1. Doesn’t listing the main reasons why cheating is so common reflect on the intense academic pressure that has been placed on students to be perfect? In most classes an A+ isn’t possible without a 97% or higher yet professors give us all this work that we can’t make a single mistake on. Then they expect the pressure and need for perfection to not take over the students’ mindset? I’m not saying it’s right to cheat at all, but there is definitely two sides to every story.

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2. very good at showing reasons as to why people think its okay to cheat.

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3. Mr. Crawford, this is a good presentation of reasons and excuses for cheating.  The more significant issue is how do we, as instructors of online courses, discourage cheating besides re-writing all our homework and quiz and test materials every semester?  This tactic seems to be the only way to avoid students creating and publishing answer sets for courses, but puts a terrific burden on online teachers.  Face-to-face class teachers can restrict access to their tests and quiz materials at least.  So, do we simply accept cheating as societally accepted and inevitable?

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   1. That is the thousand dollar question is it not? I am glad you used the word “discourage cheating” because I have never seen anything that is “cheat proof” in the online or face-to-face learning environments. I do not think we should accept cheating as socially acceptable and inevitable, we have a responsibility to preserve the academic integrity of our courses.

      So what can we do to discourage cheating? I like to start with the pedagogical approach before addressing technology techniques. Have you seen the post by Marc Van Horne on Academic Integrity http://teachonline.asu.edu/2012/03/academic-integrity/ ? What do you think of some of those ideas?

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