Kenjiro,
Cheating is cheating whether you are in the work force on in an academic class.
Shelly Crider
While it is true that cheating also occurs in traditional courses, that is no reason to shrug off the seriousness of the offense or to accept it when it happens in online courses.
A lot can be said about plagiarism in online courses, and tools for catching internet copy/paste plagiarism are quite good now; however, purposeful plagiarizing is only one form of online "cheating." Another equally concerning form of cheating might be having someone else do the work. If a student consistently gets a friend or family member to compose his/her written assignments throughout the course, will the instructor ever know? Other instances of cheating can involve passing along exam answers to students who take the exam at a later time. This is even more damaging when exam questions for courses do not change very often.
I am relatively confident that I will notice and respond appropriately to cases of plagiarism. What the online classroom is yet to address as vigorously are the opportunities for the other forms of cheating mentioned here. These are just as possible in the online environment, and they are just as wrong.
Cheating in no matter what form it is, is wrong and unethical. It is very hard to identify a cheater in an online environment. Though, when I used to support WebCT at a job there was a system that would be downloaded from the school in order for the student to take the test. This would lock down the browser and prevent other instances to run. It was very touchy and hard to troubleshoot if there were issues.
I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt. The only thing I put my foot down is plagurism. This is easier to detect than straight cheating on a test.
Mark,
Oh so true.....this is serious business no matter where it is occurring.....good post!
Shelly Crider
Sean,
We need to hone in on it being unethical in our classroom. Most classes touch on business/career ethics...this is one of the ethics that does need to be discussed.
Shelly Crider
It absolutely happens and it needs to be controlled to the extent possible.
I have taught for several years and you can actually begin to see patterns in online courses just as you can in the classroom.
Test centers on college campuses deal with this problem as well - one college implemented a policy that cell phones need to be held at the desk because students were texting friends for answers.
So online is no different. The best way to combat it is to have application tests that require students to think and apply the material and include essay questions.
Janet,
I love application tests as well. It is nice to see what the students have learned as opposed to seeing them guess.
Shelly Crider
I am not sure how to define cheating in an online situation. Students are encouraged to use everything to which they have access to complete assignments. That opens up every internet site. I use a plagiarism detector built into our course structure to identify when something has just been cut and pasted from some other source.
So far I have had success finding plagiarism by just comparing comments in discussion postings to the writing submitted for assignments. If a student is a poor writer and speller but the assignments are well written, I believe plagiarism is taking place.
John,
It is amazing how quickly you can find cheating by simply reviewing the student's previous work.
Shelly Crider
The online classroom is just a different format. Certain concerns, such as cheating, is just as relevant in the online classroom as in the ground campus setting.
I disagree that cheating is not a concern in the online environment but agree that cheating may also exist in the traditional environment.
We should always be concerned about students cheating ~ no matter the style of class format. Students may actually be less inclined to cheat in the online environment simply because the deliverables they submit are computer files and thus very simple to compare to all available online sources for similarity. Students in most traditional classrooms still submit hard copies of their deliverables, which makes the process of comparing their work to that of others a bit more laborious.
Even so, the concern of the instructors regarding cheating in their classrooms should be as important in the online learning environment as in the traditional classroom.
You raise a valid point, Mark ~ if the enrolled student manages to coerce a friend or family member into composing his/her written assignments throughout the course, the instructor would never know if the caliber of work from one assignment to the next remained the same. As an online instructor, I have raised an eyebrow when the quality of a student's discussion contributions (original posts and comments to classmates) have not matched the quality of their individual assignment submissions ~ in which case I typically find a friend or family member offering proofreading services on the latter but not the former. I would hope that (a) any person who could submit high-quality deliverables on behalf of another to pass a class or earn a degree would also have the moral fortitude to refuse, and/or (b) the threat of losing the degree and thus the tuition invested in it should such dishonesty be discovered would be enough to reject the idea.
Interesting way of posting this question. Some people will cheat regardless of the learning environment. Opponents to online education have used this issue as a battle cry. Normal reaction to that statement is the same as listed in the question above.
There are several ways to address cheating in an online environment:
1. turnitin and similar engines can catch most if not all writing efforts to cheat. To beat this system the student often has to work harder than to write a good paper in the first place.
2.Tests can be administered using question pools by learning objective that scrambles the test so that no two students take the same exam.
3. Writing grading components that encourage rather than exclude the use of learning materials is another way to curtail cheating.
4. Proctoring services do exist and have some limited merit. But I find it laughable that on a broad scale students will have someone else do their exams without actually taking the course. Granted exceptions exist such as the massive SAT test scams. (Oh yeah, that was on-ground wasn't it)
As we use turnitin extensively I have allowed students to do over an assignment pointing out the problems of too much work being from the outside source and not enough in the vein of critical thinking. I use it as a learning experience rather than a gotcha experience.
Blatant plagiarism is a different matter. But again, with turnitin its pretty easy to catch.
Trista,
Students due tend to forget that their computer files are trackable. I have seen many dupicates of the same document.
Shelly Crider
Alan,
This is true. Some people love the challenge of cheating and will do anything to do so. We do want to stress that cheating in school will lead cheating on the job at some point.
Shelly Crider
Alan,
I look for more and more programs to come out due to this very subject and the fact that online learning is here to stay.
Shelly Crider
I believe it is the same. Whether its a resident course or an online course, cheating is just that... cheating. Oddly enough I caught a student's attempt to cheat just recently in the online forums. Thankfully the student did not plagiarize any of his peers. In this instance the student was responsible for one initial forum post on a specific topic along with two replies to his peers on the same topic. In a peer reply he copied and pasted his original topic thus using the initial post as his reply also. In other words he recycled his own work hoping it would suffice as if the instructors aren't taking the time to read all responses word-for-word.
Steve,
This is a good point! We as instructors do need to be reading each discussion post to help students with plagiarism and cheating.
Shelly Crider
Academic integrity and honesty is important in both the online and tradtional environement therefore each college should have a specific policy in dealing with students caught cheating.