Teaching Tales: Cheaters Don’t Win

Teaching at GMU had to be done in large, crowded classes, making cheating easier—and more frequent.  

Early in the semester, I’d devised a system to ensure students would get to class on time, even when there was no quiz. They would get a point of credit simply for signing their name on a sheet of paper. But I often found that at least one pair of names would be written in identical handwriting, once in the same color crayon. Someone had signed their friend in, as well as themselves. Upon being confronted, the students inevitably denied any wrongdoing.

Another favorite was to sit outside class and copy the worksheets and lab assignments from someone else. It was impossible to prevent this, although I tried by insisting that all work be handed in before the beginning of class. This prevented students from being late and made some very angry, but I soon found it wasn’t necessary. Those who cheated would happily and mindlessly copy wrong answers too, and usually did. The better students had worked hard for their grade and were reluctant to share, especially after I instituted a rule that giving someone your answers would result in the same penalty as for those receiving them. The result was that the students who cheated usually failed, but they were also pretty angry with me.

 Exam Strategies

Next, I had to prevent cheating during exams. Since I used Scantrons, it was easy for one student to look at another’s answers and copy them. How to avoid this? Here, I hit on the idea of using three versions of the same exam. Even so, some would copy their neighbor’s answers and then write their neighbor’s exam version number on their answer sheet, as well. So, I had the students write their names on their exam and answer sheets, checking that they matched before grading. It was a lot of trouble, but very necessary.

One young lady, Hiroko, turned in a Scantron sheet identical to Elise’s, the student sitting next to her. She also had Elise’s exam version written on her Scantron; it did not match her exam sheet.

“Hiroko, you have the wrong version written on your Scantron, look.”

“Oh,” she answered airily, “I just got confused about it.” She changed the version.

“Now look, Hiroko, your answers are identical to Elise’s answers,” I challenged her. “You know cheating isn’t allowed.”

Hiroko looked indignant, “I wasn’t cheating. I just happened to choose the same answers.”

“But you had a different version of the exam.” I was amazed at her denial. 

“So, are you calling me a liar? How can you accuse me of cheating!” Hiroko flounced out of the room.

Because we had been told at faculty orientation that it was mandatory to report cheating, I sent the evidence to the honor committee. Hiroko was found guilty. We then found she had been cheating in the lab, as well.

 And She Kept it Up

Hiroko, who seemed a little slow at realizing when she should stop, had notes penciled on the back of her Scantron during the very next exam. Another student, Maya, informed me that I had seen it and sent the evidence to the honor committee. They decided that Hiroko should leave the university.

It amazed me that Hiroko persisted in misbehavior. She followed Maya around, threatening her, until Maya phoned me at my home in tears. It did not take long for me to contact the Dean of Students, a lovely man, who soon made a phone call and put a stop to the nonsense.