I read a good article on cheating this morning. The article makes a few good points and some excellent further reading. There is a lot of talk in training and education on cheating particularly since elearning continues to grow in popularity but I don’t think there is anymore or less cheating than say 10 years ago. Technology has just provided a different way to cheat, not a gateway to more cheating.
Maybe it is just me but I think that everyone has at some point cheated. It might be small, it might be virtually insignificant but when the appropriate situation arises everyone has the capacity to cheat and most will. Do you agree? I know that I have cheated in the past, early school days. I do remember once writing a formula on my leg. I don’t think I even looked at it but it was still there if I needed it. Why? For me it was the fear of failure. I never failed anything and this particular subject worried me.
I good assessment can virtually make it impossible to cheat. A simple example is asking a series of open ended questions where the participant has to apply the learnt knowledge into their own environment. They could still get someone to write it for them though. Most cheating occurs due to the participant being asked to regurgitate large slabs of knowledge, ie memory recall assessment. Why do these types of assessments? They don’t prove anything except that the participant has managed to store a truck load of information in short term memory. So, don’t design assessments like this.
No recall required. Access to all information provided. Application is what we want to assess. Knowledge is freely available at all times. Application is competence. Strangely enough elearning provides fantastic opportunities for application, both learning and assessment.
Get over the cheating. It is going to happen, just like crime, taxes, death and change. Get better at designing more effective application based assessments that demand participants to access information and knowledge and apply it to the real world.
Don’t blame them for cheating, blame your self for providing the opportunity.
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