Academic cheating is defined as representing someone else’s work as one’s own. It can take many forms, including sharing another’s work or purchasing a paper or test questions in advance. Statistics show that cheating among high school students has risen dramatically in the past fifty years. Two major causes of cheating include temptation and opportunity. There are also many different solutions that teachers could consider in order to decrease the amount of students who cheat. These solutions include confiscation, the teacher watching over the students, and separation between students.
The first cause of academic cheating is temptation. It is fairly easy to obtain needed information nowadays with cell phones and the internet. Most students have a smartphone that lets them use the internet in class, making it easy to hide behind the desk searching for the answers online. Students may also take advantage of downloading or purchasing free online essays or pre-written papers.
Plagiarism is tempting among students because it is easier to copy someone else’s work instead of putting it into their own words. Another reason that students might be tempted to cheat is because they don’t study enough to know the material on the exam. If students studied for at least half an hour they could get better grades on their exams.
Another common cause of academic cheating among students is opportunity. As soon as the teacher leaves the room, students will most likely start asking other students for answers to questions they didn’t get. Students may also cheat if they know the teacher is not paying attention, or if he or she is working on the computer. Another reason that students take the opportunity to cheat is because the other students around are not covering up their answers so someone else can see them. Students may take anything they see as an opportunity to cheat.
There are many different solutions to decreasing the amount of cheating in the classroom. One solution to decreasing the amount of cheating would be having the students put all of their personal belongings in the front of the classroom before sitting down for the exam. This would stop some cheating because the students would not have their cell phones or any electronic devices to cheat from. Another solution would be the teacher watching the students and making sure that there is no cheating between students.
A final solution to cheating would be to arrange the students in a way that there are empty seats between each student. This would decrease the amount of cheating because the students would not be able to see one another’s test answers. There are many causes and solutions to academic cheating. Temptation and opportunity are two of the many causes to cheating in the classroom. Confiscation, watching the students while they take the exam, and separation between students are just some of the solutions that can decrease the amount of academic cheating.
