Will Richardson at Weblogg-ed raises an interesting question about some students' usage of blogs in the classroom — they're using them to post answers to the tests in between periods, so students in later sections know what's on the exam. One teacher's take on it is that this is clearly cheating, but Will's take is "sounds pretty inventive to me." Knowledge is being shared, and students are collaborating on presenting information of relevance to the class. He goes on to question the relevance of this kind of "push" learning in the age of the internet, when the answers to those questions on the test are already out there on the web, anyway. Answers that used to be difficult to find were disseminated by teachers and students were quizzed to see if they'd paid attention. Now the knowledge itself is no longer scarce — is there a sense in which we should be teaching our kids how to "pull" the information they need instead of "pushing" in advance what we think they might need to know? Is there a sense in which the always-on information field of the web may be shifting what we think of as education? What are your thoughts?
Students sharing test answers via blog: cheating?
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. it's inventive cheating. it is almost surely against the honor code at the school. whether or not it's inventive, it's cheating. using a blog to share information for studying in an ethical manner is great. when you break your honor code, you're cheating.
the students should be able to be inventive without being unethical.
3. Obviously cheating and his defense shows his lack of perspective, or his lack of integrity. Either way I am sure he will be a greta lawyer once he cheats his way into law school.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Brett
5. It's "cheating" to just look the information up on a computer. It's "cheating" to use a calculator. Basically you are supposed to pretend that it's still the 19th century and US schooling will do you just fine.
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Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Pope Salmon the Lesser Mungojelly
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Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Ashfaq Tunio
7. Yes, it's cheating. But it poses a problem similar to the "problem" of file sharing. We can slow down the progress of file sharing technology with endless court battles, but that is not going to make the desire to share and remix audio and video go away. Similarly, when it comes to education we need to break away from old standards and mores and get creative.
There are many ways to test for knowledge acquisition. Sure, a teacher can ask students to regurgitate answers by rote. This opens the teacher up to cheating and pretty much guarantees that the student won't retain the information. A better way to tackle this problem is to get more creative with the tests. Test for critical thinking. Ask questions that don't have one single answer. Teachers who give take home tests, where a student can get assistance with their answers from texts and online, aren't open to cheating because they can measure the students' grasp of the material in the thoughtfulness of their answers.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Carole McManus
8. I think the Barb's point is not "look, a new way to cheat," but more of an observation on the power of blogging, and the desire to share knowledge now that these tools are available. If the blog is simply a list that looks like this: 1.C, 2.D, 3.A, 4.B, 5.C, etc, then this is cheating, and the teachers need to be more inventive, but giving each class a different test, with different correct answers. But if the blog technology is encouraging students to discuss what they are learning, this is definitely a good thing. At what point does sharing become cheating? At one time, was reading a book in the spirit of cheating where pure experimentation and discovery was real learning?
On a slightly different note, people are going to rely on technology more and more to enhance their knowledge as time goes on. This is only the beginning.
9. This is just the begging. What blogs and the web will mean in the future (an as google is trying to do now) is complete cataloguing of all information. Clearly the students actions were cheating, but the question is...when will this become so standard that punishing students for this will be impossible? Another question is...if the imformation is so readily available in the future, wouldn't it be simply be intelligent to look at it? Students that allready would do well on the test have nothing to loose by getting an 'edge' on the test. Students that don't study have nothing to loose as well; the would most likely fail the test. The students that would use this to cheat without knowing the answers are simply delaying their inevidable failures (sorry to be so harsh..I'm not trying to generalize.) Some students don't test well and know the answers, and this would help them.
Final thoughts: this won't happen until a while from now. I'm sure things will change in the future.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Ben
10. obviously, being able to find the information you want is more important than memorizing random tidbits of info as per some arbitrrary cariculum [sp?] ...things like remembering times-tables couldn't really be aided by this sort of web activity. the nuts-n-bolts stuff can't really be cheated on by school kids using this sort of real-time information. it's only the more abstract stuff, and being resourceful is way more valuable then having things memorized in almost any field.
to those kids, i say: "good job!"
when kids can outsmart their teachers, i think we should applaud them.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by andrew peterson
11. I agree with most of the posters here.
Clearly, students have been cheating a long time, but in my experience, it's almost always been a function of really poor teachers using Scantron standarized tests.
How about flipping the paradigm? Instead of giving your students a multiple choice quesion, give them an hour to write an essay and post it on a group blog for the course.
Allow -- encourage -- them to use the web as a resource in that hour.
Grade on the following:
+ synthesis of ideas
+ creativity of thesis
+ language skills (spelling, grammar, etc.)
+ validity of source material/hyperlinks (did they choose good sources?)
Instead of challenging the student perception of tests ... what's the point of memorizing facts when I can Google them? ... what's the point of spelling when I have spellcheck ... accept the perceptions and force the students to think and excel in their native mediums.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by LauraFries.com
1. Um I think that is called cheating. Before blogs, this sort of activity occured and when students were caught they were punished. Prior to blog technology students shared this sort of information in analog, if not, social way. Cheating + Technology = Cheating.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Alexander Muse