VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
[Slide of a Speed Limit Sign] I have a confession to make. Back when I used to drive every day, I sped. I have driven over the speed limit many, many times. I knew it was a crime, and I did it anyway. Now I want you all to be honest with me. How many of you have gone over the speed limit? C'mon now, admit it. That's what I thought...(sadly) we're a bunch of hardened criminals.
Why am I starting this video by confessing to illegal activity? Because the topic I'm going talk about today is [Title slide] Cheating and Online Learning. And I want to put all of you in the mind set of a student who might cheat. Going over the speed limit is a minor infraction, and one that almost everyone does. It's terribly easy to justify. But it's still breaking a rule--in fact, a law. And before we delve into the topic of student cheating, I want us to bear in mind that all of us, every person, in the right circumstances, can be tempted to break the rules.
[Slide of the cheating trifecta] This is the cheating trifecta, based on the old business psychology idea of the fraud triangle. The same elements that lead to business fraud can lead us to speed on the highway. For example, when it comes to speeding, how many of you have used one of these excuses: "I'm in a hurry, I CAN'T be late to work today" (that would be need) "There's never any police on this road anyway." (opportunity) "Everyone is speeding" (and justification).
This framework is useful for understanding rule-breaking in a wide variety of contexts, so now let's get specific to students who cheat in online classes. I'm going to address three questions. 1) Do students cheat in online courses? 2) Do students cheat MORE in online courses than in face-to-face courses? And 3) is there anything we can do about it?
[Blank slide] So, to start off, do students cheat in online courses. [Transition to just saying "YES" in large letters]. Yup. They sure do. [Trans to subtitle saying 'students do cheat in online courses sorry frowny face'] There is a wide array of student cheating happening in online courses through an impressively creative variety of methods, and we'll talk about some of those in a minute. There's definitely a perception that digital technology has enabled cheating, so let's move on to question two.
[Blank slide] Do they cheat MORE online than in-person? [Trans to saying 'MAYBE'] I don't know. [Trans to saying 'students might cheat more online. We just don't know.'] There's definitely a perception that they do, but the research on the subject is mixed. When it comes to the cheating we do know is happening, so let's ask the third question.
[Blank slide] Is there anything we can do about it? [Trans to saying yes] There is! [Trans to saying 'there are strategies we can use to reduce online cheating'.] That's part of why I'm excited about the research I did on this topic, because I want to share some of these strategies with you, and hopefully leave you with a few tools under your belt to take forward with you as an instructor.
[Slide: DO STUDENTS CHEAT] Before I started looking at the scholarly research on this subject, I decided to start with some simple web searches. So I searched for things I thought a student might search for if they were looking for how to cheat in an online course. [Slide of search results] And I found tons of helpful advice. There are a huge number of places out there where a would-be cheater can find answers. [Click to highlight number of results] Of course, in most places, when someone would show up and ask about how to cheat, they would also get responses telling them NOT to cheat, that it's not worth it.
I hope you'll be as pleased as I was to learn that, of all the online communities I checked, the one where students were most likely to get the “don't cheat” answer was...[Slide of yahoo answers search results] Yahoo Answers! Yes, Yahoo Answers, home of dubious spelling and troubling pregnancy questions from teenagers. In every single instance I saw, when someone would show up asking how to cheat, the top voted response was always something along the lines of [Slide of this type of response] "you're only hurting yourself by missing the opportunity to learn"
So, congratulations, Yahoo Answers! You may be a bit fuzzy on how babby is formed. [Slide of How is Babby formed], but when it comes to academic integrity, [slide of "don't cheat" screenshot] you have a strong, consistent moral stance.
What kind of cheating strategies do students find and use? [Slide of these three methods in bullet points] Well, for one, if you give graded online quizzes, they will look up answers (to test bank questions) or share test answers among themselves. And then there's a big one--buying papers. This happens a lot. Also, though this sounds crazy, I believe some people do it, they will give their username and password to a totally different person and pay them to take the course--or parts of the course--for them. This is by no means a comprehensive list of cheating methods, but these are a few of the big ones. So, how much cheating is happening, exactly?
