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Permalink Reply by Kate Nolan on October 24, 2011 at 6:31am

I feel like this is a very difficult question in this digital age of instant gratification. Students are so used to having all the answers they desire at their fingertips, that it only seems natural that they should transfer this state of mind to the classroom. If it's out there and they can find it, they do not think it's cheating. Therefore, it is up to schools and teachers to make clear the definition of cheating and enforce the policy. At my school, cheating is not tolerated. The handbook states that cheating is any kind of academic dishonesty (i.e. taking the work of someone else and passing it off as one's own). This, of course, includes any kind of cheating through a digital medium. Despite this policy, students still try to cheat using cell phones, ipods, facebook, etc. In the end, though the school and district has laid out the policy, it comes down to the classroom teacher to enforce academic integrity. My classroom mentor teacher makes it very clear that cheating will not be tolerated in her classroom and those caught engaging in such behavior must face the consequences (often no credit for the assignment). Only those assignments designated as collaborative in the directions are to be completed with the help of others. So far, cheating has not been a huge issue. It helps that the students do not have individual computers at school and cell phones are closely regulated in the school.

To counteract cheating, in my opinion, classroom teachers need to be explicitly clear about how they define and handle cheating and communicate this well with both students and parents. It is a battle that teachers must face everyday and it will only become harder with more shades of grey as technology continues to evolve. 

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Permalink Reply by Aimee Green on November 1, 2011 at 2:10pm

Hi Shelley,

My schools cheating policy is that if they get caught then that assignment is an automatic zero. If they are caught cheating on a semester exam, they receive a W/F grade for that class. My school doesn't really use any technology for their assessments.

Aimee

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Permalink Reply by Matt Oberle on November 2, 2011 at 10:46am

My school has a policy similar to those described in the posts above: if students are caught cheating they receive a zero on the assignment or test.  Students who cheat will also need to meet with the teacher to discuss the seriousness of their actions.  The label of “cheating” is mostly reserved for tests, quizzes, and papers; homework is usually not subject to the same scrutiny unless last-minute copying is occurring.  Technology has granted students access to a seemingly limitless amount of information.  Collaboration, using references, and Wikipedia can all be used as learning tools rather than learning bypasses.  The most important thing to remember about technology is the context in which it is used.  Using the internet to search for answers during a summative assessment is probably not an acceptable action.  Collaborating with friends in this situation is similarly inappropriate.  

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Permalink Reply by Marina V. Kostina, PhD on November 14, 2011 at 10:24am

This is a very interesting post, Matt. I think that it is crucial for the educators to understand how cheating has changed in the last decade. I also believe that teachers need to equip themselves with new strategies that help prevent cheating and plagiarism in their digital classrooms. I have written a blog post that identifies these strategies:
http://effectiveonlineteaching.org/2011/10/05/how-to-avoid-plagiari...

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Permalink Reply by Toni Rieger on November 15, 2011 at 4:19am

Our school uses Turnitin.com to check essays and reports for plagiarism. It's very clear, and parents can see (in color codes) how much of their child's work was "cut-and-paste." Just the fact that they know their work will be checked makes the students work harder at writing things in their own words.

Now if I could only find a way to keep parents from writing the papers.

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Permalink Reply by Alexandria Shinn on January 25, 2012 at 10:47am

At BGSU, there is a strict no cheating policy. Any cheating or stealing of information of any kind can result in getting kicked out of the university. I have googled key terms from my homework before to try and find an article that would help me to discover the correct answer; this is different than directly copying someone else’s answers, or asking someone else to do the work for me. I have at times found questions straight from my homework posted to yahoo! Questions/answers. People would reply to the post giving them the answer and often explaining as to why it was correct. I believe this to be a similar debate as to the facebook dilemma on whether or not it was cheating. In my opinion, if just the answer is given, and no explanation or help is provided to guide the questioner in the right direction this classifies as cheating.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Davis on January 25, 2012 at 7:50pm

My schools policy is that if you get caught cheating on an exam then you receive a WF for the course and are usually turned into the dean for Academic dishonesty. On my final exam for a a class I took this past fall, the professor allowed us to use our phones for calculations (they were pretty simple) but said that if he caught us using them for anything else that he would take our final and turn them in. A girl in the class (sitting in the front row) was using her phone for things other than calculations and he ended up taking her phone and her test and she received a WF and was turned in. It's not worth having that on your permanent record, just study!

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Permalink Reply by Amanda McKay on February 2, 2012 at 1:54pm

The policy at the school I work at is the following:

First Occurrence:

Minimum consequence  - Parent-Student Conference with teacher and loss of credit

Maximum consequence - Long-term suspension

Repeated Occurrences:

Minimum consequence - Short suspension

Maximum consequence - Course Failure and/or Expulsion

 

This is communicated to students on the first day of school when the Rights & Responsibilities Handbook is gone through in each class.  Students then sign that they have gone over the handbook and it is sent home to the parents.  New ways of cheating with technology have been observed at my school, but they have not been formally addressed.  It is really just word of mouth amongst teachers that lets us know what the latest form of cheating is.  We did a survey of the kids a year or so ago regarding the rise in cheating and many said that they felt they had to cheat to get into college.

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