Failing Honestly: Better than Cheating

Blog Post 2 (Graded)

               During my placement this year I have encountered one issue that I have not had much experience with in my previous placements; also, this issue is something that has not really been talked about in any education classes that I have taken to this point (as far as dealing with it in our future classrooms). The issue is cheating. Cheating, in all its infamous stained soiled glory, must be addressed by every teacher at some point.

                To date, I have already witnessed blatant cheating in my placement. In the most egregious example, plagiarism was the nasty offense. In this particular instance, the student not only plagiarized an entire section of his/her essay directly from Sparknotes, parts of the teacher sample essay were included in the purported unique student work. The policy in the classroom is that all instances of plagiarism receive a zero on the assignment and may not be made up. In addition to plagiarism, I have seen cheating during group work and on quizzes. Recognizing that cheating is going on, what can teachers do to foster an environment of academic integrity where students view honest work as their currency for success (both now and in the future)?

                Before answering that question, every teacher must realize that some cheating is likely going to happen. Therefore, there are a few best practices that I have observed to ensure some cheating never happens. For instance, my CT (when observing me grade a multi choice test) told me to always mark through the actual answer, not the item number. This ensures that the student does not change the answer after they get the paper back.  This best practice is something I didn’t think of and something my CT had to experience (In actual incidents) before adopting. Also, as English teachers, we can adopt a few simple steps to easily detect essays plagiarized from online sources. Currently, at least in my placement experience, students are almost always given class time to work on essays. Make the rough draft part of what they hand in. Personally, I like a hand written rough draft as part of what the student hands in for the final product.  While some teachers may allow the students to type a rough draft on a computer in class, if they have the resources to do so, it is still easy for a teacher that is actively moving around the classroom to observe cutting and pasting or a lack of work on the screen.

                The fact that cheating occurs in high instances in both high school and college settings is not new news. Our job as future teachers is to try and change this culture, the culture that makes students they need to cheat and that it is ok. In “Ten Principles of Academic Integrity: How Faculty Can Foster Student Honesty,” Donald L. McCabe and Gary Pavela, give an insightful list that can help teachers get a handle on cheating in their classrooms before it is an issue. The list is as follows:

1.       Recognize and affirm academic integrity as a core intuitional value.

2.       Foster a lifelong commitment to learning.

3.       Affirm the role of teacher as guide and mentor.

4.       Help students understand the potential of the Internet—and how that potential can be lost if online resources are used for fraud, theft, and deception.

5.       Encourage student responsibility for academic integrity.

6.       Clarify expectations for students.

7.       Develop fair and creative forms of assessment.

8.       Reduce opportunities to engage in academic dishonesty.

9.       Respond to academic dishonesty when it occurs.

10.   Help define and support campus wide academic integrity standards.

While each of these items is individually important, there are a couple that really stand out for me. Those two are: developing fair and creative forms of assessment and making expectations clear. I am a big proponent of alternative forms of assessment; every assessment does not need to be a multiple choice test. Even when a teacher uses a multiple choice test, they can write it is a fashion that is more enjoyable than the standard boring assessments a student might find on state wide assessment. For example, on the internet, students like to fill out personality tests or questionnaires that match them with a particular character from a TV series etc.  While I am not saying this is the type of test you should give, by making sure some elements of your test are fun and individually rewarding, student feel value in the actual material you are concerned with. This decreases the possibility of cheating.

                

I am interested in the experiences my colleagues have had to date with the cheating issue in the classroom. How was it dealt with? Why did the cheating occur? What could be done differently?

References:

Ten (Updated) Principles of Academic Integrity: How Faculty Can Foster Student Honesty

Donald L. McCabe and Gary Pavela

Change, Vol. 36, No. 3 (May - Jun., 2004), pp. 10-15

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40177967