Lyn, it is true that life provides us little time to achieve our objectives but at some point the student has to approach life ethically. So in this we graduate students who will represent the school standards in an ethical manner. So yes I do agree with you.
Shelly, yes this is one those trick questions that has a really easy response. Plagiarism certainly has to be dealt with harshly if it proven to be the stealing of someone else's work with the complete intention of doing so. We have those that blatantly do so and those who simply did not know enough about APA citations and misunderstand how to follow APA. We really need to first understand why students cheat and then develop a response to prevent such actions. Most importantly, we have to have prevention techniques like fully posting clear APA guidelines in the main classrooms, chats and discussions, and then even mentioning ways to improve APA in their papers to make them aware.
Cheating online is actually easier than in a traditional classroom, so I completely disagree. Students can do a quick google search and simply copy and paste their answers into a discussion forum, or a Word file.
Sara
I am not sure why there is additional concern with cheating in an online environment. This can be a problem in any school and students can purchase papers and submit them to a ground campus just the same as an online course.
We should always be concerned about cheating and academic integrity. Most online universities have great tools to help detect if documents and postings have information that is "copy and pasted" from the web and from other peoples work. It is concerning that there are websites where people have created assignment answers and papers to questions that are commonly used at online university. Instructors needs to keep an eye on the students work to ensure academic integrity.
Kelly,
Each situation could be a bit different as well so each situation does need to be addressed.
Shelly Crider
Shari,
I do not really understand why you would want to cheat yourself, but I do know it happens!
Shelly Crider
Cheating in an online environment is much easier as students have access to an almost limitless source of information on the web. There are numerous sites that support student cheating and offer free resources, papers, answers etc. In the world of design, it is extremely easy for students to steal other people's work and call it their own. Instructors must be extremely vigilant of all incoming assignments and checking anything that appears questionable. There are numerous helpful tools such as "Turnitin" for academic integrity or sites like tineye.com for checking image similarity with millions of images online. Reviewing process work on an ongoing basis can often resolve much of the cheating issue as you watch a project evolve from the beginning to insure that the end product does belong to the student.
Cheating is cheating. We are giving students the necessary skills to succeed in life and cheating should not be one of them. Students who are caught cheating should be penalized.
Hi Shelly,
I disagree. It is unethical for a student to receive credit for an assignment that they did not complete. Each situation should be addressed and reported to the institution.
Best,
Kelly
Cheating does occur in online environments. It is easy for a student to go to a site, like Student of Fortune, and buy an entire class worth of assignments, including the final project. We as instructors need to be aware of this occurence and try to change up the assignments as best we can each time we teach the course, so students have more difficulty cheating. Cheating with YahooAnswers can be done via a smartphone in a traditional class, as well as online. The question for me about cheating has always been, rather than take the time to find a pre-made answer that may or may not be right, why not do it yourself?
Colleges and universities across the country are increasing their offerings of online courses as students and the general public demand greater access to higher education. One problem inherent in online education is the greater opportunity to cheat on quizzes, papers, and discussions. When students are not in the classroom, but on the other end of the Internet, they cannot be directly observed or monitored. This creates problems for students and professors as they struggle with maintaining the integrity of the course and seeking to ensure that all students do their own work and learn the selected material.
Dwayne,
Not just a learning environment, but in the workplace as well.
Shelly Crider
laura,
It does seem that Google can be quite the temptation!
Shelly Crider
Tylana,
Updating your class each and every quarter will stop students from sharing, at least a little!
Shelly Crider
Tylana,
Excellent! To be visual to the students right from the start is a must!
Shelly Crider
Martin,
Open-ended questions are excellent. When students go to job interviews, that is what is expected of them!
Shelly Crider
Cheating should always be a serious issue. No matter the type of learning environment, you must hold the highest standards of integrity and credibility. Students rely on learning institutions to lead them and guide them to a level of higher learning that they can then rely upon in order to profesionally and academically grow. Cheating has no place in this type of environment and should never be tolerated. With that, learning institutions must set the standard of learning excellence and push for a higher level of learning.
In an online classroom, cheating is probably more of a temptation. Online instructors need to be extremely concerned with cheating. That being said, instructors need to be diligent and also discern between outright dishonesty and not understanding how to properly cite references. I tend to think that more emphasis needs to placed on APA formatting in the online classroom.
I am currently in the process of changing some assignment details to limit cheating. I think that instructors who are pro-active can find new ways to address these issues.
I like to remind students that cheating can often take more time than actually doing the research. With so many tools available to monitor students, they often have to spend much time in their efforts to avoid detection.
