Overhearing Cheating

[Meggie]

Scenerio:
A professor, a bit foreign, a bit loopy assigns a closed-book essay exam. Several students suggest they have bad handwriting and want to use a laptop to type answers. The professor agrees, class dismissed.
The student with learning disabilities stays behind to speak with the professor. Said student gets special accomidations for this (separate testing area) and said student’s participation makes classmates believe student is teacher’s pet.
On his/her way out she runs into a group of her classmates who are discussing the use of laptops in order to copy thier notes on and cheat. Cheating would normally only damage cheaters, but this is a newer class with a new book and the professor plans to curve. A large number of cheaters could dramatically shift this. So student who heard must consider his/her own final grade as well as other non-cheating classmates. Morally what should said student do?

 

[LilyM]

Scenerio:
A professor, a bit foreign, a bit loopy assigns a closed-book essay exam. Several students suggest they have bad handwriting and want to use a laptop to type answers. The professor agrees, class dismissed.
The student with learning disabilities stays behind to speak with the professor. Said student gets special accomidations for this (separate testing area) and said student’s participation makes classmates believe student is teacher’s pet.
On his/her way out she runs into a group of her classmates who are discussing the use of laptops in order to copy thier notes on and cheat. Cheating would normally only damage cheaters, but this is a newer class with a new book and the professor plans to curve. A large number of cheaters could dramatically shift this. So student who heard must consider his/her own final grade as well as other non-cheating classmates. Morally what should said student do?

Absolutely the professor needs to be told. Cheating is wrong period. Anonymous is the best way to do it.

 

[hasikelee]

Meggie:

Scenerio:
A professor, a bit foreign, a bit loopy assigns a closed-book essay exam. Several students suggest they have bad handwriting and want to use a laptop to type answers. The professor agrees, class dismissed.
The student with learning disabilities stays behind to speak with the professor. Said student gets special accomidations for this (separate testing area) and said student’s participation makes classmates believe student is teacher’s pet.
On his/her way out she runs into a group of her classmates who are discussing the use of laptops in order to copy thier notes on and cheat. Cheating would normally only damage cheaters, but this is a newer class with a new book and the professor plans to curve. A large number of cheaters could dramatically shift this. So student who heard must consider his/her own final grade as well as other non-cheating classmates. Morally what should said student do?

Do not tell, its none of students’ business, period

Do not tell, student is just doing it for the curve

Tell the professor outright…regardless if the rest of the school year will worsen teacher’s pet status

Give the professor in an ananomous note…professor is informed with no names

Tell a superiour of the professor, this professor should of figured this out himself

I would go the anonymous route and leave a note only if I had specific names of those involved and only if I was certain that cheating was going on.

Just stretching for the benefit of the doubt here…what if they were arguing against using laptops due to cheating and you heard the tail end? Or what if they were talking about someone else who said he/she would cheat? Or what if they were just joking.

If you can be sure, I would definitely tell!

 

[Reepicheep]

Morally, the student has a duty to tell.
As a practical matter, anomymous may be best.

 

[wjp984]

I remember this happening back in high school. I never liked to cheat but the teacher gave really hard quizzes and someone had all the answers for them so we all memorized them as the list got passed around to us. I would never think of cheating but if I am going to be negatively effected by a curve I had to make myself at par with the other students. Some students who would get poor grades knew about this and would tell thet teacher that at least they didn’t cheat. The teacher did not believe them though. Anyways, as you probably know cheaters are stupid people. The idiot wrote his name on one of the cheat sheets and left it on the ground for a teacher to find. Then he finked on everyone else and since it was unraveled that the vast majority of the class was involved no punishment was given out. It was hilariously shocking when the school found out that this involved nearly everyone and was going on for a couple of years.

 

[Augustine22]

Oh my gosh, that’s wild. Two years? Really?

I had a Chemistry teacher in high school that would sit at his desk during a test and read. He never looked up. Some of the kids would have there Chemistry books out to find answers. Some were right up front in the class. I don’t know if he was that clueless or he just didn’t care. It was weird.

 

[LilyM]

Oh my gosh, that’s wild. Two years? Really?

I had a Chemistry teacher in high school that would sit at his desk during a test and read. He never looked up. Some of the kids would have there Chemistry books out to find answers. Some were right up front in the class. I don’t know if he was that clueless or he just didn’t care. It was weird.

Must be something about science teachers. I had one in high school who really didn’t believe in basing class marks on written exams, and made his views abundantly clear to everyone including his students. But the school for form’s sake obliged him to give at least one to his classes each semester.

He would hand the papers out and actually leave the room for the duration of the test!

 

[Meggie]

That cheating story is just wrong…no matter what the teacher/professor did, or how the school reacted to it…I’d give everyone and F.

Maybe the tests were so hard becuase people kept cheating and getting good greades.

 

[Joan_M]

Cheating is always wrong. The professor needs to be told. An anonmyous note is not good enough. If I was the professor and I received an anonmyous note I would tear it up and throw it away. Such a note could be just a trouble-making prank.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Myself, I would go to the students and tell them what I heard and ask them to explain. (Yes, they might lie. But what if they had ‘second thoughts’ and changed their minds about cheating–that is a possibility as well).

If they said, “no business of yours”, then I’d go to the professor and tell him what I heard, saying, “since they told me it was no business of mine, I figure they can’t really say it’s no business of YOURS, teacher”. Then the teacher can question them and they’ll know they’ re ‘under watch’, and that if anything happens to you that this would be a reason–so they would probably be pretty careful not to do anything further. And you could quite legitimately tell them, “I didn’t make it my business, I didn’t discuss anything with the teacher other than what was HIS business!”

If they said, “well, we’re just joking”, then you have to trust that they won’t cheat. . .which is pretty much the position you take ‘normally’, or that you would have assumed of them had you not heard them speaking–in other words, ‘normalcy’. If it does turn out that there is an ‘unfair’ grade curve and it looks like ‘cheaters win’. . .well, sometimes cheaters do appear to win. But it won’t last. They could cheat their way through school and cheat their way through life, but they can’t cheat their ‘exit interview’ at the judgment. If the cheating unfairly impacts others like you, unfortunately this can and will happen throughout life. One can only ‘offer it up’, continue to model Christ like behavior, and pray for the sinners involved as well.

If they said, “yeah, what’s it to you” or start threatening you not to tell, then you go not only to the teacher but the school administrators etc. Then they’ll go up before the board possibly, not just for ‘possible cheating’ but for the threatening.

Of course, I’m a lot ‘braver’ about withstanding the ‘bad’ opinions of others now that I’m ‘older’. I don’t know how I would have handled it as a student when it ‘feels’ so important to be accepted. God bless you and guide you and give you strength where you need it.

 

[wjp984]

That cheating story is just wrong…no matter what the teacher/professor did, or how the school reacted to it…I’d give everyone and F.

Maybe the tests were so hard becuase people kept cheating and getting good greades.

Well they can’t give an entire class Fs and the teacher was part to blame for using the same tests over and over again each year without changing them. They caught one of the students breaking into the classroom trying to steal the answer key to the final even after this incident. Even worse was when the students were caught cheating on the AP exams. These were 4.0+ students too. To my knowledge the school covered it up too with just a slap on the wrist by canceling that specific test score. They didn’t even report it to the college board like they should have since they didn’t want to ruin the lives of these students. For such leniency it is no wonder cheating goes on as much as it does.