Online Exams Might Be Cooked

Written by Jeremy Grifski in Teach Published January 23, 2026Last Updated January 19, 2026
A photo of someone cooking a steak in a pan with the title of the article overlaid.

Broadly, STEM programs in the US have an obsession with examinations. As someone who tried to limit the role they play in the classroom, I shifted to online exams via quizzes in Canvas. Now, I’m being told there is an AI tool that can take the exam for students. It looks like online exams might be cooked.

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AI Ruins Everything

Over winter break, I got some pretty horrific news from someone at the university that a new AI tool is going around that is capable of completing online exams for students. This is a bit different from the types of tools you might be imagining, like the ability of a student to copy a question into ChatGPT.

What this new tool does is take over the student’s computer and completes the exam for them—fully autonomously. I assume this is some sort of AI agent tool, or maybe something a bit more simplistic with automated copy-paste or computer vision. I don’t know, but it apparently can fool some of the proctoring tools (which I already oppose from a privacy perspective—as do others). Here’s what the content of the email said:

We have confirmed evidence of an online service called “Black Tom,” an application that will take over a student’s computer and take their exam for them in real time. Black Tom also captures the questions on the exam and sells access to them.

Current safeguards like LockDownBrowser have banned some students from being able to access their exam, but other students have been able to enter exams and use the Black Tom application, though they try to dim their screen while doing this, to hide their activity.

I questioned whether or not I should share the actual name of the application, but I think it’s more important to spread awareness of these kinds of exploits.

What Should You Do

If you’ve been around here for a minute, you might know that I somewhat recently started using online exams. In fact, I once boldly stated that I was never going to go back to paper exams given how much success I had with the new format.

That said, my position on exams hasn’t really changed. I don’t like them as an assessment tool because I don’t believe they “measure” understanding. They tend to assess memorization in most cases—lest you be accused of making an exam too hard. Worse, they cause a whole bunch of stress, and they basically never map to any real world scenarios.

The whole purpose of exams is to be able to lazily compare students. Because why judge them by the body of their work when you can simply label some of them as stupid for performing poorly on an exam. Do I need to share the Interstellar clip again?

Of course, despite my general hatred for exams, I am still required to give them. Unfortunately, given that my online exams can be easily completed using “AI” (even with the surveillance technology), I am not sure I can move forward with online exams.

The Snitch

Ironically, around the same time I received the email about “Black Tom,” I also received an ominous email from my course coordinator. It basically read (I’m paraphrasing):

A student from another section complained about their instructor to the department chair. Their email complained about the lack of fairness between sections as my section is “easier” then others for offering online exams.

When I met with my course coordinator, he told me that he had backed me up with the most obvious argument: different sections of the same course are going to be different (i.e., tough luck). However, he was concerned that maybe the grade disparity between sections was so large that something would have to be done, so we agreed that I would start offering paper exams again.

I felt it was the right choice in general. I was already considering it with the prevalence of AI on my exams to the point that I was dabbling with prompt injection. With tools like “Black Tom” in the mix, it’s only a matter of time before online exams are completely untenable. There’s just no way I am willing to fight cheating with surveillance. I am not going to die on that hill, and I am certainly not interested in the result of that arms race.

So, What Now?

For me, it’s back to paper exams. Right now, the paper exam format I use is heavily borrowed from my course coordinator. It’s a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and coding questions. I don’t love it, but I’m not really interested in perfecting something I don’t want to do in the first place.

I’ve noticed that this “back to the classroom”-style assessment is starting to catch on again. It seems to be the only way to ensure students are actually learning and not just relying heavily on generative AI to do the thinking for them. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of educators of writing classes advocating for those blue books again, so they can make sure students are actually developing their writing skills.

Perhaps in the future, we’ll start programming courses without technology: just pen and paper. I think that could be a lot of fun. I would enjoy working with students to develop their algorithmic thinking skills without the crutch of syntax highlighting, tab completion, and generative AI.

In the short term, however, it does seem like my university is going to force us to make every student a prompt engineer. That’s certainly a future I am not excited about.

Anyway, that was a short rant out of me for today. I’m very busy these days with getting things started for the semester but also practicing my Japanese and prepping for another trip to Japan. Did I mention I’m having another kid in July as well? And, we might even be buying a house this year. Let me not forget that also trying to do my tiny part to fight fascism in my local community. The day-to-day has been a mess!

As always, if you want to keep reading what I have to say, there’s plenty more to follow:

There’s also a list of ways you can help grow the site, but only if you’d like. Otherwise, that’s it for today!

Jeremy Grifski

Jeremy grew up in a small town where he enjoyed playing soccer and video games, practicing taekwondo, and trading Pokémon cards. Once out of the nest, he pursued a Bachelors in Computer Engineering with a minor in Game Design. After college, he spent about two years writing software for a major engineering company. Then, he earned a master's in Computer Science and Engineering. Most recently, he earned a PhD in Engineering Education and now works as a Lecturer. In his spare time, Jeremy enjoys spending time with his wife and kid, playing Overwatch 2, Lethal Company, and Baldur's Gate 3, reading manga, watching Penguins hockey, and traveling the world.

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