If You’re Gonna Cheat, You Gotta Cheat Smart, Part 2
I teach high school in a district where cheating is rampant. Thanks to a year of hybrid learning, where half of the students were in the class at a time, we have built up a large collection of online worksheets. These are Google Docs where students copy the templates and then fill them in with their own answers. The students share their online versions with the teacher and submit them via our web-based Learning Management System (LMS).
As I’ve gotten older, I find it easier to read documents online rather than in student’s handwriting on paper. This method is also great for students who constantly lose homework papers. However, the downside is that students find it easier than ever to copy online homework.
The typical shortcut is to ask a friend to share their worksheet. Clever students will view it, write their own answers in their own words on their own worksheets, and then have their friends un-share the original. (These students are not as clever as they think, though, because the worksheets do not count for much and their lack of preparation shows on their tests.)
One time, [Student #1] asked [Student #2] to share his work. [Student #2], of course, shared with his friend, but [Student #1] did not fulfill his part of the social contract. He simply copied and pasted the answers in the same exact words. Our school gives all participants the same penalties for academic integrity violations. The look of consternation and surprise on [Student #2]’s face when he realized that his friend’s laziness had gotten them both zeroes on the work he did was priceless.
An even less careful student turned in a complete copy of her friend’s worksheet — which I had already graded. I’m sure she meant to remove the grade marks… and her friend’s name from the top of the page.
The most memorable effort from last year involved a trio of students who were assigned a group worksheet in class. They spent class socializing, and then one student went home and did the work, slapped everyone’s name on it, and turned it in. This might have worked… had he remembered to share it with his partners. The students claimed they had done the work together over FaceTime. Google Docs records the times that documents are edited. Two out of three sets of parents found it easier to believe their kids cheated than to believe they were FaceTiming physics with each other at 11:00 pm on a Wednesday night.
Question of the Week
Have you ever served a bad customer who got what they deserved?
