Yes. Cheating is the same. Regardless of whether the class is online or on the ground, the truth of the matter is that some students will still cheat. I do not agree that we should not be concernced. Hence, I agree that we must strive to hold the integrity of the courses we offer and the degrees we confer. Students (and learners) must earn their grades and degrees!
The good news based on my experience is that most students/learners want to learn and do their work honestly. I teach mainly Accounting and Finance classes, so it is hard to use tools like Turnitin to check for plagiarism or copying other students' work. I use such tools whenever there is a writing assignment or project. What I do though for calculations is that I ask them to show the work in Excel and through that, I can know sometimes if they actually know the concepts or just copied it.
Chasidy, I agree with you about older students as I primarily facilitate classes in a non traditional school. Hence, I deal with adult learners. I can actually see the willingness to truly learn and they contact me when they are struggling! It is always rewarding for me to see that they end up doing well in the class.
Jerry,
Yes, the instructor must do his or her due dilligence to determine whether cheating may have occurred on not. Since I teach Accounting and Finance, Turnitin does not work for me unless it is a writing assignment (which is rare). So, I have developed some techniques to hopefully catch the few lazy students.
Depending on the structure of the class, some exams and quizzes do not time out in an online environment which allows the student to use the internet to help find answers to questions. I say this as I know some students who wee doing this until I set the online class exams/quizzes to be log on specific, and set the restrictions that did not allow questions to be copied/pasted.
However, students are inventive creatures and if there is a will to cheat, they will somehow find away to do so, especially in todays technology age.
Bobby,
Where there is a will there is a way! No matter what the technology!
Shelly Crider
Cheating is cheating, online or in a traditional class. We should take precautions when building online test material so cheating doesn’t occur. You can setup a test to give random order of questions instead of always the same order, you can prohibit students to open test in new window so then can’t review the course content when doing the test.
I think we should be concerned about cheating since it is dishonest behavior. Students who cheat their way through programs and online classes are not learning the knowlege, skills or abilities that future employers will expect them to have. This then hurts the reputation of the school and the instructors and makes it harder to recuit future students who would be interested in attending our school.
Unfortunately, to many students see cheating as the only way to "get ahead" so as educators we must have strong policies against the behavior and be willing to enforce them to act as a deterrent to such behavior.
Kelly,
You can even go as far as have certain question sets for each test opened.
Shelly Crider
Kendra,
It does hurt reputation of everyone involved. Good point!
Shelly Crider
Cheating is cheating, regardless of the instructional delivery technique used. The goal should be to design authentic assessment versus rote memorization that will give the students an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding/grasp of the material. If the assessment is critical to passing the course, then the institution has a responsibility to develop a plan for assessment that alleviates or at least discourages the opportunity to cheat (i.e. in person testing site).
Amie,
You sound like a Bloom educator! I like that in you!!
Shelly Crider
I believe we should be concerned about students cheating. I think that we as instructors need to explain to our students the value of knowing the information rather than relying on someone else to provide it for them. In the end the person that cheats is only cheating themself.
To me cheating is cheating is cheating no matter if it is online or in a traditional classroom. As a facilitator and faculty it is important that we identify cheating however it is most important that students realize that cheating on subject matter is only cheating themselves of valuable information they may be missing out on. They are de-valueing themselves when they cheat. I also believe cheating can be malignant no matter if online or in traditional classrooms and if identified must be stopped and cheaters must be reprimanded and perhaps even kicked out of program they're studying.
Robyn,
We do need to stress the importance of being proud of your own work.
Shelly Crider
Barbara,
I like how you state "de-value". That is right on target!
Shelly Crider
I so agree with Barbara that cheating in whatever context is cheating themselves. Since most of the threads I have read agree that cheating is ongoing, it might be beneficial to start each one of my courses with a discussion about both what needs one tragically attempts to meet by cheating and which needs are compromised.
I do think that cheating occurs both in classroom and online environment. However after reading this discussion I will spend more time putting emphasis on the value and payoff of studying with integrity and authencity.
Instead of saying we shouldn't be concerned about cheating, I would say that we need to explicitly re-define what cheating is for online learners. Because the online learning environment is so different, cheating for online learners is not the stereotypical "writing the answers on your hand." Instead, allowing for tests where students can openly use their book but only, for example, allowing 1 or minimal attempts for answering the question help to combat online 'cheating.' The goas is to make sure they are learning, not just regurgitating information. Finding the best way to measure learning (without cheating) in an online environment, requires thinking outside of the box.
Kelley,
I like your plan Kelley! This is a good course to gather ideas!
Shelly Crider
Detria,
Nicely stated and oh so true!! I love out of the box thinking because that is exactly how real life is!
Shelly Crider
