Have I written before about the massive cheating that took place on my last pre-calculus test? It was so bad, and so obvious, that I sent an email to all the parents in the class letting them know what had happened and suggesting that they go over their child's test with the child. I told them the three problems that I thought had extremely strong evidence of cheating (by large numbers of students in the class, but I didn't call anyone out in particular) and suggested that if they saw comments on those three problems that they might consider discussing the issue with their kids.
I've received more than a handful of replies from parents and students since those emails went out. Every single response from the parents has been laudatory, thanking me for having high standards, for caring enough to notify them, for caring about integrity, for being diligent enough to catch cheating. A couple students didn't follow instructions (show all work) but, in a private Zoom meeting, explained their rationale for not showing some work, and their explanations created enough reasonable doubt that I restored the points I took off. One or two students still insist they didn't cheat but cannot explain how they got the answers they did.
This morning when I got to work, an email was waiting for me. One student completely owned up to cheating, apologized, said that cheating wasn't "him" and that that wasn't the kind of person he wanted to be. Etc., etc., etc. If his email wasn't from the heart, it was still thorough.
There is some graffiti (a graffito) on the door to our long-since-gone auto shop: You are more than your mistakes. That really speaks to me. Cheating once is a mistake, more than that is a pattern and might be indicative of what kind of person you are. The author of this morning's email seemed sincere in wanting to keep it at the "mistake" level, and I hope he does.
Other teachers may sigh and look away from cheating, I grab my sword and flag and rush up that hill.
Update: If you're wondering what I'm going to do to make it harder for students to cheat on a math test at home with no supervision, I don't want to give away my plans here--but yes, absolutely, I'm going to modify future tests to make them significantly harder to cheat on. And no, I don't usually just give "problems" that can be solved with the Photomath app--but I catch those. And I catch Desmos.com help, too. Given the material I teach, I'm coming up with ways to nullify the effectiveness of these tools, which will make cheating even easier to catch.
It's a technological arms race!
For my history class, I cannot just give easy level 1 questions. I am allowing my students to have their notes so I am giving higher-level opinion-based questions where students cannot just copy and paste. Examples: If you were the King of England, how would have you stopped the American Rebellion and why? Which British Act do you think the Colonists hated the most and why? What would have happened to the colonies if the British had lost the French and Indian War?
ReplyDeleteHistory is more amenable to such questions than math is.
ReplyDeleteToday I took that last test and modified some of the questions so that Photomath, Desmos, et al., wouldn't be so helpful. I'll look ahead to the next test and see what problems I can tweak similarly.