The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office and Clovis Community College are committed to allowing educational opportunities for all potential students while actively working to combat fraud.
Faculty play a vital role in identifying suspicious behaviors related to student accounts, such as bots, identity theft, or non-existent students. While institutional measures are in place to reduce fraud, faculty vigilance remains an essential part of these efforts.
Faculty are required to proactively engage with each student enrolled in an online course to both verify and support the student’s active engagement in the course. Verification should take place through regular and substantive interaction between the instructor and students, such as class participation, direct engagement with the instructor for asynchronous courses, completion of assignments, or general communication through any medium.
When addressing potential fraud, it is important to act thoughtfully and equitably. Accusations of dishonesty can have serious consequences on a student’s educational experience. Faculty should rely on clearly documented, equity-minded syllabi policies and protocols and ensure they gather proper evidence before taking action.
Below are recommendations for identifying and addressing potential fraud in student accounts:
Review your No-Show drop policy. Make sure you're asking students to complete a task or a set of tasks by a particular date in order to avoid being dropped (usually by the Friday of the first week).
These should be something that students can complete without having to have additional materials for the class (think about making it something that doesn't require purchasing the textbook, since some students won't have it by the first week). Some popular ones include taking a syllabus quiz, submitting a course survey, or introducing themselves on the introduction discussion board.
In these first week tasks, add a component where you're asking students to share personal details (like their major or career goals), or connect their life experiences to your course topic. These responses should be relatively unique (multiple students shouldn't have the same answer) and logical. You can also ask students to share a photo or post a video submission.
For larger online classes, there are some activities that are harder to automate responses to. If you have too many students to be able to closely review submitted responses, consider adding in a quiz or survey through Canvas or another quizzing tool in your first week.
Review your late drop policy. You can drop students who do not have regular, active participation over two weeks of class before the census date. Regular, active participation is participating in any curriculum-related course activity (emailing you, submitting an assignment, taking a test, contributing to an online discussion, etc). Make sure to clearly communicate your late drop policy to students.
Here are some tips for the period between the second week and before census:
If you'd like to talk about how to implement any of these activities in your course, please reach out to Instructional Designer Tracy Stuntz (tracy.stuntz@cloviscollege.edu). If you have any questions or concerns about student enrollment, please contact your dean.
Fraud Prevention. California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
Memo ESS-21-300-013 RE: Mitigating Enrollment Fraud – Instructional Practices & Reporting Obligations. September 20, 2021.
How Student Engagement Can Mitigate Enrollment Fraud. ASCCC. November 2021.