It's the common debate within every school, university, or place of education: where do we, as educators, draw the line between collaborating and cheating? When it comes to online learning and online courses, this question becomes even more important. In my personal and educational experience, I would have to say that collaboration tools (such as Google Drive, Prezi, PollEverywhere, and Today's Meet) are excellent resources to use in the classroom. They provide students with other students' viewpoints, which can help students to 1) expand their own thoughts and ideas, 2) consider other options that are out there that they had not previously thought of, and 3) dig deeper when it comes to learning.
Teacher of online courses can limit "cheating" simply by asking students opinion questions, rather than questions with a "right" or "wrong" answer. If you ask a student to explain why they think a certain way, it forces them to think about what is being asked. Multiple students could have the same answer to a single question, but by asking them to explain why they answered that way, the teacher forces the student to think at a higher level and really reflect on their answer.
For example, Katt Blackwell gives the following example in her blog: there is a history class that assigns a research paper. Two students in the class decide to collaborate on the research for their paper and share good resources with each other. They both write their papers and turn them in. The teacher reads over the papers and realizes that the two papers contain several of the same quotes and have used the some of the same resources. The organization of the papers is different, along with arguments and content in the paper itself. So...what is it: cheating or collaborating? In my opinion, it's what all of us do on a daily basis: collaboration. It's how we learn from each other. No one's mind works the same way, and because of that, we have the wonderful gifts of different viewpoints and ideas, varying from person to person. The content of the papers was different; so what if the two students used the same quotes and resources? The content proves that they were both thinking as individuals, rather than "cheating".
In many of today's schools and universities, any sort of collaboration is considered cheating. I think that this ought to be re-evaluated, as there are strong differences between copying another person's work, and using another person's work to help you think about a topic in a new way. The greatest scholars out there reflect on other people's work. That is why it is in my opinion, that the job of teachers in general (but especially online teachers, where there is much debate and conflict over this issue) to create projects and assignments that test a student's ability to create an opinion based on the opinions of others. Collaboration is key.
Teacher of online courses can limit "cheating" simply by asking students opinion questions, rather than questions with a "right" or "wrong" answer. If you ask a student to explain why they think a certain way, it forces them to think about what is being asked. Multiple students could have the same answer to a single question, but by asking them to explain why they answered that way, the teacher forces the student to think at a higher level and really reflect on their answer.
For example, Katt Blackwell gives the following example in her blog: there is a history class that assigns a research paper. Two students in the class decide to collaborate on the research for their paper and share good resources with each other. They both write their papers and turn them in. The teacher reads over the papers and realizes that the two papers contain several of the same quotes and have used the some of the same resources. The organization of the papers is different, along with arguments and content in the paper itself. So...what is it: cheating or collaborating? In my opinion, it's what all of us do on a daily basis: collaboration. It's how we learn from each other. No one's mind works the same way, and because of that, we have the wonderful gifts of different viewpoints and ideas, varying from person to person. The content of the papers was different; so what if the two students used the same quotes and resources? The content proves that they were both thinking as individuals, rather than "cheating".
In many of today's schools and universities, any sort of collaboration is considered cheating. I think that this ought to be re-evaluated, as there are strong differences between copying another person's work, and using another person's work to help you think about a topic in a new way. The greatest scholars out there reflect on other people's work. That is why it is in my opinion, that the job of teachers in general (but especially online teachers, where there is much debate and conflict over this issue) to create projects and assignments that test a student's ability to create an opinion based on the opinions of others. Collaboration is key.
Limiting Cheating in an Online Environment
It's plain and simple. Get your students to learn to love the process of learning. When you, as a teacher, value a student's true thoughts and opinions rather than the right answers (which makes learning a competition for memorizing the right answers and "correct" reasoning), there is less pressure put on them, and they learn to enjoy learning. It's as easy as that. Students that fear that a single letter will determine how they do in a course, learn to dread the class and learning process. Therefore, going back to what I mentioned earlier, focus on opinion questions and explanations of why the student feels the way they do about a subject. Much can be learned from these students' responses, and the level of thinking is much deeper in this situation, rather then when they just regurgitate the information that they know you want to hear.
Studies have shown that students who collaborate help each other learn and discover more sophisticated problem-solving strategies than any single student would discover alone. Group and team projects also show the lowest incidence of cheating. It can be argued that some forms of cheating, such as collaboration when the course doesn’t permit it, are students’ way of helping themselves learn more effectively. In a famous example at MIT in the 1990s, student programmers who weren’t allowed to collaborate did so anyway—and became much more effective programmers. Collaboration is now the norm at MIT (Pearson).
Sources Used for Research:
- http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/3644-collaboration-or-cheating-where-is-the-line-
- http://www.pearsonmylabandmastering.com/northamerica/assets/pdf/controlling-cheating-in-online-courses.pdf