Dear Auntie Siobhan: Why Are All My Students Cheating?

Siobhan Curious' blog, Classroom as Microcosm, details her day-to-day struggles with classroom teaching, adolescent psychology, and personal fulfillment in her role as educator.

This week she's visiting Change.org as Auntie Siobhan, teachers' advice columnist.  If you have a question for Auntie Siobhan, please send it to siobhancurious@gmail.com, and watch for her answer in the days to come.

Today: What do I do when even the "good" students cheat?

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Dear Auntie Siobhan:

I'm teaching a college summer English course, and my midterm assignment is a literary analysis of Steinbeck's Cannery Row.  I received these essays a couple of weeks ago, and as soon as I started marking, I discovered two students using the SAME sentence cribbed from an internet site. The SAME sentence. One of these plagiarizers was a kid who begged for mercy when I caught him plagiarizing his first paper; the other wrote a paper that smelled like rat, but because I couldn't tie it to anything, I warned her that she was close and that I'd be watching her carefully.  And then they went ahead and did it again.

Then I caught a THIRD plagiarizer using the same "sample" essay as the previous two. This one was submitted to me in Comic Sans font. All mockery aside, this one hurt more than the last two because it's a student who came to class daily, participated in discussions and joked around with me a lot and it's hard not to take it personally when you thought a cheating kid was as interested in the book as you were.

Then I caught a fourth plagiarizer (using the SAME essay as the others) -- this one my favourite student in the class!  And he's a smart student too (even his plagiarism was of a higher quality than the others, demanded much more of my time, and irritated me that much more), which makes it that much more of a bummer.

Is there something I could have done to prevent all this?  I talk to them about plagiarism and remind them of the penalties.  Why do they keep doing it anyway?

Yours,
Enraged
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Dear Enraged:

No matter what measures we take, plagiarism still seems to happen.  However, the fact that so many students plagiarized on this one assignment, and that they weren't all unmotivated or struggling students, suggests that maybe there's a deeper problem here.

You're teaching a summer course: it's intensive, and students may be doing summer jobs at the same time, so maybe they're falling behind on work and panicking.  Summer courses also have a higher concentration of students who have previously failed, so that might be a factor.

But it sounds like they're under the impression that cheating is worth the risk.  This no doubt has something to do with their past experience - maybe they've cheated in the past with no or minimal penalties, for example - but it might also be because they haven't understood exactly how seriously you take this problem.

Here are some of the methods I use to prevent plagiarism, and to help students understand that cheating is, contrary to what they may have learned so far, a big deal.  None of them are foolproof, but they do seem to make a difference.

1. Make it clear to them exactly what plagiarism is and what will happen to them if they do it.

As you said, you talk to them about cheating and remind them of the penalties.  I go further.  I review the issue of cheating with them on the first day of class, but then, before they hand in their first at-home assignment, I have them sign a contract.

This contract doesn't state that they won't plagiarize; as I remind them, by enrolling at the college, they've already committed to not plagiarizing.  Instead, the contract outlines exactly what cheating and plagiarism are and what the consequences will be.  (I particularly emphasize that copying and pasting EVEN ONE SENTENCE from an online source without giving credit constitutes plagiarism.)  By signing the contract, they're declaring that they understand these things.

We go over the contract in class, and there are often questions ("What do you mean by 'unauthorized help'?"  "What if my ideas are really similar to some online paper but I didn't copy?" etc.)  This gives us a chance to really get into the issue, and seems to leave a greater impression than when I just tell them what I'll do to them if I catch them cheating.

Since I started doing this, the incidence of plagiarism in my classes has dropped significantly.  When the problem arises and a student protests innocence, I produce the contract, with the student's infractions highlighted.  The student usually (not always, but usually) then admits wrongdoing, and accepts the penalty without causing too many headaches.

2.  Teach texts that don't lend themselves to online research.

This isn't always possible or always desirable - if you love Cannery Row and want your students to love it too, far be it from me to tell you not to teach it.  I do find, though, that choosing more obscure, contemporary texts means that students have a lot less recourse to copying off the internet.  I also try to change the texts up from time to time to minimize the copying/selling of papers from previous semesters.

3.  Design assignments that don't lend themselves to plagiarism.

Sometimes the straight-up thematic analysis is the only thing that will do, but a bit of creative juggling can force students to do their own thinking.

For example, in one course, we read a lot of theoretical texts and I ask students to pull out statements that they think are significant.  Then, when it comes time to deal with a literary work, I ask them to choose a quotation they identified in the other writings and apply it to the novel or short story.

Comparative assignments - integrating one's knowledge of two different stories or novels - can also help in this respect.  Again, not foolproof, but it helps, and it also makes it pretty clear when plagiarism is happening; odd, off-topic sentences jump off the page and suggest that something fishy is happening.

And then there are more creative possibilities - write a short story about these characters, write a personal narrative about a situation similar to the one in this novel, etc.  This is not always appropriate or possible, but if an academic essay isn't essential, there are many other options.

Another advantage is that assignments that stray from the beaten path are almost invariably more fun for teachers to read.

4.  Address cheating when it happens, both with the student and with the class.

You mention that one student previously begged for mercy (and, I assume, got it), and another was warned.  They cheated again anyway.  This has happened to me too.  The lesson I learned from it was that if students get away with cheating once - even if you've made it clear that you're on to them - they'll often do it again, if not with you then with someone else.

This is one place where the plagiarism contract helps: if they've already signed a paper saying they know the consequences, there's no reason not to enforce those consequences for the first offense.  Because, in truth, it's probably not their first offense - they may have cheated repeatedly in the past, and you might be the first person to draw the line.

I also bring up incidents of cheating with the whole class, without naming names of course.  I tell them that I discovered a plagiarized paper (or four) and that it's possible that others also plagiarized and I didn't notice.  I tell them that it's perfectly possible that they'll cheat and I won't catch them, but that if I do, I'll have no mercy on them.  And then I do my best to follow up on that threat.

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When I describe my heavy-handed approach to plagiarism, some people (many of them non-teachers) protest that I'm setting up an atmosphere of mistrust and that I'm creating "defensive assignments" instead of focusing on learning.  Some years ago, I might have shared this opinion, but since then I've come around.  Cheating is unbelievably pervasive, and we need to create guidelines that encourage students to think, analyze and do their own work, not copy stuff from the internet and each other.  We need to do everything we can to reward real effort, and discourage students who might be tempted to profit from taking the lazy way out.

Whenever I discuss plagiarism in the classroom, I'm careful to point out that "I know that many of you would never, ever cheat on anything, and you have every right to be insulted by the implication, but some people will, and my goal is to protect those who are doing their work honestly."

I think it's essential to address the reality of cheating with our students, and to do so repeatedly, BEFORE they have the chance to actually cheat.  If we do that, we won't eliminate the problem, but we will go a long way toward reducing it, both for us and for the teachers who will deal with our students in the future.

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Readers:  What do you think of this advice?  How do you deal with problems of cheating and plagiarism in your classroom?  (Or how would you, if you were a teacher?)

Do you have a question about teaching or learning for Auntie Siobhan?  Write with your concerns!  You can contact her at siobhancurious@gmail.com, or visit her blog, Classroom as Microcosm.

Image by adamci