I totally agree with you, the nontraditional students do understand the value of an education more than the younger students. With this day and age we are having more of the nontraditional students in our classrooms. I hope that their experiences and ways of study help the younger ones to value their time and energy in the online learning process as well.
Patricia,
Nontraditional is now becoming the traditional!
Shelly Crider
Cheating is going to happen in any milieu. Many online students will plagiarize from various websites because they don't know it's wrong, because they think they won't get caught, or because they don't know what to do. It's our responsibility to teach them what plagiarism is and how to avoid unintentional plagiarism. It's also our responsibility to be aware it's happening.
Karen,
Exactly! We do need to make sure students know what to cite and how much they can.
Shelly Crider
I completely disagree. Like any educational environment, we must be concerned about cheating. There is a misconception that cheating occurs more in the online environment, but it definitely occurs. There are many tools like Turnitin now available to help reduce the level of cheating, and we must be on watch for it to make sure students are getting value for their educational investment.
Kurt
This is akin to saying “Drivers run red lights all the time. Why should we care if it’s going to happen anyway?†Cheating is a concern no matter WHERE it happens. For one, instructors cannot gauge student learning appropriately if cheating is occurring. If instructors don’t know the true comprehension level of the students in the course, adjustments and reteaching cannot be done effectively. Any cheating is concerning and should be addressed by the instructor.
Kurt,
Tunitin has made a world of difference for the instructor and the student as a learning guide.
Shelly Crider
I agree. If a student is disciplined enough to do an online program then I would expect that they would want to get the most out of the program. This is their future and they chose the program to benefit themselves. As I am in the beginning stages of developing online programs, the only way I see cheating online would be having someone else take the test for the student. That would not be benefiting their future nor themselves.
We should always be concerned about students "cheating." To me that means we should be concerned that the student is actually engaged in the course and is involved with the discussions, students, and the instructor. That kind of involvement should solve a lot of what we might call "cheating." When students want to learn, that problem goes away.
Margaret Bennett
Margaret,
Very good point. If the student is more focused on cheating, what are they really in class for?
Shelly Crider
We should always be concerned about cheating whatever the modality may be. The form it takes may be different. On line, perhaps the biggest concern is that someone other than the student is actually taking the class. In the end, whoever is cheating is only hurting themselves. The standards established for on ground students and on-line students must be the same and be enforced.
Brian,
That is so true Brian. Cheating has many different forms.
Shelly Crider
What if the student has somebody doing the work for her?
How would you handle this situation?
You may never find out that somebody else was doing all the writing for her.
Elma,
You can check the properties in Microsoft Word documents, but this is not a fail safe trick, just one thing you can do.
Shelly Crider
Good catch on the property part of the document. As you said this is not a fail sage trick.
We should always be concerned about cheating in an online learning environment. If some students do not know the material hey will attempt to cheat if they have to. Changing quiz questions and exam questions every so often can help eliminate cheating on quizzes and exams.
Mario ,
Exactly....you can change your quizzes every other term or do something to keep things mixed up!
Shelly Crider
There is no doubt that the value of knowledge rises above the ability to look up someone else’s answer on the Internet. There is another kind of cheating in online courses, though. Many of us work at institutions that provide course content, such as assignments and discussion prompts. Institutions do this for many reasons, but the two main reasons are to provide even content and meet accreditation standards. Both of these are important reasons, but they do create a unique version of the “frat paper†in an online course.
The problem arises when the content is static for several sessions, sometimes years, all in a row and the course has many different instructors. It does not take very long for students to begin sharing papers. For instance, a student may give his/her friend copies of all the individual projects in a course and that student makes a couple of changes (maybe) and resubmits a paper that he or she already knows will get a passing grade. Certainly no learning occurs in this situation.
The solution to this problem may be in instructional design. If all the static assignments were set up in the same manner as question banks for a quiz, students could not share quite as easily. Let me explain. Say for any given project, there were four different equally relevant assignment prompts in a databank. When the session course loads, only one of the prompts would be randomly or sequentially (n+1) posted for that session. This configuration would have two main benefits. First, it would make the “frat paper†more difficult to obtain. Second, it would keep the instructor “fresh.†Grading the same assignment several sessions in a row might cut down on grading time, but it doesn’t allow instructors to maintain the enthusiasm in their presentations that really engaging teaching requires.
Donna,
Ramdomizing is a great way to keep the cheating down. Any assessment can have items ramdomized.
Shelly Crider
Yes, cheating is everywhere...online, on-ground...etc...
As an on-line instructor, you must manage the academic integrity as you would in class.
Mike
