Cheating does not serve anyone. The reason you take a course is to acquire knowledge. Cheating may get you through the class but, when you get into a real world situation you will not be equipped to handle the job. We should be concerned about cheating because it is our responsibility as educators to give the students the tools they need to succeed. If we turn a blind eye to cheating we would not be providing the student with those tools.
Yes cheating is the same and has to be treated seriously. It can be a little difficult too detect in a project or group project setting but you can become familiar with identifying it quickly.
Cheating should not be tolerated at all in any learning environment. Unfortunately, there are many ways students can beat the system to cheat and provide someone else's work with only little efforts in an online environment. Despite this, educators should be vigilantly looking for such behaviors by studying the character of the students and by closely watching their activities.
Absro
I'm not sure this question is really supposed to ask if we should ignore cheating. Of course we should not and whether it is in a classroom or an online course instructors must always be aware of the signs of cheating. If not for class integrity but, for the students learning as well. Cheaters rarely learn content.
Not to mention, when using APA or MLA formatting 80% of what is submitted by the student could be others work. This is a normal function when doing research papers. This is why stressing proper citation is so important, use others work if that is what is needed but, give proper credit.
Whether we are talking about an online or an on-ground course cheating in the classroom should always be a concern.However as we can all imagine managing this for an on-ground course is much easier then for an online course.
Suggestions:
1 - Design the course material receiving grades in such a fashion that one would need to integrate information from multiple areas in order to provide a correct answer.
2 - Give the students different questions to answer.
3 - Timed tests also make it hard to receive a good grade if one has not already studied the material.
Just a few thoughts for trying to combat the issue, but I certainly do not think it can be eliminated.
Dawn Huber
Cheating is wrong whether in the online environment or in the traditional classroom. Plagiarism is still plagiarism as well. Fortunately, there are tools that can be used online such as Turn-it-in that lets the instructor know whether or not a document has been copied and pasted from the internet. I believe it is very important for students to know that cheating is unprofessional, unacceptable, and can cause problems even in the online environment.
If an online student copies another student's work and it is noticed by the original student, there will be conflicts in the class between the students and the educational topic may get off-track because the students are communicating about the cheating issue at hand rather than discussing the course material.
I agree. Many students are not even aware of what plagiarism is because many have not written any type of professional documentation or papers since high school. It is very important that instructors inform students about plagiarism even though the information will be included in the syllabus. That is one of the areas that may be overlooked.
I totally disagree. When students cheat their way through school nothing is gained. I have seen evidence of cheating in my on-line class—though I can't prove it. When 90% of my student gets 100% on a test that I know an advanced learner would mostly likely not achieve, I become suspicious. During a discussion on what they think would be the challenging area on a mock exam, they answer by saying they don't understand the very topics that they score 100% on the test. I found out that students can submit the test questions to a website which then supplies the answers for a fee. This concerns me because I want my students prepared for the workforce when they graduate. What I do to further test their understanding is to give them alternative test questions on the same subject just to see how well they do. The scores are normally down 30 to 40 percent. Just like lying is lying regardless if it's small or big; cheating is cheating!
I feel it is often hard to regulate cheating when looking at an online course. I would base it on if the answers are word for word out of a book, or they got every math question right but struggled in the discussion area and homework. Cheating is cheating but in todays world of information at teh touch of a button it almost seems unfair to say you can't look up the answer because in reality they always will be able to.
Jerrod,
I like the benefit of doubt. I do think there are times when students just didn't get "it".
Shelly Crider
Daniel,
you can definitely tell which students have been paying attention when you are working with technology.
Shelly Crider
John,
Even as an instructor, I feel cheated when I find a cheater.
Shelly Crider
Johnny,
We do need to be on the look out for cheating and not be too lax just because we are online.
Shelly Crider
Absro,
There are many people who cheat "the system" in the general public as well.
Shelly Crider
Mike,
This is one of the resources I place in my class in week one....how to cite.
Shelly Crider
Craig,
I think there will be more and more tools and materials for the instructor in the future as well.
Shelly Crider
Vivian ,
This is a great example of terrible cheating!
Shelly Crider
Erin,
I like to discuss cheating in one of my discussions, not just school cheating, but cheating in the workplace.
Shelly Crider
Mike,
I would like to think that we instructors never ignore cheating. It is just a matter of what to do with cheaters.
Shelly Crider
