CollegeHumor.com recently conducted an online survey of almost 30,000 college students during finals week and unearthed some scary views about cheating. The survey had questions related to honor codes, most common cheating methods, and the average GPA of cheaters vs. non-cheaters. The survey also looked at whether cheating is influenced by factors such as: gender, political affiliation and even religion.
Proving that cheaters do indeed prosper the survey reported that students that cheat have a higher GPA (3.41) than those that don't (2.85). (Which reminds me of last year's ABC News poll where students said they had to "cheat to compete.") The survey reported that 61% of the students responding regularly cheat and only a small percentage (16.5%) have feelings of remorse for their actions.
Some of the other survey results include: Males cheat more than females (64.8% vs. 42.0%); 24.6% of students have intentionally plagiarized; 12% of cheaters have been caught at some point in their cheating career, yet only 7.1% of people who got caught stopped cheating as a result; and 45.9% of students allow others to cheat off of them.
So, the question I have to ask is: How much should we trust a survey conducted on a site called CollegeHumor.com, riddled with bad jokes and gazillions of beer-bust pictures?
Best regards,
Don Sorensen
Vice President, Marketing
Caveon Test Security
801.592.3396
Caveon Webinar - June 27 - 50 Ways Students Cheat on Tests
This webinar will cover many of the new cheating gadgets including: cellphones, iPods, and calculators. I'll also cover some of the methods being used to steal test information and review five practical ways to stop cell phone cheating. Click here to register.
1 > The cheating culture
ChronicleHerald.ca - Halifax,Nova Scotia,Canada
...according to the first large-scale study of cheating in a Canadian context, nearly one in five Canadian university students admitted to cheating on a test or exam; and 53 per cent of the 14,913 students surveyed said they had plagiarized written assignments or turned in another student’s work....
2 > Battling Term-Paper Cheats
TIME - USA
...students at a high school in McLean, Va., are trying to bring down Turnitin by suing its parent company, iParadigms, for alleged copyright infringement. To file such a lawsuit, a writer has to pay $45 to register a copyright, be it for a Pulitzer prizewinning novel or a ninth-grader's meanderings on Animal Farm, and the penalty per copyright violation can be as much as $150,000. So if the McLean High School students prevail with their copyrighted essays--a trial will probably begin this fall--ambulance- chasing lawyers will start tailing school buses, and Turnitin may have to close up shop...
3 > ‘Hagwon’ Blamed for Cancelled SAT
Korea Times - Seoul,South Korea
...The document was compiled by a hakwon teacher and he encouraged his students to carefully memorize the answers before taking the test. In other words, students in America who had access to the document before taking the test could have gotten perfect scores. But sadly, only the test scores of those who took the SAT in Korea were canceled. ...
4 > Students warned not to use cheating tools in upcoming college entrance exam
People's Daily Online - Beijing,China
...A Chinese education official warned students sitting for the upcoming college entrance examination to steer well clear of cheating tools being sold online. "Cheating in the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) is a violation of law. Those caught cheating will have a permanent mark in their student credibility record," said a senior official with the Ministry of Education (MOE)....
5 > Young liars
PSU Daily Vanguard - Portland,OR,USA
...Donald McCabe, a Rutgers professor who's studied cheating for decades, said, "I'm past the 'epidemic' language. I've been looking at this for so long I'm used to it." Tim Dodd, executive director for the Center of Academic Integrity, said research shows 20 to 25 percent of undergraduates admitting to five or more instances of cheating. He said, "The fact that we have a quarter or more of our students admitting they've engaged in serial cheating does not inspire a lot of confidence about the credibility of their degrees."...
6 > Students say cheating common at SP, elsewhere
Annapolis Capital - Annapolis,MD,USA
...When three Severna Park High School students allegedly cheated on a college-level history test earlier this month, their peers were upset. But most weren't surprised. For them, what happened is part of a culture of unchecked cheating that thrives in the school, regarded as one of the county's finest for its stellar test scores and high academic standards....
7 > TESTING HONESTY - Has standardized testing turned some teachers into cheaters?
Visalia Times-Delta - Visalia,CA,USA
..."Without condoning cheating, I understand why this is happening," said Fred Schreiber, a biology professor at California State University, Fresno. "By my unscientific sampling, I see that a lot of teachers have not bought into high-stakes testing. And if they don't believe in it, they [might not] feel the need to follow the rules."...
8 > Clamping down on exam cheats
News Shopper - UK
...Edexcel which is responsible for 13 million exam papers a year, will enforce a number of new technological security measures throughout England.Radio frequency tags, similar to the security tags you find on clothing are being placed in every bag of exam papers. The tags store data such as how many papers are in the bag, where the papers were dispatched from, where they are going to, and if the bag has been interfered with along the way....
9 > Cheating Rampant on College Campuses, Survey Reveals
CNSNews.com - Alexandria,VA,USA
...Sixty-one percent of college students admit to having cheated at least once, according to survey results published on CollegeHumor.com, reflecting a growing obsession with grade point average and a decreasing sense of accountability, according to the author of a book on why Americans cheat....
Testing Industry Events
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National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education & Certification (NASDTEC)
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