But here’s one: Recently, I had to deal with an incredibly blatant case of plagiarism on a test. I raised it in the next class (when the students did not yet know whom I had caught, as I had not yet returned the tests). I raised it in the context of their next component in the course, the term paper. I told them how easy it was to catch the case of plagiarism, that I am not soooo old that I don’t know how to use the Internet, etc. . . .

And then I told them about how many times I have been plagiarized, including by so-called scholars — and I told them how much it hurts, not only on principle but because so many family members also had sacrificed so much for mom to do her diss., do her books, etc. Interesting to see the reaction of students. The room was the quietest it ever has been, and several said afterward that they finally realized that plagiarism is stealing, as they related it to thefts they had in their lives.

Tell them how it hurts — the author, or the other student who studied hard, etc. It doesn’t seem to bother many students that they are engaging in the petty evil that erodes their own moral base. But tell them how it hurts others. Sometimes, that just may get through, too.

1. Church
2. Fine Arts Productions
3. Classrooms
4. Military Transports (already done in the Middle East due to roadside bombings)

People engaged in these activites, and those around them, can chill from the technology routine for those few moments and give those around them their undivided attention.

And I make sure they’re put away during exams.

Interesting tips about texting from within a pocket. Not sure what the benefit would be.

One other thing is to format exams so that no easy answer via a text will even work. IDs in history that require not only who, what, when, and where, but also why, historical significance, and examples do not lend themselves to an easy text. Nor do essays. Of course, grading takes more work, but oh well.

I’ve already given students a heads up about IDs: if they study with a friend, they should not sit next to the friend, so that it can never enter my mind that they cheated if their IDs are similar. But really these kinds of questions are too complex to cheat effectively on.

If I were ever to do multiple choice, I think I would use several different versions throughout the class with no rhyme or reason to it. That could help

And I expect students to communicate between classes, so exam content and surprise quiz scheduling will vary.

All in all, one has to walk the fine line and show students respect, not treat them all as potential criminals. Hence, minimizing the utility of cheating is probably best in many cases.

We have to either be willing to teach the lesson and stand by it like that strong oak tree in the yard, or be willing to sway like that willow tree in the yard and not complain when it becomes damaged by the swaying.

I don’t have the resources to “check” for plagiarism for every assignment, but I get damned tired of colleagues who cut and paste quizzes from PinkMonkey or SparksNotes, etc. I was in a classroom once where the “teacher”–who had been gone for 2 days and had assigned the students to read the first 6 chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird–told the kids that Scout was the name of the dog in the novel! She was serious and I was shocked and appalled. Did any of those kids read that book from that point onward? If the teacher isn’t willing to do the work, the kids will pick up on it and run with it…just like we adults do. I will continue to speed on an expressway until I get a ticket, then I will let off the accelerator for a while.

Here are some sticking points that we all must consider:

-Students who are adept at texting can do so without ever removing the hand or phone from the pocket. Make sure that hands and backpacks and purses and coat pockets are not accessible.

-Follow the College board policy–if they are the grand masters of testing, why not mimic their punishment? No technology allowed in the room-except for the approved calculators. No score for the test if the student is perceived as cheating.

-Yes, the internet is a valuable tool for time saving efforts for everyone-TEACHERS included! Once the students realize that the assignment you gave is from a website, they will look for EVERYTHING on that website and see what you are doing next…even reading those test answers. We need to look at those ideas, and morph them into something that is uniquely ours. I teach literature and many of my questions connect literature that I know they have previously been assigned “Romeo & Juliet” to the literature we are covering “The Great Gatsby”…I pull sentences from the literature we are studying for specific questions. I looks for symbolism within the novel–not check Sparks to see what it says.

I do believe that I earn my paycheck and I make the students think. I cannot control if my students come from a home where rules are firm or where rules are meant to be challenged or where rules are meant to be bent…but I can define what my rules mean and have the integrity to stick to them.

