Reflections

Let’s face it.  Sometimes students are dishonest.  We like to think the best of everyone but there is no denying it, sometimes students cheat.  In an online environment, how do we know who is taking the test?  How do we know who is behind that screen?  No matter what we do, we cannot say for sure that the person behind the screen is actually our student, however, as trained professionals, there are things we can do to try to prevent our students from cheating.  One way is through our assessment tools.  As an instructor, we should design our assessments to be unique, unexpected and based on material that most people would not know unless they participated in our specific class.  We should create many smaller assessment activities.  This in itself can help prevent cheating because it is hard for anyone to have someone there to help them for every assessment.  Start by having written assignments.  Get to know your student’s form of writing, how they learn best.  This will give you a heads up if their styles change.  Do progressive assignments.  If a paper is to be turned in at the end of the term, have them turn in several rough drafts at select times before the final paper is due.  Utilize several different assessment tools.  This keeps your students on their toes and keeps them interested.  It also gives you a leg up on who is doing what.

Sometimes students will utilize information off the web.  There are sites such as turnitin and plagiarism detection that can tell if the information was pulled off the web.  Best suggestion would be to have a quick tour of do’s and don’ts of internet usage.  Make sure your students realize they cannot just pull anything off the web, this information is copyrighted and they need to reference the material they are using.