How College Professors Can Prevent Students from Cheating

Introduction

Since the time everyone started to go to school and learn, we’ve heard and seen enough of cheating when it comes to participating in all kinds of exams or doing assignments. All over the world, I believe, there are students cheating to get good grades in order to get ahead. Common cheating ways include copying answers from other students, giving answers to other students, doing assignments for other students, and plagiarism. In this paper, I am going to talk specifically about what professors can do to prevent mutual answer-copying. As an Asian student, I think this situation is especially severe in Asia because grades matter a lot and affect most people’s lives by providing the qualification of entering good colleges or finding good jobs. According to Rui (2016), academic dishonesty, from cheating among students to fraud by scientists, has long been an issue, and it is increasing especially in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Exams and assignments serve as the ways to evaluate the results of our learnings, but the concept will be twisted if students consider them as the only key to success. To me, cheating one’s way into colleges or companies will only show how superficial and immoral they are. Therefore in this paper, I am going to provide several possible solutions for professors to prevent academic dishonesty.

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The problem

Most of the students who cheat in junior or high schools receive forgiveness from their teachers and the schools because they are still young and teachable; however, different from the situations in junior or high schools, cheating in college is a really big deal. Generally, colleges are places of good learning qualities and what students learn in colleges are considered the preparations of stepping into the society and workplaces. One’s attitude toward college studies will affect him or her in the next stage of life. Other than the lack of integrity and morality, one of the external factors that results in students’ cheating is insufficient supervision from professors. In exams or in the process of assignments grading, some professors or invigilators are not cautious enough therefore cheatings won’t be noticed. What’s more, ridiculous situation I had encountered is that sometimes there is even no invigilator in the room during some exams. According to the survey I conducted, 68.6 percent of the participants, including both students in several different colleges and faculty members in CCU, said that they have seen or heard their classmates cheat in exams or when doing assignments (Figure 1). Half of the participant further explained that the form of cheating they have seen or heard is classmates doing assignments for other students or asking someone to do their assignments. The fact that the indifferent attitude of some faculty members has increased the rate of cheating among students might be implied.

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Possible solutions

        To begin with, professors could switch up students’ seats on the day of exams. Speaking of taking exams, students who usually sit together might plan to “corporate” with each other during exams. To solve this problem, professors may try to rearrange the seats of all the student just right before settling for exams either randomly or deliberately, that is, to separate students who probably would cheat together.

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Second, professors could make different versions of the assessments. For example, professors are suggested to prepare multiple versions of the same exam and assignment. Combining this possible solution with the first one, professors could make students who get the same version of exam papers sit separately to deter them from cheating. By doing so, it would necessarily prevent students from copying answers from others or sharing answers with others because they have different questions on either exam papers or assignments. And if there are still students who share answers together, it would be very clear and easy for professors to notice. What’s more important is that students shouldn’t be informed that there are different versions of the same assessment; otherwise, some might come up with another method to game the system.

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Third, professors could strengthen the integrity education. Professors have the duty to enforce this kind of education and to teach students about the proper standard to define success. By encouraging every student to speak up more and emphasizing the process of learning give students a perspective that ethic matters more than the numbers next to their names on exam papers. It is also important for professors to acknowledge students’ hard work and show more care towards their attitudes. University should pay attention to cultivating the sense of integrity, foster a culture that integrity is worthy of being praised, while cheating is shameful (Qiong, 2019). Fourth, professors could enforce serious punishments on those who cheat. For example, professors could set up a rule that if one is caught cheating, he or she will not be able to pass the course.

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In my survey, to prepare different versions of the same assessment and to enforce serious punishments in those who cheat are the two solutions which got the most votes. Each of these solutions get 14 participants’ votes as the most effective way to prevent cheating (Figure 2 and Figure 3). The participants think that students would be afraid if they are not able to pass the course after being caught cheating, so the rule would make a good deterrence. They also state that by providing different versions of assessments, it would make cheating more difficult and therefore invalidates some ways of cheating.

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Answering possible objections and problems caused by the solution

Among the possible solutions I provided above, some participants of my survey held different opinions.

 

22 out of the 35 participants (Figure 4) think that strengthen integrity education is the least effective way to prevent cheating, for students won’t listen to what the professors say and they only care about the grades. Some of the participants even said the method was “completely useless.” In my opinion, enforcing integrity education might be ineffective, but it is definitely not useless. Professors should try their best to let students know the consequences of cheating and how cheating will affect one’s life and career. It is cheating we are dealing with, and professors should start with correcting students’ perspectives. Therefore, to strengthen the education on cheating is actually the best solution because once it works, the effect would be long-lasting.

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Conclusion: recommendation and call to action

  In my opinion, cheating may not be solved so quickly in the near future. However, I hope that students know what they learn in college serves as the preparation of the professional world and the society. Instead of thinking about how to cheat to get better grades, knowing what’s at stake would do more good to us. I believe that everyone knows cheating is wrong, and all we have to do is to have the courage to face our evaluation of learning and to be responsible of our own studies. Finally, I hope that cheating can be decreased in colleges and that students and professor would be able to promote the healthy development of higher education together.

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References

1. Zhang, Q. (2019, December). On the Causes and Countermeasures of Student Cheating in College. In 5th Annual International Conference on Social Science and Contemporary Humanity Development (SSCHD 2019). Atlantis Press. Retrieved from: https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/sschd-19/125925673

2. Stauffer B. (2019, July). 11 Ways to Prevent Cheating in Schools. Retrieved from: https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/ways-to-prevent-cheating-in-schools

3. Yang, R. (2016). Toxic Academic Culture in East Asia. International Higher Education, (84), 15-16. Retrieved from: https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ihe/article/view/9112

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