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by poulsbohemian 2054 days ago
I'm genuinely curious to learn your option on cheating - does it actually matter?

What I mean is - certainly you don't want to harm the reputation of your school, and you want your students to have actually learned the material and be prepared for whatever they do in life that requires that knowledge... but what I'm wondering is... if there's presumably some tiny percentage of a class that is going to actually cheat or act in ethically questionable ways, are we in fact putting more effort into the prevention of that cheating than is warranted?

3 comments

One third of the students on my last exam cheated (at least, these were the ones that gave an identical answer to one of the problems, including identical minor typos). I was using the tools described in the article, but apparently I was being too lax about enforcing the 360 degree views or something as they clearly colluded to find a way to share answers anyway.
I feel like this hits the real problem, figure out a better way to prevent cheating and a better cheat will be made.

It should instead be worked on making cheat resistant material

(unfortunately I don't know how to do it but I feel like the later is where the energy/brainstorming should be spent)

> presumably some tiny percentage of a class that is going to actually cheat or act in ethically questionable ways

According to the International Centre for Academic Integrity, from 71,000+ US students surveyed between 2002 and 2015 at least 68% of students admitted cheating in some way.

https://www.academicintegrity.org/statistics/

Other 32% lied /s
Of course it matters. In a class where cheating is permitted, the students who choose to cheat will perform better than they otherwise would have. That will give them an advantage over the students who choose to not cheat.

I personally experienced this in undergraduate with a professor who chose to ignore obvious cheating and I think it negatively impacted the motivation of students to learn the material.