CHEATING AS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
CAN CHEATING TEACH ETHICS?
Hi Ronda,
I love this teachable moment! How creative, they will get it!
Patricia
I am glad that this question was posed! I teach Ethics and I just thought of a great exercise to do for the next term. I will probably ask a question(s), ask the students to write answers, then for the students who can not think of answers, I will suggest that the student look on his/her neighbor's paper or any other method of getting the answer. When I receive puzzled looks (hopefully), this will begin a discussion. I may need to tweak this experiment a bit, but this will provide a great foundation.
Hi Hank,
If you let students get away with cheating, others will think they can cheat as well.
Patricia
Only if an example is made to other stduents of the consequenses of cheating. Not knowing the information when needed in thier career fields may mean getting fired or a loss of the opportunity for promotion.
Sounds like adult students have a stronger ethical code than high school students. A friend of mine is a HS teacher and cheating is rampant and even when caught the students are not remorseful.
Maybe. I actually have an adult student very recently who confessed to cheating. Briefly: a rough draft of an essay was due. The student (told me all this later) did not have time due to a busy week to write a rough draft and so found a sample on the internet (sigh) and brought that to class. What was odd was that we had already established that I was not grading or even really looking at rough drafts and the purpose of it was to have a peer edit with a fellow student. Therefore, there really was a very minor consequence to not having a rough draft. No feedback from peers or participation in the peer edit which was worth some points as a class participation grade. But this student felt so guilty about this that she came clean with me after class confusing that she had not written the draft. Ironically, while we were taking a quiz in class, I checked the rough drafts by looking them over. She told me she was so consumed by guilt that she did not really concentrate on several of the quiz questions. She did not do well on the quiz. So I guess this was definitely a learning experience. And I think that was for both the student and me.
Hi John,
Yes, if it used by the cheater as a lesson learned.
Patricia
