Cheating is something we see very common in high school and college today. With devices like cell phones and blue tooth, students find many ways to cheat, and they do it rather easily. However, I was not aware that some people go as far as they do to cheat. The article mentions students using labels from soda bottles and bills of their hats to write notes on. Student has also hid blue tooth pieces behind their hair and chew gum so no one could tell they were talking. These measures of cheating seem a little drastic to me, but they all are creative and I guess if they work then students will continue to use them.
Teachers are also becoming more and more creative with the types of anti-cheating software they use. There are now websites that students have to post their papers to and the website uses thousands of documents and journals and scans them for matches with the students paper. Teachers then log into the website, look at any highlighted marks on students papers, and determine if the highlighted section is plagiarized. Also, universities now have testing centers in which students are not allowed to bring any devices, food or drink, and hats must be turned around backwards. Another way mentioned in the article is that students must download a special software to their computers and get a 360 degree web cam, in which teachers can see the entire environment that the student is taking the test in. All of these ways seem to be helping with the cheating numbers, as percentages show cheating is going down in many universities that have been using these new anti-cheating methods.
One teacher at IUPUI has gone so far as to create fake websites that specifically answer her tests and homework wrong. Her websites usually are the first thing that comes up in a Google search if the student just copies the question and posts it in the search box. She also has created a fake email account as a student in her classes so she sometimes receives message that other students send out. It is an easy way to catch students sharing answers from her tests. Personally, I think this is a little extreme. Students will find ways of cheating to get good grades, and I do not think it is necessary for teachers to go this far with trying to catch people.
After reading this article I was not surprised that cheating numbers are very high in colleges. Students everywhere cheat, and I do not think anything will completely stop it. However, teachers using these new ways to prevent cheating are dropping the numbers, and making it extremely hard for students to cheat. Using these new methods will make the students who really do study shine, and those who rely solely on cheating fail. I think anti-cheating software is a big step for colleges in decreasing the number of students plagiarising, but again I do not think it will ever be stopped.
In high school our teacher would walk around the class to minimize the chance of students cheating. If they were caught cheating they would get a zero for the assignment and they would also get written up. I also think that my old high school had some type of program that would block out signals and or it did not allow text messages to send. I knew it was not just me because a lot of students would complain about it and the teachers would say that you should not have your cell phone out anyway. Once school was out our signal would be back so it made you think that they had something to do with that.
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