I will be teaching my first online class, and have thought about the possibility of students cheating. You brought up a great suggestion...and one that as a teacher we should be doing anyway! Thanks Shenetha!
Best of luck with your first online class Kathryn! I hope this class has provided you with some helpful information.
I think as an online instructor it is our responsibility to do our best to prevent cheating among students, however, this can be easier said than done.
One website I like to use to guard against plagiarism is www.plagiarismdetect.com. I have found this website extremely useful.
Thanks for sharing the website Adam. I appreciate the tip!
I have been teaching online for 5 years and have experimented with a few methods to discourage and/or identify students cheating...however there is still no foolproof method for a 100% online course.
First, for an online course with essays my school utilizes Turnitin.com. Since we began using this service 4 years ago we have witnessed a dramatic decline in plagiarism. Of course we still conduct seminars to educate students about plagiarism, recycle papers, recycling resources, etc.
Second, and this is not always possible, an on-campus testing center that can verify ID's of students for online assessments is effective, although this is problematic for students traveling abroad or distance learners.
Third, with new emerging technologies we will see/are seeing biometric devices that can verify student ID's and minimize cheating [fingerprint scanners, etc, that are standard on many laptops or via USB for desktops]. This is probably the most viable option moving forward – although as my father often said, "When the good guys build a 10' wall the bad guys build a 12' ladder."
You have some very good suggestions Ron. With continued improvement with technology will come additional tools to ensure students aren't cheating. However, I agree that someone that is motivated will find a way around it. Unfortunately, unethical people will continue to be unethical.
You can never be 100% sure. However, there are certain steps we can take. Examples would be an on-line plagiarism checker, weekly phone calls to students,and paying attention when grading to look for similarities in content and other features.
Unless you watch your students all the time, it is probably hard to be 100% sure in a residential class as well. Thanks for your comments Steven.
I don't believe you can prevent all instances of cheating when it comes to an online environment. However, that doesn't mean that we do not have a responsibility to be diligent in our efforts to combat the issue. As others here have suggested, a singular approach isn't going to be effective. Fortunately, we have a number of different means of communicating with our students (assignments/quizzes/forum posts/chat/telephone) that permit us to assess their comprehension under different circumstances. If a student submits a beautifully written paper, yet has poorly constructed forum posts and poor grades of her exam, my red flag is definitely going to be raised.
I like Jessica's idea about watching for the "tone" of her students' work. I have seen significant differences in the style/quality of writing in different assignments submitted that led me to question the students work.
With the proliferation of tools such as Skype, I wonder if there is not some minimal level of "face-to-face" interaction on-line instructors could achieve that could address this (for example the wife completing the masters program for her husband)? What about a phone call one time in a course to assess how the student is doing? If the male voice cannot speak to the course content, you know you have an issue.
Well said Patrick. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, Jessica does make a good point. I agree that watching for differences between the way a student writes their assignments is one way of identifying cheating. Of course, that is true for residential and online courses!
Terrific suggestion David. You are correct that there are many technology tools that can aid us in identifying cheating.
Its a challenge to keep students from cheating in an online class.
An instructor can engage students in the discussion room by requiring some sort of reference to their answer, even if its just a page number from their book or a URL from a site.
Next in the discussion room I always ask followup questions.
Instructors can also use turnitin.com for paper or document verification.
Another way is to require submissions of work be sent as a word document. Once received properties can be checked to see the person and date it was originated.
Great tips Robin. Thanks for sharing with the group!
Dr. Ernst
This can be very difficult to combat. I oversee the Accounting and Finance area and have caught online students cheating.
We normally research the issue as well as send them our course policy information and, of course, the student will receive a zero for that assignment.
Once the research is complete and have found that a student cheats I know call each student and address the issue.
I have had good luck and each student has been forthcoming and normally is a personal issue that required them to cheat and stated that either a friend completed the assignment or they bought an answer key online.
Turnitin is a great online tool to check for Plagiarism and also just copying and pasting a paragraph and/or sentence in Google helps find results as well.
Kim
You make some great suggestions Kim. I had never thought about using Google. That is easy to do. Thanks for sharing your ideas and thoughts.
Dr. Ernst,
In a way, instructors will never 100% know who is completing work on the other end of the computer. I use a variety of methods in each class because you can really get a feel for a student's style. I look for consistency. Do test scores reflect their writing? Are emails, posts, replies, discussions, and papers all in the same tone and style? I had a student that typed flawless papers but could not write an email. I addressed this with her and simply asked her why there was such a difference between the two. She finally admitted that she had "help" with her papers but she wouldn't do that again.
Trisha
Thanks for sharing your experience with a student cheating. I like your approach of simply asking the tough questions to try and get the answer.
