Accused of Cheating during an online exam Today, I got accused of cheating on an exam I took yesterday. It was a lockdown browser exam, my exam as well as several other students exams were also flagged because of the following reasons.

This was a 20 multiple choice question exam, and here is the response I was given,


the answers were identical
the time the answers were submitted is identical 


The vice chair for my university emailed me stating “there is absolutely no way this can happen by chance  The odds are 1 in 10^1000 or something to that order” 

The vice chair also explained this will go through due process so I will have a chance to explain my side. 

I don’t know how to feel about this, I feel as if there is nothing I can do and all my hard work put into this class is going to waste.

What action should I take? How can I respond to this claim? 

Note from comments: I did not cheat.
If you truly did not cheat then there will be a way to prove your innocence because false claims eventually lead to contradictions. The statistics aren't very threatening because it sounds like your accuser is probably assuming that each multiple choice question is a random event to get a ridiculous probability,  but that's nonsense. Exams are written to be answered correctly by those that are prepared. Thus in reality we expect many of those questions to be answered correctly and identically. You can offer to justify your answers to show you answered them on your own.

The identical submission time is concerning, but there is no reason to assume Blackboard is a perfectly coded software. Even programs like Microsoft Excel that are written by experts and probably used by millions have silly bugs in them. If I coordinated with my friends to the best of our abilities we could never click the submit button with identical submission times because we have different response times. If anything the identical submission time better supports there being a bug with blackboard than anything else. You should ask the accuser to explain how the identical times is evidence that you cheated and not that there was a bug with blackboard or any other aspect of online examination. You should also ask your accuser for how long have they been doing examination like this because likely it's new to them and they should be reminded of that.

Good luck.