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October 23, 2006, 11:10 AM ET
How to Check on Cheating
Many college students seem to have no idea what cheating is, said a group of community-college instructors at a roundtable discussion today at the annual League for Innovation conference in Charlotte, N.C. The freewheeling discussion was intended to help instructors find ways to ferret out and cope with cheating by students in online classes. Lorraine Miller and Kay Holcomb, both computer instructors at Eastern New Mexico University at Roswell, are so troubled by cheating that they plan to administer a survey to online students to determine their understanding of the problem.
One of the survey questions asks whether “putting your name on someone else’s work” is cheating. Students can provide an answer from 1 to 5, with “1” being “this is definitely not cheating” and “5” being “this definitely is cheating.” Some instructors at the discussion recommended that their colleagues make clear to students at the beginning of their classes what does and does not constitute cheating. One instructor suggested an unorthodox idea for those trying to figure out the scope of cheating at their institutions: Offer amnesty to any student who steps forward to reveal that he or she has cheated. The instructor said one of his colleagues did this in a face-to-face class and 75 percent of the students came forward to say they had cheated. —Andrea L. Foster
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