Opportunities for cheating
Unfortunately, the opportunites for cheating online are numerous and extremely easy to do. The Internet provides the "dishonest" student sites to either copy or buy previously completed assignments. The major sticking point is how to deal with the plagarism and the student claiming they did their work themselves. Too many student advisors and counselors siding with the students and leave the instructor to stand by themselves when dealing with this issue. What are your thoughts on this?
I believe that cheating is available anywhere even in a classroom setting. When the student wants to be dishonest and don't really have an interest in learning they will find a way. Like the saying "When there is a will there is a way". I have had experience with a lot of cheating individuals in a class room. It is all about how interested the student is and how willing they are to learn.
Depends upon the course. For "open book" tests, I find it no different that in real life when someone goes to a reference book to look up something specific.
I agree that there's a significant potential for cheating in an online environment. There are some tools that are helpful, like turnitin.
I agree that its important for any online school to have clear and enforceable academic honesty policies. It's doubly important that the individual instructors apply those standards and that the school supports the instructors.
Unfortunately this is an issue, I like the blended course for this reason, you can give a quiz in class to see how the students are doing without any assistance from either their book or family, friends etc. There have been a few times that I have felt like someone else is doing the work for the student but we have no method to check when it is all online. Proctored exams may be a solution. I don't know any other way to control this issue. In the end the student is the one who suffers, but we are putting our brand on that student too.
I agree that the school needs to stand behind the instructors. I have used Turnitin and it is a very good tool to have for papers, but not every class is paper based and that can be difficult, such as timed writings in keyboarding.
