever had any experience with Chegg? 

Edited June 27, 2013 by JoeyBoy718

[TakeruK]

Wow, that Calculus textbook is on its 7th edition now?

 

I would be concerned that looking up online answers to questions in your textbook might violate some academic integrity policy for your school and/or course (I know some courses explicitly prohibit this, while others are more lenient/do not care).

 

I mention this because although for many textbooks, you can probably google the solution guide or even say, find a friend who took the course before, this case is a bit different since you have to pay to register for Chegg. Although technically either action (googling answers online or paying for a Chegg registration) would violate academic integrity policies if the policy prohibits this sort of action, I would personally feel it's worse to do the latter because you are basically buying answers / paying someone else to do the work for you. To me, using Chegg to get answers to your homework would be the same as buying someone else's old homework, or paying a personal tutor to help you with the homework questions. 

 

That said, I am not saying that Chegg is only for cheaters, since not every course prohibits looking up answers and sometimes the answer key is a very helpful study guide (after all, it's unlikely that the homework set would include every single question in the book, so sometimes you need an answer key to check your answers to the other questions you might attempt in your studying). But, a service like Chegg would make me suspicious that it is making money by enabling students to be academically dishonest.

 

Of course, one could make an argument that Chegg is just simply providing a service and it's up to the student to decide whether or not to use the service for academically dishonest purposes. But, from my point of view, it seems like the main selling point of Chegg is the answers and if Chegg is truly a legitimate company that wants to help students instead of exploit our desperation, they should put more effort into making sure they are not enabling cheaters. For example, they can work with schools/courses so that the student can only access the book for the course if the student is registered in the course and the professor gives the students the access code for that specific course. Then, the professor can select which questions they want to assign as homework and have Chegg block access to those questions from the students. Or something along those lines!

 

Renting textbooks in electronic form is a good idea though. I've seen other services do it and sometimes the school's bookstore offers the service too. At the graduate level, the textbooks are always in the library (and on reserve) so I never have to buy a textbook unless I want to own a copy of it. In my field (and probably many others), the textbooks used in graduate courses are the classic/fundamental references for the topic, so whenever I take a class relevant to my research, I usually already have the book, or plan on buying it anyways.

 

Also, my old school's library had an agreement with Springer so that all Springer books available in e-book format were free to access with our school library subscription. The e-book service is not exclusive to Chegg and it might even be free through other sources!

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

Interesting point about Chegg potentially enabling cheaters. I never really saw it like that. Like I said, we have a weekly quiz on 40 assigned questions from the book and he chooses 4 at random to quiz us on. I did all 39 on my own and only had trouble with one (which caused me to search for a solution). I knew the answer since it was in the back of the book, but I didn't know how to approach the problem. I liked that Chegg went through the steps for me. 

 

Also, the quizzes only make up 10% of our overall grade. Our exams don't use questions from the book. So, in that case, "cheating" on the practice questions isn't necessarily a bad thing if it allows you to learn how to approach problems that may be similar to what you'll see on an exam. To me, it's a matter of learning how to approach the problems and not about getting the correct answer. If we had graded homework assignments, then I would feel guilty about using Chegg. But I do see your point about students taking advantage of sites like Chegg. It really all comes down to the individual. 

Edited June 27, 2013 by JoeyBoy718

[TakeruK]

I agree that there are lots of legitimate uses for full solution sets. For example, in my undergraduate Quantum Mechanics courses, we used a very popular and good textbook. The publishers sells "full" solutions (most of the steps are shown and there are explanations but they are pretty terse) that is only meant to go to instructors, but any student can find a free PDF of it if they know where to look online. To keep things fair for everyone, our prof basically told the whole class that this book exists somewhere online and that since they cannot enforce students not using the answer key, they can only strongly encourage us to try the problems ourselves first since we're really just cheating ourselves if we copy the answers (we won't learn as much and we will probably do poorly on the exam). The profs also kept the weight of homework grades low (so we're basically expected to get full marks for this portion) and made sure to choose midterm/final exam questions that are not part of the textbook question bank.

 

I think this is the best way to run a course where you know your students can access a solution guide and if I ever teach a course like this, I would pretty much do everything but give the students a direct link to the solution guide (so that everyone is on the same level) and put in the effort to make up unique questions. If they tried to hide the fact that the solution guide exists and/or used final exam questions from the textbook, then it would give an unfair advantage over those who knew about it. In some schools, they try to enforce some kind of "honour system", and while it might work in some places, I don't think it's a good thing to do at the undergraduate level (where grades are much more important and the risk of getting caught is low). 

