Cheating in homework or exam is common among students and most of those who cheat don’t even feel the guilt of this illicit practice. All the punishment model of cheating prevention don’t work because they are the attempts to stop the process without even considering its origination.
Students who cheat are not the only ones who want to escape the learning process. Good students often compromise on their academic integrity due to the lack in our teaching methodologies and education policies. Teachers often think about the ways to effectively encourage students not to cheat.
To decrease the tendency to cheat among students, teachers need to give equal moral significance to all homework and classwork content that work as initial tools of evaluation. Teachers, in most cases, worry about the cheating of students in the examination hall, but they happily neglect the copied homework and assignments. This initial act of ignorance sends a message among students that they are allowed to cheat. The failure to point out the first acts of academic plagiarism works as a motivating factor that encourages students to repeat cheating.
Factors that create and sustain Cheating Practice
Inefficient Parameters of Judgement
In the present education system, the mode of instruction and evaluation stays the same for every student even though we are well aware that all students don’t have the same learning speed and concept retention. The absence of personalized modes of instruction and evaluation makes learning a race that demands every student to be the first to finish every lap of it that creates a psychological pressure which pushes students to cheat.
Lack of Morality
Whether students see cheating as morally acceptable or not plays a significant role in their decision about cheating. It is necessary to instill morality among students and to link morality with their character. If students realize that the moral disintegration makes their character weak and a weak character makes life hard to live then they would not cheat.
The availability of solutions to almost all homework problems at finger-tips has made plagiarism easier that makes the need to instill a sense of moral integrity among students more pressing.
Pressure of Excellence
Cheating in the examination hall is a result of the unwillingness to take personal responsibility for learning and plagiarism in homework is often-times a result of the pressure that students feel due to the expectations of the teachers and parents.
Students in the present times are expected to perform exceptionally well in academics as well as in extra-curricular activities, this pressure of expectations pushes them to find easy ways to impress their teachers and cheating comes handy to them.
My Take
It is not sufficient to take only disciplinary actions to reduce plagiarism in homework and cheating in examination, we as educators and policymakers also need to reconsider our approach to learning for the long term changes.
Share your how are you putting an end to cheating in your class.
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