[Slide: 2 DO THEY CHEAT MORE IN ONLINE COURSES?] The research isn't clear. Some research seems to indicate that there is more cheating in online courses either because the technology enables it, or because of greater psychological distance--that is, students feel further removed from the consequences of their actions. However, some studies contradict this. In one large study of undergraduates in US and Israeli universities, the authors found that there was less cheating in online courses. [Slide of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation] They explained this by saying that, since online courses require greater intrinsic motivation, that is self-motivation, students with greater intrinsic motivation self-select into online courses. And students who are only after extrinsic motivation, that is, grades, are not motivated enough to take online courses.
I think at this point we just don't know the answer to this question.
[Blank slide] But here's what's interesting, and what I think we should focus on is that cheating is not uniform. And what I mean by that is this. [Slide of unlabled BW pie chart] In studies where students were asked about their intentions to cheat or not, and in studies asking students about past cheating, a pattern emerges. The exact numbers vary, but the pattern stays the same.
[Highlight first slice] There's a small chunk of the student population that will ALWAYS cheat. Again, it's hard to know what percentage, but as a very rough estimate, let's say 5%. For these students, cheating is the preferred strategy and they have zero moral qualms about it. They see school as a game, and if they can find a lower-effort way to get an A, well, an A's an A, isn't it?
[Next slice] Then, there's a group, let's estimate it at 25%, who will NEVER cheat. They won't do it. They think it's wrong, or they're scared of getting caught, or some combination, but they would rather fail then cheat. You do not have to worry about these folks.
[Last, biggest slice] Then, there's the rest. The maybe-cheats. These folks don't prefer cheating, they don't go into a course looking for a way to cheat. But if they have the opportunity, need, and justification, that we talked about earlier, they will.
Now, this may at first seem disheartening, you may be saying, 'what the heck, 75% of students are cheaters??' But I consider this good news! It means that the significant majority of students are reachable. They're persuadable, they are open to your influence. They don't WANT to cheat, and YOU can do things that will make an impact on whether or not they will. Which brings us to point three.
[Slide: 3 IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT?] Let's go back to the Cheating Trifecta for a moment. [Slide of cheating trifecta]. These three elements that are necessary for cheating to happen are also the clue as to what to do about it.
[Slide: Opportunity bullet points] Opporunity is the one that the technological anti-cheating efforts focus on. Blackboard and other EdTech companies are developing high-tech identity verification systems to try and prevent cheating. But to me, these solutions are aimed at the always-cheats and I feel like that's missing the point somewhat.
There are better tools we can use to guide the maybe-cheats. And they don't require a retina scan or trillion-word corpus analysis. The two most vulnerable areas for cheating are online for-credit quizzes and in plagiarism in papers. There's no law saying we have to stick to these types of assessments.
Here are a few ideas for how to craft assessments that are less vulnerable to cheating:
- assignments that encourage creative and original work (rather than formulaic)
- requiring students to relate the subject matter to their own personal, professional, or life experiences
- focusing on the process rather than a final product (drafts, outlines, planning stages)
- give your students the opporunity to find a genuine audience: projects that are public and/or peer reviewed within the class encourage better work
[Slide: Need bullet points] Need is a huge motivator in the decision to be academically dishonest. Students who get overwhelmed, who fear failure, and/or who cannot financially afford the consequences of failing or dropping out, are STRONGLY motivated to cheat. So what can we do to reduce these pressing needs? Universal design for learning principles can help us here. Helping ESL students (identified by some as a signification population who resort to need-based cheating), We can also use SCAFFOLDING built into the syllabus to guide student progress. We can model time-management and steps-to-completion. And finally, we can encourage, as many instructors already do, students to seek help and find resources. You can find out more about UDL principles in the resources link at the bottom of this video.
[Slide: Rationalization bullet points] Rationalization is where psychological distance and teacher presence come into play. As one researcher puts it, "the increased psychological distance between the dishonest act and its significance, and between teacher and student ... allow[s] room for people to get away with dishonest behavior; it creates the psychological distance that allows people to further relax their moral standards." One cheating student who was interviewed anonymously argued that "the university has put so little into the security of the course that it can't be very serious about whether the online students are learning anything" Students can tell how much you care about cheating, and they can tell how much presence you're putting into your course. You can provide an honor code and even ask for student input for what the honor code should consist of. Show that you're a real person, who cares about the course and cares about student outcomes, and students will be more likely to care, too.
[Slide of the maybe-cheats slice] So remember, the vast majority of your students WANT to be honest, and your pedagogical choices can help them get there. [Click twice to reveal "reachable students"] For more resources on this topic, check out the accompanying webpage linked in the description below.