 

So I guess the main thing about Chegg that rubs me the wrong way is that it is a resource that enables students to gain an advantage over another through monetary means. I thought about this statement a bit, since I originally thought it might be a bit hypocritical since I used to do a lot of private tutoring. In this case, my students were getting an advantage in learning the material by paying me. But, I think this is different because when I tutor, my policy was that students were not allowed to ask me for help on their homework questions (or anything that was worth grades). I mostly tutored in my own school/department so I could look up the syllabus and find out what is assigned. I only worked on non-homework questions, or similar questions but with some number changes, or already graded exams/homework with the student. In my opinion, this is different from what Chegg is offering, but I do realise that I might be just trying to justify two conflicting viewpoints inside of me!

 

Anyways, I am not saying what you are doing is wrong, and I also agree that learning to approach problems is the important part. I definitely looked up solutions to non-homework questions in my textbooks in order to help me learn in cases like what you described here. I am not saying that students are not responsible for cheating if companies like Chegg (or e.g. tutors) provide them with answers to their homework. But I am also saying that companies like Chegg, and tutors that provide full answers, cannot just claim non-responsibility if their clients use their products to cheat.

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

I agree with your points. It reminds me of Cliff/SparkNotes for liberal arts students. I knew some people who were English or Philosophy majors who graduated with 4.0s and were praised by professors and they never cracked a book. Now,I don't know Why they chose their major if they weren't interested in reading.

[guitarplayer158965]

I tend to take this view on Chegg with regards to cheating. If one is using the solutions on chegg to a text book for homework to learn the material, then I don't see it as directly cheating. The key word I used was "to learn." For example, say I am stuck on a problem. I have looked through my notes and book to no avail as they don't help with hints on the approach. Also, I am unable to ask my professor about the problem in time that the problem is due. Then, I go to chegg to get some help on this problem that I am stuck on,again, after exhausting all other resources. By looking at the solution, I am able to make a connection, or see the approach needed. Then, I solve the problem and get it correct. Here, I acknowledge that I would not have gotten the problem 100% correct without chegg. This is where I draw the line on cheating by using chegg. 

 

By using chegg, I was able to understand the problem fundamentally. So much so, that if a student, or even the professor approached me about this same problem, I could explain every aspect of the solution with a solid understanding ( the problem is math.). This I don't consider cheating by using chegg. I used the site a a learning tool to help me figure it out, as I have learned how to do the problem and can even explain it to others afterward.

 

Conversely, if I would have copied down the solution from chegg, and didn't really understand it, and could not explain anything about the solution to the problem, then this I consider cheating.

 

Recently, I have debated with myself on rather using chegg is cheating. For now, this is where I draw the line. As long as I am using the site a learning tool for understanding and not as an easy way out, I don't think it is cheating. 

 

As an aside: I tend to take on the philosophy in life that, one has to use outside resources to figure some things out sometimes in life. There will not always be someone to explain things to you about a particular subject. So the better I am at being resourceful, the better off I will be in life after college. Doctors are always looking things up to help patients with health problems. Are they cheating too?

 

I recognize that others would still consider my current approach as cheating. There is so much grey area here. Please, I would appreciate some feed back about my post. Is what I outlined still cheating to you?

[eeee1923]

I remember using chegg a bit a few years ago for my introductory university physics course. When you're stuck, it can be helpful but at that point it was free - I wouldn't pay money to finish a homework set since they usually don't hold that much weight in the final grade. 

[Tom Xiao]

I came here to see if using chegg was a good idea and it definitely is helpful. I am doing physical chemistry and for this course you need explanation to the textbook questions to understand the material and get a good mark on the exam. Purchasing Chegg is equivalent to purchasing a solution manual, but with all explanations for all questions available, so I definitely think its worth the money and this shouldn't be cheating - you are just getting a more detailed solutions manual. Plus a solution manual is usually $70, while using chegg for a semester is just $56.

[justabigboy]

This thread somehow turned into a full-blown student dishonesty discussion. All points taken, it still depends on the student whether to use something to aid in learning or be an “unfair shortcut”. Be it Chegg, any other software, an app, etc—there’s that risk and responsibility. I’m just glad to know many people in this thread (as I observed) prefer to use Chegg as it was originally intended. I did a bit of a research on this and found here that it’s actually made not for students only but educators also—which gives more light to how it could benefit its users. And for a lesser price, it’s quite the package deal!
 

[Kefi]

https://discord.gg/yRuEd2H There is a bot in the channel that gives screenshots in chegg for free. I think it can help everyone :)