What to do about CHEATING
[Excerpted from Teaching Tips (10th edition) by Wilbert J. McKeachie, Houghton Mifflin, 1999, pp. 111-116; 136]
Studies of cheating behavior invariably find that a significant percentage of students report that they have cheated. Most students would rather not cheat, but the pressures for good grades are so intense that many students feel that they, too, must cheat if they believe that other students are cheating. In my experience the most common excuse given by a student caught cheating is that other students were cheating and that the teacher didn't seem to care, at least not enough to do anything to prevent or stop cheating. Many students thus feel less stress when an examination is well managed and well proctored.
How do students cheat?
Preventing Cheating:
"OK, so we want to prevent cheating. What can we do?" An obvious first answer is to reduce the pressure. While you can't affect the general academic atmosphere that puts heavy emphasis on grades, you can influence the pressure in your own course, for example, by providing a number of opportunities for students to demonstrate achievement of course goals, rather than relying on a single examination.
A second answer is to make reasonable demands and write a reasonable and interesting test. Some cheating is simply the result of frustration and desperation arising from assignments too long to be covered adequately or tests requiring memorization of trivial details. In some cases, cheating is simply a way of getting back at an unreasonable, hostile teacher.
A third answer is to develop group norms supporting honesty. I frequently give my classes a chance to vote on whether or not we will conduct the tests on the honor system. I announce that we will not use the honor system unless the vote is unanimous, since it will not work unless everyone feels committed to it. If the vote is unanimous, I remind the students of it on the day of the exam and ask whether they still wish to have the test under the honor system. While I haven't collected data on the success of this approach, I've never had a complaint about it. Although only a minority of classes votes for the honor system, a discussion of academic dishonesty is itself useful in helping students recognize why cheating is bad.
What else can be done? One principle is to preserve each student's sense that he or she is an individual with a personal relationship both with the instructor and with other students. Students are not as likely to cheat in situations in which they are known as in situations in which they are anonymous members of a crowd. Thus, if a large course has regular meetings in small discussion or laboratory sections, there is likely to be less cheating if the test is administered in these groups rather than if the test is administered en masse. Moreover, if it is in their regular classroom, they may perform better because of the cues to their original learning.
Even in small groups, cheating will occur if the instructor seems unconcerned. Graduate student teaching assistants often feel that any show of active proctoring will indicate that they do not trust the students. There is certainly a danger that the teacher will appear so poised to spring at a miscreant that the atmosphere becomes tense, but it is possible to convey a sense of alert helpfulness while strolling down the aisles or watching for questions.
The most common form of cheating is copying from another student's paper. To reduce this, I usually ask to have a large enough exam room to enable students to sit in alternate seats. I write on the board before the students arrive, "Take alternate seats." Some students fail to see the sign, so in large exams you not only need two proctors at each door passing out exams but at least one more to supervise seating.
In the event that you can't get rooms large enough to permit alternate seating, you probably should use two or more alternate forms of the test. Houston (1983) found that scrambling the order of items alone did not reduce cheating. Since I prefer to have items on a test follow the same order as the order in which the material has been discussed in the course, I scramble the order of items only within topics and also scramble the order of alternatives. I typically write separate sets of essay questions for the two tests. Since it is difficult to make two tests equally difficult, you probably will want to tabulate separate distributions of scores on each form of the test.
Whether you use one form or more, don't leave copies lying around your office or the typist's office. One of our students was nearly killed by a fall from a third-floor ledge outside the office where he hoped to steal the examination, and janitors have been bribed to turn over the contents of wastebaskets thought to contain discarded drafts of the test.
Plagiarism: If plagiarism occurs, sometimes it is simply the result of ignorance. Explaining what plagiarism is and indicating that it is a serious offense not only may prevent the naïve student from plagiarizing but also may deter the intentional plagiarist. All of this advice will not eliminate cheating. It is a sad commentary on our educational system that it occurs, but recognizing and preventing problems is likely to be less unpleasant than ignoring them.
