How do students use online homework solutions?

Instructors often assume that, when a student accesses online homework solutions from sites such as Chegg, the student intends to copy answers. To investigate how students use online homework solutions, we interviewed students and invited them to write or audiorecord "think aloud" journals as they worked on homework. With permission from the university's academic integrity office, we informed students that their responses would not be shared with that office. We found that students used online solutions in a variety of ways, many of them potentially helpful for their learning. For instance, some students solved the homework problem and then used an online solution to check their reasoning and/or answer. Some students used online solutions to get themselves "unstuck" when they couldn't figure out a step in the problem-solving process. In many cases, a given student might use a mix of these and other strategies, some aimed at helping them understand the underlying physics and others at helping them get the homework done under time constraints. These results suggest that instructors should not assume that students are simply copying when they use online solutions.