The following is a link to a blog that I found on cheating, and I found it very interesting.
In order to really view the blog with certainty, you really have to decide what you define cheating to be. To me, asking for someone’s help. I don’t feel like the blogger cheated in asking for that template, because, even though she used work that wasn’t hers, she wasn’t being graded on it. Whether or not that template was good or not, only affected how well the students learned that day. It becomes a different story, however, when students are doing it, because their progress is constantly measured. The definition of cheating, to me, changes when grades become involved.
In a take home assignment, or homework, I don’t believe teachers would mind if students worked together, but there is a fine line between working together, and copying. I feel like it is cheating if, at least in a math setting, a student is strictly copying answers from another student and does not know the reason why the answers are what they are. For example, if a student writes down the 3 or 4 steps to solve an algebraic equation, but doesn’t understand what they are doing, then it could be considered cheating. However, if a student is really having trouble solving a problem on their own, then it would be beneficial to ask another what they got, and how they arrived at their answer. This, if you think about it, is no different than using a site like wikipedia to find out how to do a certain problem. And the point of homework in itself is to allow kids extra time to understand the given material.
Cheating, again, becomes different when taking assessments, like quizzes or tests. Cheating on quizzes is what the blog mainly focuses on. I found it interesting that so many students are cheating, but I also found it quite obvious that cell phones are a problem. If a teacher is going to give a quiz, or test, and then just sit at his or her desk, or even leave the room, then how can they expect students not to cheat. I feel like they should periodically walk around the classroom, and make sure students are being honest. There should be no reason for a student to have a cell phone in the middle of class, and especially during a quiz or test other than to cheat, so if a student has one out during a quiz, then I would always assume that they are cheating. If more of these students are caught cheating, they can be made examples of, and less people would cheat. Instead of trying to figure out why students cheat, I propose that we try to stop it at the source, and the source, according to the statistics found in the blog, are cell phones.
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