Handling Cheating:
Despite preventive measures, almost every instructor must at some time or another face the problem of what to do about a student who is cheating. For example, as you are administering an examination, you note that a student's eyes are on his neighbor's rather than his own paper. Typically you do nothing at this time, for you don't want to embarrass an innocent student. But when the eyes again stray, you are faced with a decision about what to do.
Most colleges have rules about the procedures to be followed in case of cheating [consult your departmental Instructors' Handbook]. Yet instructors are often reluctant to begin the procedure. The reasons for instructor reluctance vary. Sometimes it is simply uncertainly about whether or not cheating really occurred. Student's eyes do wander without cheating. Answers may be similar simply because two students have studied together. "If the student denies the charge, what evidence do I have to support my accusation?"
Again, unwillingness to invoke the regulations concerning cheating may be based on distrust of the justice of the eventually disposition of the case. Cheating is common in colleges; few teachers have not been guilty themselves at some stage in their academic careers. Thus most of us are understandably reluctant to subject the unfortunate one who gets caught to the drastic possible punishments that more skillful cheaters avoid. Such conflicts as these make the problem of handling a cheater one of the most disturbing of those a new teacher faces.
Unfortunately I've never been completely satisfied that I handle the problem adequately; so my "advice" should, like the rest of the advice in this book, be regarded simply as some ideas for your consideration rather than as dicta to be accepted verbatim.
First, let me support the value of following your college's procedures. Find out what they are and what legal precedents may affect what you should do. Even though it may not be long since you were taking examinations yourself, your role as a teacher requires that you represent established authority rather than the schoolboy code that rejects "tattlers." Moreover, your memories of student days may help you recall your own feelings when you saw someone cheating and the instructor took no action.
Further, some student or faculty committees dealing with cheating are not as arbitrary and impersonal as you might expect. Typically, they attempt to get at the cause of the cheating and to help students solve their underlying problems. Being apprehended for cheating may, therefore, actually be of long-term value to the students.
Finally, following college policies protects you in the rare case in which a student initiates legal action against you for an arbitrary punishment. There still remain cases where the evidence is weak and you're not quite sure whether or not cheating has actually occurred. Even here I advise against such individual action as reducing a grade. If you're wrong, the solution is unjust. If you're right, you've failed to give the student feedback which is likely to change his behavior. In such cases I advise calling the chairman of the committee handling cheating cases, the student's advisor, or some other experienced faculty member. It's surprising to find how often your suspicions fit in with other evidence about the student's behavior. Even when they don't advice from someone who has additional information about the student will frequently be helpful.
Finally, let's return to the case of the straying eyes. Here you haven't time for a phone call to get advice; your decision has to be made now. Rather than arousing the whole class by snatching away the student's paper with a loud denunciation, I simply ask the student unobtrusively to move to a seat where he'll be less crowded. If he says he's not crowded, I simply whisper that I'd prefer than he move. So far no one's refused.
In Conclusion:
Dealing with Plagiarism:
If, despite your preventive techniques, you suspect plagiarism, what should you do? Here you are in a conflict situation. Typically you don't want to reward plagiarism; yet it may be very difficult and time consuming to locate the original source. Without it, you will probably not be able to take formal action. So should you forget it? No.
Ordinarily I recommend a conference with the student. You may use the indirect approach of discussing or questioning the student about the content of the paper to assess the student's knowledge, or you may be direct in expressing your suspicions. In many cases the student will admit plagiarism; in some cases you will encounter blustering anger. In any case you will need to arrive at a decision about (1) turning the case over to college discipline procedures, (2) permitting the student to write another paper, or (3) giving the paper full credit. Often I tell the student that I will consult my departmental chair or respected colleague before making a final decision.
Giving a failing grade is probably the most frequent alternative chosen by teachers, but also the most problematic. The teacher is then vulnerable to a legal challenge of the grade for not following the college rules for disciplinary action.