On Cheating (Guest Post)

(Photo credit: Mr_Stein)

This post was written by BHS staff member Tim Calvin and originally appeared on http://timcalvin.prxy.net/. You can follow Tim on Twitter here.

There has been a lot written on the topic of cheating in classrooms - and how we respond and treat such circumstances. I thought I’d offer my thoughts.

A recent post by Patrick Larkin quoted George Couros in saying that if a student can answer a test question with a simple Google search, it’s not a very good question. I have to agree. In fact, I’d go a bit further, and suggest that we might begin to think about allowing Google searches and structuring the test with that taken into account. It’s an interesting idea, but not really what I want to talk about here.

Cheating is a cultural problem. Our emphasis above all things of getting the “right” answer contributes to this. Our stress on regurgitation of fact encourages this. Our artificial stress on students completing tests in absolute isolation (and at odds to the way the rest of the world functions) rewards this. We need to think about changing that culture.

As educators, we have to set a better example ourselves. We need to cite the work of others we use. We need to note where the image we took from a Google search came from. We need to cite where the article we photocopied was published. We need to credit who made the activity we adapted. We need to make it the standard operating procedure to cite work that is not ours in all venues- and we need to do this in all grade levels. In doing this, we might be able to create a culture where open citation of work and influences is the norm. We might begin to cause change.
We must think first about what we are trying to teach. Traditionally, when data was scarce and static, we distributed information. We built schools and tests to measure how much information students could accurately regurgitate. This, I would argue, should no longer be the case. We should be teaching students how to analyze.

This is a good thing on two levels: we are imparting a much more powerful and versatile set of skills AND we’re able to build assessments that are un-cheatable. If we build a test that looks at a student’s ability to analyse and explain that analysis, we are free from a cheatable set of facts.
Above all, we must to a better job with our education of the nature of cheating. We cannot hold students responsible with an ever-harsher set of punishments and expect real change. It has been long established that longer prison sentences don’t dissuade people from committing crimes. We create a dynamic of adversary and punishment which precludes learning.

Related articles

• More Chatter about Cheating (patrickmlarkin.com)
• Cheating Is Cheating, But Why Does It Happen? (patrickmlarkin.com)

More Chatter about Cheating

Cheat sheet in a juice box. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The conversations around cheating have taken off since yesterday's post Cheating is Cheating, but why does it happen?

My good friend George Couros nailed one of the key points from my perspective with the comment below. Those of us who have spent any significant time working in schools need to make sure that we have not lost touch with what is happening outside of schools. If we are preparing students exactly the same way as we always have then there is a problem

This morning I was excited to see a blog post from a Paul Huebl,  a teacher in Adelaide, Australia who wrote a great post titled Cheating v. Inspiration.  While I encourage you to read the entire post, the portion that stuck out for me was where Paul talked about assessments.

"What are we assessing when we give a test? Is it whether a student has good memory? Whether they can apply knowlwedge  to a new situation? Whether they can perform well on tests…? I propose that any situation where a child is able to cheat, is not a very good assessment (*most of the time)."

Finally my friend Tony Baldasaro shared a story from his first year as a teacher this morning in a post titled One of the Worst Decisions in my Career... . Tony recounts his experience having "no mercy" on a student he caught with a cheat sheet and giving an otherwise top student an insurmountable hole to dig himself out of as one of his veteran colleagues urged him to hold the line.

Again, I am thankful for a PLN with so many lifelong learners (like Tony, Paul and George) who reflect on their practice and are flexible in the interest of students. Tony's question is one that all of us who have ever given a zero to a "cheater" should consider.

"What would have happened if I taught differently, assessed more creatively, and engaged the (student) in the learning in such a way as to emphasize learning and not the grade?"

While I know there are many different directions that this conversation can take based on the unique circumstances of individual cases, I think we need to ensure that we are emphasizing learning and not punishments.

Cheating Is Cheating, But Why Does It Happen?

image via http://www.salisburyschool.org/ 

There was an interesting back and forth this week in the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet  surrounding the topic of cheating. The first take on the topic was by Penelope Trunk who kicked things off with an article titled Why Schools Should Relax About Cheating.  Strunk, a successful entrepreneur with two successful startups under her belt, noted the following:

In school, looking at someone else’s paper to get the right answer is forbidden.  But in the work world, the people who rise the fastest are the ones who know the right person to ask to get the answer.

Personally, I find it hard to argue with this logic.  But when I tweeted out the article, I got some pushback from a few folks on Twitter.

As usual, the folks on Twitter got me thinking a bit more deeply on the topic of cheating. The follow-up article that appeared the next day by Elaine Power, a Biology teacher in Maryland also made me reflect on my initial reaction. Power titled her counter to Trunk's point of view Cheating Isn't Networking, It's Cheating.

While putting out the disclaimer here that I do not condone cheating, I think it is important to have a clear definition of cheating while also asking ourselves why cheating occurs.  In regards to the defining cheating, we need to be sure that we are all on the same page. For instance it was not too long ago that some students at Ryerson College were disciplines for starting a Facebook Page to help prepare for their final exam.

Finally while I will not support anyone who copies from someone else's paper, I do think we need to reflect upon assessments and the fact that if there are too many of them that require rote memorization of inane facts that we are the ones cheating. We are cheating our students of valuable time that could be used for something more significant that would better prepare them to be the true collaborators who Power describes as "the gem of the workplace."