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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 7, 2000)
Cheating continued from page 1 unique to this campus, or to Uni versity students. An article in the Nov. 22,1999, issue of U.S. News & World Report described cheat ing as problematic at the high school level and at most college campuses. And it’s on the rise. “Nationally, the trend is signif icant since the 1960s,” said Chris Loschiavo, University director of student judicial affairs. “There has been a very sharp increase.” The need to succeed What has changed in academ ics during the last 30 years to mo tivate so much dishonesty? The motivation for cheating in high school is to get into college, Loschiavo said. “In today’s society, to have a good job, you’ve got to have a [college] degree,” he said. In the last three decades, the nature of the university has changed. Thirty years ago, stu dents came to the university just to learn. Today, “students come in to get a degree and get out and get a good job,” Loschiavo said. “The university is providing a product.” Add to that the increased fi nancial burden of increasing tu ition costs, extracurricular activ ities and intense pressure to succeed academically, and sud denly the high numbers from the survey seem believable, experts say. New schemes Students have been using some of the same techniques to cheat throughout the years, but with new technologies such as programmable calculators and the Internet, cheating has become easier. “We know that with the calculators that students have to purchase for math classes, they can program in an amazing amount of stuff,” chemistry Pro fessor Ralph Bamhard said. “In chemistry, they program in the periodic table and everything you would want to know about the elements.” Bamhard counters this by try ing to design exam questions that don’t favor students with calcula tors. He also warns students that their calculators are subject to in spection. “It’s a rolling question in the sciences: Should we allow stu dents to use calculators?” he said. The Internet is prone to aca demic dishonesty in the form of plagiarism. Bamhard has seen as signments that were clearly taken directly from the Internet. “The student didn’t even take off the references [to the Inter net],” he said. But “cheating on exams is still the biggest because it’s the easiest to do,” Loschiavo said. Large, crowded classrooms, re cycled exams and too few proc tors to monitor exams all con tribute to an environment conducive to cheating on tests. “I’m surprised that some facul ty don’t insist on more proctors,” Bamhard said. About one-quarter of the stu dents surveyed admitted to using the old fashioned cheating meth ods, such as looking at a neigh bor’s paper or bringing a crib sheet into an exam. Professors have always been worried about old copies of ex ams or homework being distrib uted and compromising the fu ture use of those documents. “Dumpster diving” for old tests and homework is pretty rampant, business Professor Bill Daley said. Recycling bins are often re ceptacles of clean copies of old exams. The University Student Con duct Committee and the Office of the Dean of Students have pro duced a booklet of policies and guidelines for student academic integrity. Some examples of cheating as defined in the booklet are: • copying from another stu dent’s test paper, computer pro gram, project, product or per formance; • collaborating without author ity or allowing another student to copy one’s work in a test situa tion; • using the course textbook or other material not authorized for use during a test; • resubmitting substantially the same work that was pro duced for another assignment without the knowledge and per mission of the instructor; • taking a test for someone else or permitting someone else to take a test for you. Fighting back With such high percentages of students cheating and the high tech tools they’re using to accom plish it, professors and adminis trators are searching for ways to stem the tide of academic dis honesty. Daley has taken a proactive ap proach to cheating in his classes. He has gone so far as to pro duce six different exams printed on four different colors of paper to prevent cheating in some of his larger lecture sections. He has checked student identifications before administering exams and has demanded that students take Cheating unlikely to be reported Most students say they are unlikely to report another student they see cheating. Half of all faculty say they mate little effort to document cheating incidents. Likely effort by faculty to document modems: 4% very great effort Likelihood students would report a cheating incident they observed: 2K very Bely 10% very little effort SOURCE: 7990 Rutgen University survey of 10 state universities, including Oregon off their hats and move all back packs to the front of the class room. All of these precautions, espe cially the creation of so many ex ams, is a lot of work, Daley said. To avoid having to create so many tests, while still attempting to prevent academic dishonesty, Daley places more weight on homework and class projects. Still, the opportunity exists for students to copy or use a group project approach to an individual assignment. And with more than 300 students a term and at least one assignment a week, Daley can’t afford the time to thorough ly investigate each suspicious pa per. “How many minutes can I spend on plagiarism each week?” he asked. Daley makes his position on academic dishonesty clear at the beginning of each course he teaches. Despite these efforts, Daley still sees a significant number of Katie Nesse Emerald questionable papers. “I think last term I had about 260 students in my intro class,” he said. “I’ve got a folder with 30 cases” of questionable papers. The Office of the Dean of Stu dents, in addition to publishing the policies and guidelines on student academic integrity, has circulated a letter at the begin ning of each school year urging professors to deter academic dis honesty. It also provides a guide for professors to follow when faced with a case of academic dishonesty. The letter “creates awareness on the faculty member’s part,” Loschiavo said. Loschiavo has other ideas such as a periodic workshop to teach faculty members how to prevent academic dishonesty. “The only way I’m ever going to bring the high numbers of aca demic dishonesty down is through a combination of educat ing students and faculty,” he said. MYTH REALITY Most UO students have 4 drinks or fewer when they party. 11998 CORE Survey 2000 ident life
