Hello, colleagues. One of the most frequent questions I get from our faculty is "how do we stop cheating?" I'm a Canvas admin, adjunct instructor, and instructional designer, and I do a lot of reading about academic integrity. Donald McCabe said:
This is my "20-60-20" theory. As many as 20% percent of college students will cheat no matter what we do. And as many as 20% will never cheat no matter what we do--perhaps due to religious convictions, or the fear of getting caught. We're fighting for that 60% in between.
I'm aware that all of the technological guardrails will not stop all of the cheating. We have Respondus and Turnitin, but there are ways to foil monitored online exams, even with video proctoring. Heck, I grew up before the Internet (old, I know), and kids cheated on in-person, live-proctored, paper-and-pencil exams all the time.
One way I'm trying to help reduce cheating is by encouraging an appeal to authenticity. Authentic presence, genuine curiosity, honest mistakes, and real human-generated work, should be part of the learning process. By focusing instruction and assessment on the process of learning, we might be able to lessen some of the incentive to find the answers and get the grade. But making those changes takes time and effort, which means more work.
How are people helping faculty reduce cheating when they ask for help? My math department is looking for ideas, so I thought I'd check with this amazing community. Thanks for listening!
