One third of senior class caught cheating with cell phones

[xlpanel]

I gotta just say, cheating is way more advanced than you have ever imagined. It is a multi-million dollar industry.

 

For 200 Bucks or so, a kid can get a hidden earpiece that works as a bluetooth speaker off his cell phone, so he could constantly be fed info. With a throat mic going the other way, he can whisper something so softly that no one 3" from his mouth could hear, the throat mic picks it up perfectly, and the guy at home on his cell with the internet can get him the answer in no time.

 

You may think that is impossible for a throat mic to do that, but they are designed so motorcycle riders can talk on CB or other radio without any backdrop noise, as it works off throat vibrations of speech. Drop a 100 there.

 

A 300 dollar investment for a kid for four years of high school and 4 years of college is pretty good for not studying at all.

[Hal_Crawford]

It appears that there is only one solution left. The ONLY things that the student can bring into the exam room are:

 

Two #2 pencils and their underwear.

 

Hal

 

 

[evmori]

Good idea Hal. However, with that dress code there could be distractions.

[packsaddle]

I have to note a different experience. While I have detected cheating, it has been a tiny minority (I can count them on one hand). The vast majority of my students are highly-motivated and sincerely interested in learning the subject material. Most of them do fairly well.

I tell them they earn whatever grade they get and they do. My multiple choice questions are kin to the Grim Reaper. Not only must you have excellent reading comprehension, you have to work the problem up to four times before you can figure it out.

I also use essay questions and about once each semester I offer them a take-home exam. They fall for it every time. Even taking that exam insures they will learn a lot because I require it to be written by hand, with proper references to sources.

They have settled overall on an average of about a high 'C'. And my enrollment continues to climb.

I understand the 'horror' stories out there but I am pleased not to observe them here.

These students (especially the engineers) are just great. I had a guest lecturer once, a nuclear engineer who explained the fission process. My students interrupted several times to correct mistakes in his equations. I just loved it. Afterward the guy mentioned that he'd never take students for granted again. I replied that they had done exactly what I wanted them to do - question everything. It was wonderful.

[Hal_Crawford]

Pack:

I wonder, do you teach any survey courses. When I was teaching college I found that the incidence of problems with attendance cheating and plagiarism were inversely proportional to the first digit in the course number. The more advanced the course the more dedicated the students. With Intro to Theatre on the other hand I had a lot of students who thought it would be one of the easier of the options for the Humanities requirement. It probably was but it still required attendance, attention, reading and writing. Sorry guys, its college.

 

I did learn a shocking lesson. Even in a class of 50, I could see way more of what the students were doing than I would have thought possible when I was a student. Whispers, notes, doodling that sort of thing. I would think that even the high tech cheater is going to give himself away sooner or later. They just aren't that bright. The original post on this thread is a case in point.

 

Hal

[packsaddle]

Hal, You have a point. I teach mostly senior-level courses. I'm not including the graduate-level courses because those students are held to much greater scrutiny/standards. And you're probably right about your observation. Chances are that most of the students who are 'working angles' get discovered or move on to other fields before they get to me. Nevertheless, if that is true those losses must be minimal because the year-class sizes don't change much. Again this is hard to account for because real losses are also compensated by transfers from other programs.

Yet, while advising, I also have to say that the incoming students seem first-rate. I can't pretend to have met all of them but the ones that do cross my path are persons whom I am proud to have in the department. I count myself very lucky.

 

I do teach one sophomore-level course and that one is the wildest ride of all...for me and for the students. It's not a survey course but it is a course that has majors from every department on campus.

Yes, I expect some of them to be 'working' any angle they can but if so they will not perform well, if history is any kind of guide to these things.

[Lisabob]

While xlpanel is probably correct that technology just keeps getting better and better, what he proposes doesn't fit with what I have seen in the classroom. First, it tends to be the case that the students who I catch cheating on exams are usually the ones who are doing poorly to start with, and ironically, they seldom do much better by cheating. You might think that they could at least cheat effectively! (Now that might be a selection issue - it could be argued that I only manage to catch a certain type of cheater, but honestly I do not think that is the case.)

 

Second, I write exams that take up the full class period. I tell my students that they had better come in to class well-prepared, because if the first time they think about organizing material is when they see the test question, they're in real trouble and won't be able to finish in the allotted time. Thus, they do not have the time to relay the questions, receive the answers, and write them out. Even if they're really quick, it just would not work for them.

 

 

 

 

[packsaddle]

Lisa brought up a good point and I agree with her observations. The cheater obviously has a thinking error. They likely will fail anyway.

I too write 'challenging' exams. I tell the students that I do this not to discourage but rather to assess where they are. I can always back off. But if I make it easy, I have few options in the other direction.