As 'Bot' Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond

When the spring semester began, Southwestern College professor Elizabeth Smith felt good. Two of her online classes were completely full, boasting 32 students each. Even the classes’ waitlists, which fit 20 students, were maxed out. That had never happened before. “Teachers get excited when there’s a lot of interest in their class. I felt like, ‘Great, I’m going to have a whole bunch of students who are invested and learning,’’ Smith said. “But it quickly became clear that was not the case.” By the end of the first two weeks of the semester, Smith had whittled down the 104 students enrolled in her classes, including those on the waitlist, to just 15. The rest, she’d concluded, were fake students, often referred to as bots. “It’s a surreal experience and it’s just heartbreaking,” Smith said. “I’m not teaching, I’m playing a cop now.” She’s far from the only professor dealing with this trend. Ever since the pandemic forced schools to go virtual, the number of online classes offered b ... Read full article.