Jon,
I am a little confused about your question. Are you indicating that we should not care whether students cheat onlne or that we should not be more concerned about cheating online than we are concerned about cheating onground?
My answer to the second question is that cheating is no more or more less a serious issue online than it is onground. In either educational medium, cheating cheats the student out of an opportunity to learn and weakens the value of their degree.
I think we should apply the same concern to onground cheating as to online cheating. But I agree, we should not be more concerned about this issue occurring online, just deal with it with the same rigor as might be expected in a traditional environment.
Yes, we as educations should be concerned with cheating. If cheating is allowed in a program, the overall academic integrity of the school will come into question. Reputation is based partly on an institution’s academic integrity.
Cheating is cheating. It doesn't matter whether it occurs in an online setting or in an on-ground setting. However, cheating in online settings is different from cheating in the traditional sense. In a traditional setting, cheating includes, obtaining information from a book or note or other materials that are disallowed during examinations and stealing answers from fellow students.
In an online setting, assignments are mostly based on real-world situations. Hence, the word "Project" is often used by Information Technology departments to describe assignments. Cheating in online settings include failure to properly attribute materials used for an assignment, submitting works that have been previously submitted by another student, paying for papers, and having someone other than the student in a program do assignments for the student.
I agree with you. Cheating is unethical and could be illegal too depending it magnitude. It has come to stay. Despite the fact that Turn-It-In plagiarism tool is used by online schools to detect plagiarism, other types of cheating such as paying for papers and having someone other than the registered student do assignments for the student will continue. In some cases, spouses do assignments for their better halves.
We should not be concerned about students cheating in an online environment; they may cheat in traditional classes as well. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your answer.
Overall, I believe we should be concerned with cheating. Ethical standards and appropriate punishment must be enforced if a cheater is caught. However, learning activities should be designed to help minimize the need to cheat and promote a positive environment for student-centered learning. How do we balance the time between looking for cheaters versus designing learning activities to promote student- and active-centered learning?
My philosophy is if I detect cheating then I should investigate it further otherwise I do not actively look for cheaters.
Since I teach engineering, you can design different problems to test their understanding of the concepts that is hard to duplicate. In terms of research reports, there are tools to detect plagiarism to help save time.
Are there other time-saving tools to detect cheating?
Cheating is cheating, regardless of the environment. Students being online does not mean that they will cheat more, due to the same tools being available either way. We should be equally ready to respond to such situations in a face-to-face setting and online.
EXAMS
"Cheating" is only possible if the instructor requires rote regurgitation and is statistically verifiable. Short answers that require either critical thinking and metaphor creation or a practical demonstration verify that a student has understood the presented concepts. These testing methods require more work of the instructor but make "cheating" irrelevant. Should students in an online class collude to take an these types of exams simultaneously, their work will show the same structure, strengths and flaws. This type of cheating becomes difficult to detect only when instructors retain identical exam questions over multiple terms or share exams with other section instructors. In this case, a teacher hardly can cite a student as they are guilty of the same laziness.
PROJECTS / PAPERS / ASSIGNMENTS
Due to the difficulty of meeting conflicting standards, I applaud the student who can manage to satisfy the requirements of multiple classes with a single effort. This is not cheating. Should the work be improperly cited this again is not cheating but a technical error. Should the work be verifiably unoriginal this is indeed cheating and the student should fail automatically. However, I again caution that the instructor may minimize this situation with original content, highly specific assignments and critical thinking exercises that are updated each term.
I am very concerned about the cheating aspect in any classroom situation. It seems that students that want to cheat are going to find a way to do it one way or anyother. Cheating is something that I know only hurts the individual that does it in that it does not allow for learning only the completion of the task. If a student really wants this education they will stay away from this at any time.
I disagree. We should be concerned about students cheating in an online environment just the same as we would in a ground course.
I am in the middle on this. The student is the one loosing in the long run if they cheat. Therefore why spend too much time trying to catch cheaters and focus on students who want to learn?
I disagree!! In a personal experience I have had two sisters cheat on the online course. They copied and pasted the other ones answers for themselves. When I confrounted them the said that they each had done the work. But even the spelling mistakes were exactly the same. I know that it has been said that the student is the one who ultimately suffers from this act. But now I am not so sure. I think that society as a whole looses out. We must be concerned with cheating in any arena. If we say that we educate an individual and graduate them and expect them to perform their duties in the work place, but yet they do not know their duties it may even cost a life if they are in the medical field. So I feel that cheating is a costly and potentially dangerous act.
I disagree. Cheating is cheating regardless of whether it’s in a traditional classroom setting or online. It’s unethical and should not be tolerated. Unfortunately the advancement of technology has made it easier for students to cheat.
Cheating is cheating no matter where you do it. There is just as much opportunity to cheat in an online environment as there is in a traditioinal classroom.
Our school works diligently to ensure that cheating doesn't occur. We spell out what constitutes cheating and plagiarism and what the repercussions of it will be. We have our students sign an Integrity Statement. Unfortunately some students will still cheat.
For some it is the pressure of too many online classes and not enough time, so they will take shortcuts to completing assignments or taking assessments.
But for others they may view it as the "easy" way to get a good grade. They aren't learning anything, they're just out to get a grade and move on.
Betty Taylor
David,
I agree with you, it has to be addressed.
Jon
Belinda,
Good point tools like turnitin.com or Google really simplify things.
Jon
Dixie,
I agree, or at least the next instructor who has to stop a behavior that others may have missed.
Jon
James,
It does start feeling hopeless sometimes, but in the end I think it is important to watch.
Jon
Great post - thanks for sharing! - Jon
Jon:
I do think that we need to be concerned about students cheating in an online environment.
I have found that students who cheat in a typical classroom setting will probably also cheat in an online setting.
As an instructor it is difficult to understand the concept of anyone cheating who is wanting higher education.
I have run across instances of cheating in both settings and is disappointing; but unfortunately, I agree with the fact that it boils down to ethics. Some students do not understand, especially in an online environment, the concept of Academic Integrity.
Kim
