Inna Osinna, QA Team Lead at GR8 Tech, has had her own course that she teaches personally for over a year. The other day, she discovered that her course had been failed after she noticed that a student she didn't know had submitted the homework, who then explained how it happened.
Inna Osinna, QA Team Lead at GR8 Tech, has had her own course that she teaches personally for over a year. The other day, she discovered that her course had been failed after she noticed that a student she didn't know had submitted the homework, who then explained how it happened.
"Today I faced disappointment. I am honestly devastated," Inna wrote on LinkedIn after learning about the failure of her course.
Initially, the tester discovered that the homework was submitted by a student who had not paid for the course. Inna contacted her on Telegram, but later the fake student deleted the correspondence on both sides and blocked her.
Yesterday, students from one of the groups reported that a man named Serhiy, who is not in the student chat, started writing to them. He asked to share homework with him. But after the incident with the fake student, Inna took away everyone's access.
“The format of communication with Mr. Serhiy impresses me even more than with Ms. Oleya. I attach screenshots in the comments. I haven’t blocked him yet. But his account was created recently and there is no data about this person,” the course owner writes.
After this incident, Inna asked herself how she could be so disrespectful of other people's work.
"I have invested and am investing an incredible amount of resources and effort into this product. To what depths must one sink to distribute my painstaking work left and right without my consent? And to what depths must one reach to have the audacity to give me homework for a test and write to students in private!", Inna emphasized.
This post was responded to by a student who had submitted her homework without paying for the course. She was Senior Software Tester (QA) Olga Kyrychenko, who apologized for not responding in time and sincerely regretted that it had happened this way. She claims that she did not know that this course was paid.
"Firstly, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience, because I did not know that this course was paid, since I was given a link to just look at it and decide whether it was right for me. The course is really good, but I had no selfish goal, otherwise I would not have exposed myself so clearly by indicating my coordinates. In addition, we have long since terminated our cooperation with Playtech, so this Company currently has no relation to my actions. Thirdly, I have drawn conclusions for myself that you cannot use links thoughtlessly, even if it seems that it will not harm. Once again, I apologize to you personally, as the author of the course, and I understand and share your feelings. I hope that you will perceive this situation with understanding and use it as a Penetration testing experience to further increase the level of security of access to your course. I accept all comments and once again apologize for the inconvenience," wrote Olga Kyrychenko.
Olga also shared the contact information of the person who provided the link to the course materials with Inna.
It is unknown how Serhiy found out who exactly was studying on this course. But developer Andriy Sartek suggested: "I was looking for paid course downloads (there are many), I came across this one, apparently students are also downloaded there, usually in such videos you can see who else is in the channel. That is, they were downloaded recently."
Unfortunately, this case is not unique, as other course authors have begun to share .
Artem Bykovets, Agile Coach & Org Consultant at mono, said: "As I understand you. at one time, I had about 100++ times more downloads of my courses for starting in QA and the basics of client-server testing on Rutreker and other torrents than through the official portals where it was sold (ITVDN and video Start IT). And you know what else is funny? Sometimes people still come up to me at conferences to "thank you for the course that helped them change their career and get a profession 5-7-8 years ago" and ask to take a picture together. And when I ask: "on which course platform did you subscribe and watch?" - they either lower their eyes (which is not bad), or laughing happily say that "of course I downloaded it from some torrent, I didn't have money then"... Despite the fact that the price was purely symbolic (around $10 for a subscription for 2 months of access)."
"I sympathize. As a mentor, I understand you. I also closed access to all my lectures. I cooperate with the fwdays educational platform so as not to have hemorrhoids," wrote Senior Backend PHP Developer Nataliya Nishta.
"Congratulations, my course was once dropped and I was also nervous, but then I calmed down."
"Because if they spit on your back, at least you're ahead. Plus, without an author, the course is no longer authorial," shared Serhiy Maksyuta, CEO and founder of TJHelpers.