However, as was so astutely pointed out, the examples of Enron, etc. show that cheating is rampant in our culture. We must ALL work to teach our students that cheating is wrong, from parents, elementary and secondary teachers, to university professors and members of society at large. This isn’t just an educational problem, but a societal problem.

That being said, thanks to the many who shared some really useful ideas for preventing plagiarism through class discussions of cheating, classroom policies, and assignment design.

Some observations in teaching undergrads and grads at an R1 University for 18 years.

[*] When possible, far better to design homework, exams so that cheating is more or less impossible.

[*]

A 2002 CNN article (Survey: Many students say cheating’s OK) cites a study by Rutgers’ Management Education Center of 4,500 high school students:

“Some 50 percent of those responding to the survey said they don’t think copying questions and answers from a test is even cheating.

Newhall, a B student at George Mason High School, says students have very little sense of moral outrage about cheating. ”

This is what the students themselves are saying.

Let’s not pretend. We need to not have our heads in the sand. Believing something because it makes you feel good, despite evidence to the contrary is irrational. Let’s take a look at some actual data:

In the U.S., 56% of middle school students and 70% of high school students have cheated.
Wilfried Decoo, Crisis on Campus: Confronting Academic Misconduct (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 23.

A 2007 AP article (Higher Education Sees Rise in Dishonesty) stated:

“A study published last fall by Donald McCabe, a Rutgers professor who has studied cheating for decades, and two co-authors found 56 percent of MBA students admitted cheating, along with 54 percent of graduate students in engineering, 48 percent in education, and 45 percent in law.

McCabe emphasizes the difficulties of measuring trends in cheating, but the undergraduate numbers at the same 32 universities he studied appear even worse: 74 percent of business students, and 68 percent in nonbusiness fields admitted to some form of cheating.”

“I think the … more frightening figure is the fact that 20 (percent) to 25 percent admit to five or more (instances of cheating),” said Tim Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity, which is based at Duke. “The fact that we have a quarter of more of our students admitting they’ve engaged in serial cheating does not inspire a lot of confidence about the credibility of their degrees.”

Finally, I think Nancy L’s story illustrates why it is important to address cheating as soon as the behavior arises, instead of passing the student along. It would be interesting to know who the student was that was NOT admitted to CalTech because the cheater took his place. There are limited numbers of students admitted to graduate schools. Is it right that a student did NOT get in because a cheater was admitted? Also, CalTech invested time, energy and funds in a student who never should have been there. What a waste. He should have been set straight years before.

Now, cheating is obviously wrong. It is the easy way out, and it helps no one in the end. But for professors to automatically take a Gestapo position and assume that every single student in their classroom is going to cheat? That’s not only absurd, but it is flat-out insulting to the students. For those Americans of us on this forum, we live in a country in which citizens are innocent until proven guilty. Yet for some reason, professors like to think that that is not the case on campus. Just because we are students does not mean we will cheat. Just because we have a cell phone in our pocket does not mean it is being used to transmit answers or test questions to some other student hidden in a dark room. Technology is shifting every day, but the majority of us use these tools for convenience and not cheating.

Those professors who stalk about the classroom, eyeballing every student to see if they are leaning to far to their right or if their eyes are anywhere but glued to the sheet before them are not only untrusting of their students, they are distracting. There is a great deal of pressure on the college level to do as well as possible on each and every exam, particularly those classes in which each exam makes up 25% or more of your grade. Having someone watching you is an added pressure and takes your attention away from the test itself. Not to mention, some of the methods you have discussed to deter cheating are inconvenient for a student. Say I am taking a Scantron test and my pencil tip snaps. If my bag is located on the other side of the room, I have to disturb the rest of the students just to get another pencil. How is that fair to my fellow classmates?

