I am seeing and hearing some cheating conversation going around with the end of the term and with ChatGPT making a bit of a splash and want to raise some questions for teachers and educators about cheating and asking critical questions about teaching rather than uncritically problematizing students and children when cheating occurs.
For full disclosure I have been largely going gradeless and #ungrading for 2 years, and have not given a test or quiz in nearly a decade, I have not caught a student cheating in at least that long.
So some questions ...
Why do students cheat? And what systems promote, encourage cheating?
What is the nature of assignments and tasks that are conducive to cheating? That are not conducive to cheating?
How does cheating reflect on the trust, community, and general state of a classroom?
Who is responsible for student cheating?
#edutooter @ungrading @edutooters
@ZingerLearns @ungrading @edutooters I am going to shift from the term cheating to academic dishonesty.
Why? Academic dishonesty is, in the cases I have observed, driven by a disconnect between the student's sense of importance of an assignment and their perception of their ability.
There is a secondary class that is driven from academic dishonesty being easier than competing an assignment.
@ZingerLearns @ungrading @edutooters Therefore we can conclude that assessments should be relevant and engaging to ensure that the students view the work as meaningful and worth the effort.
In addition students should be given enough feedback to understand where they stand with regard to the assessment.
Except when absolutely required, students should always feel they can redo assessments to prevent them from feeling overly stressed about the outcome.
@scerruti @ungrading @edutooters I think that is an incredibly productive way of thinking about it, that invites use to reflect on how we design instruction to promote student learning by making it meaningful and important to them.
