Monday, April 16, 2012

A Cheating in the Classroom - A New Look at an Old Problem

A Cheating in the Classroom - A New Look at an Old Problem

Here's how you do it. Write test answers on a card attachedto a rubber band. Then pin the rubber band inside your long sleeve. Stretchingthe rubber band, hold the card in your hand to use during the test. If theteacher seems suspicious, release the card, and the rubber band will pull itback into your sleeve, out of view... Who knew! I didn't, until I found a how-to-cheatsite on the net: Link. And it's only one of many.

Cheating no longer seems "bad" to many students. Evenstudents who believe it is dishonorable still cheat sometimes. In one recentsurvey of college students, 85% said they had cheated in high school! At anyage, kids who cheat do so for numerous reasons, some unexpected. Check out thelist.

The best way to counter the causes of cheating, researchsuggests, is to change the focus and the dialog in the classroom-to emphasizepersonal mastery over high test scores. (Iknow! We haven't heard a lot latelyabout de-emphasizing test scores!) It makes sense, though, that studentswho focus on personal mastery will score higher on tests anyway, without the pressuresthat promote cheating. That was the finding at Ohio State University; thediscussion and suggestions to change the classroom dialog can be found here.


In the meantime, we still have to prevent cheating as muchas possible. A lot of it can be eliminated through classroom management. Hereare some tips; others can be found at this site.

Address cheating sooner rather than later. Define it for yourself first. (Is doing homework together cheating?) Then define it specifically for students, including a discussion of plagiarism.

Require students to sign a cheating policy statement, and let them know you will keep their signed statements on file. The message will be clear: You treat cheating seriously, and they have been informed of its consequences.

When testing, be proactive:

Sit in the back of the room while monitoring a test. Students won't know where your attention is directed at any given time. Move about the room occasionally; don't be predictable.

Move students out of their assigned seats; have them sit near others with whom they usually don't interact in class.

Hand out 2 versions of the test; for instance, alter the sequence of questions.

Require students to put books and notes completely out of sight; also, require them to place their cell phones face down on desk tops where you can see them.

Create cover sheets for kids to use to hide test answers. (A manila file folder cut on the fold makes two.) Hand these out with test copies, and collect them after testing. Make sure students haven't written on them before using them again.And then there's plagiarism. It used to mean copying passages out of library reference books; now students can go on line to plagiarize, even downloading entire papers. The good news is we can use technology, too.

Simply typing a suspicious passage into a search engine will usually reveal its origin. Numerous web sites are dedicated to identifying plagiarism. Four of them are listed here. I warn my students to not even think about plagiarizing, because I can hunt them down with a few mouse clicks! (They laugh-but they listen.) There's an even easier way to identify plagiarized work: If kids can't define specific words they used in their papers, case closed.

Academic cheating was first recorded during the Han dynasty in ancient China, and it doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. At least we can act to minimize it. As for students who are busy turning cheating into an art form, imagine the results if we could inspire them to put all that ingenuity to better use. Until then, surf those how-to-cheat web sites yourself to stay a step ahead. And one more thing-watch out for square pencils. That may not be company printing on all four sides!

Happy spring, and I'll see you later.

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