Forms of Cheating

One of the reasons you and I are doing this interview is to make our colleagues, both teachers and parents, more aware of the highly sophisticated forms which cheating has adopted since the advent of technology in the classroom. Can you outline some of the kinds of cheating we adults ought to be vigilant for?

The University of Texas complied a very comprehensive list of cheating strategies, which I've included in the Appendix of my paper Academic Practices, School Culture & Cheating. You've raised a good point with regards to sophisticated forms of cheating. One of the problems we encounter in deterring cheating is that some kids can simply outsmart us. While writing my paper I was in touch with many educators around the country. At one point I received an e-mail tip that there was a discussion going on among some students on one of the major graphing calculator's listserv whereby students were sharing how they had outsmarted teachers.
The following was one of the entries that day:

"Concerning teachers clearing memory before test, just write a memory clearing simulation program. I had a bunch of formulas I needed for an Algebra test stored in a program. I wrote a program that would simulate almost every function after [2ND] [MEM]. I even had a blinking cursor. The only problem I had was with Page Up and Page Down and having two menus at the bottom of the screen. When the teacher started around the room clearing memories, I went ahead and executed my program, doing a fake total memory clear. When she came around, she saw the memory cleared, defaults set screen, and went on to the next person. What a dumb ass!"

So, yes, dealing with the more sophisticated forms of cheating is a reality.

How can teachers keep ahead of their students when it comes to recognizing electronic cheating?

This might seem simplistic, but, first, students need to understand why cheating is wrong. Dr. Lickona defined a few in his book Educating For Character:

• It will ultimately lower your self-respect, because you can never be proud of anything you got by cheating.
• Cheating is a lie, because it deceives other people into thinking you know more than you do.
• Cheating violates the teacher's trust. It undermines the whole trust relationship between the teacher and his or her class.
• Cheating is unfair to all people who aren't cheating.
• If you cheat in school now, you'll find it easier to cheat in other situations later in life - perhaps even in your closest personal relationships.

Secondly, when essay topics are generic in nature, there seems to be more opportunity to cheat. However, when the essay topic is specific to class discussions and/or unique to the course's stated goals, it becomes more difficult for students to go to web sources to lift material or download papers. Additionally, when the teacher expects that the paper's development will follow a step-by-step process that requires them to document their topic, thesis, outline, sources, rough draft and final draft there are fewer opportunities to cheat. Conversely, when a paper suddenly appears with no documented process, then teachers should be wary. Lastly, if there are regular in-class writing assignments, a teacher can come to know the students' writing style. Lastly, teachers might want to familiarize themselves with the major web sites which offer papers to students for a fee.

Plagiarism seems so much harder to spot when students only have to cut and paste materials. How can you recognize electronic plagiarism?

I suspect the teachers reading this might offer many worthwhile tips. To me, however, the best way is to simply know the student's writing style. At times we have even asked the student's previous teacher to help us to determine whether the paper or a section of a paper was consistent with the student's work from the previous year. The difficulty comes when you're convinced that something isn't quite right and the student denies any wrongdoing. Different schools will handle this situation in different ways.