And to say that most students who cheat see nothing wrong with their actions is ludicrous. Everyone knows cheating is wrong. It has been drilled into our heads (by people like you) since kindergarten. But you speak of failing students who plagiarize, and I know that many students are unsure of what exactly constitutes plagiarism. That is why I am deeply grateful to my professors who ask us to utilize tools in which we can submit a written piece, and it will scour the Internet for similar phrase words. These tools show students how similar their work is to another’s, and it actually shows us a need to use our own words.

Finally, I have to say this: cheating is wrong, of course, but to automatically fail a student and report them for a first offense is, in my opinion, not wrong. Fail them for the assignment, of course, but talk to them. Sit down with them and discuss what they did, find out why they did it. For all you know, there is some deeper issue in this student’s life, some stress that led them to do something they never would have considered otherwise. To jump to reporting them, something that could follow them around for the rest of their lives, is hasty. Yes, cheating is wrong, and yes, they deserve to fail that assignment, but five years after graduation, your exam should not be the most important thing in that student’s life. Cheating may have been one stupid decision, and it should not necessarily follow that person. Cheating should be handled on a case-by-case basis. After all, we are all entitled to our day in court.

Yes, some students cheat. Always have, always will. It is wrong, of course it is. But I have to say, I think it is a shame that professors, the people from whom we are supposed to learn, those people whom are supposed to be on our side, are so blatantly prejudiced against us. Professors like Paul B have the right idea: make it clear to students that cheating is wrong and will not be tolerated, and leave it at that. Don’t treat us like we are criminals, because we are not. I would hope the majority of professors joined the teaching profession because they love to teach and mold students’ minds, and not because they enjoy catching cheaters. Sadly, the latter seems to be the case for most of you.

Understood this would not be possible in a large class such as taught by Paul, with whom I sympathize given I was assistant to an instructor in my graduate days with 322 students. That was insane. But I teach between 40 and 70 students in my course. I allow them to bring a 5×7 handwritten notecard with anything they want written on it. I give them 100 questions, any of which could be on the exam — short answer/essay… The card must be turned in at the end of class, with the exam. 70% of the students tell me that the first attempt (at writing all the information they wanted on the card) failed and they had to write it over. By the time they had it right, they didn’t need the card anymore because at this point, they knew the material. I switched questions between classes and years… make up new ones as times change… There’s just no real way to cheat in my class, even if a student gets their boyfriend/girlfriend to write the card, because completing the minimum does not score a perfect grade, as in life.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/3e/6e/81.pdf

This might be useful for some who are having trouble with this problem. You can also find this presentation “[WWW.2CHEAT.COM] Update” at

http://www.gantopian.com/others/Dad/WWW2CheatComUpdateMS.pdf

I don’t agree with claiming other people’s work as your own and I think turnitin.com is a great way to scare students into doing the work on their own if they’re considering other options. Essay’s should be original thought and properly source the ideas and research of others, but as far as general “fact tests”, why not?

In response to Richard Chang: I find pop quizzes keep the students studying the material throughout the semseter instead of cramming. I have piles of evaluation essays and test scores that support this conclusion.

Enforcement of harsh penalties for cheating is essential. What is the point of having a rule to prevent cheating if it is not enforced by faculty AND administration? I twice witnessed one of my students ‘peeking’ at a neighbors exam last year. I couldn’t PROVE she was cheating so the issue was dropped. She was in the pre-Physician Assistant program. Even though she wasn’t caught, I submitted her name to the PA department and her application will be discarded if she applies regardless of her ‘qualifications’.

Integrity is built in a lifetime of work. Why do we expect such when students have not been prepared over their early lives.

Until this trend is corrected in the K-12 environment, colleges may need to require a course on professional ethics in the freshman year, along with the innovative “FD” marks that penalize with the one commodity the students can’t manipulate… time.

And it’s better to catch it now, than have the students carry it into full adult lives.

In addition, I try to impress on them that this isn’t about getting a good grade. This is about having the knowledge so that, IF you ever get a job in your field, you don’t get fired after a few weeks when your boss finds out you don’t know anything.