You will not surprise anyone if you say that almost all the students cheated at least once when they were studying in college. According to data from the International Center for Academic Integrity, 68% of students admit cheating during tests or written work. These are data from a survey, but they only think that the rest of the students can simply lie or be afraid to admit their illegal actions. The numbers are really surprising, since future doctors, teachers and engineers do not trust their knowledge, but they will work with people and influence their lives. That is why educational establishments are in a constant struggle with deception and plagiarism and look for more effective ways to reduce the number of such cases.
Ways to prevent and fight cheating and plagiarism
1. Take advantage of technological tools and devices.
The variety of modern devices that can be useful to eliminate the amount of cheating students in exams and exams. These are cameras that can record the ways in which students use traps, signal blockers to prevent students from communicating and searching on mobile phones, as well as many interesting tools that will also be useful.
First, these are plagiarism detection tools such as Noplag or Turnitin that help teachers find similarities in students’ written work and review links that could have been sources of plagiarism.
Second, it can be a software like Proctortrack that monitors online students who perform tests through a webcam that identifies potentially dishonest behaviors that can result in cheating.
Third, the online version of QuickBooks is useful for tracking heartbeats and detecting if a student was writing an article or simply adding their name to the document from the web.
The variety of these tools can be appreciated by many educators in their battle against deception.
2. Implementation of legal responsibility for violations.
It is extremely important to regularly adjust to students’ moral principles and to allow them more freedom if they pass exams or tests based on their knowledge.
For example, in some universities, students are asked to sign a code of honor that is a promise to a student to act with integrity. This code provides students with certain privileges on campus, but at the same time, a student who violates it will face a legal proceeding. Naturally, these actions reduced the number of traps per quarter.
In any case, when a student is aware of the seriousness of the sanctions for plagiarism, his desire to cheat also decreases.
3. Verification of the tasks sent.
Sometimes it’s not enough to trust your students. If you have questions or if there is evidence that confirms the act of plagiarism, it is important to check if your assumptions are correct. You can ask your students to write a brief summary of the report that could have been taken from the Internet or to ask several questions about a written document: what methods were used, what sources were most useful or what was encouraged a student to take the test. following conclusions.
4. Preference of traditional methods in examinations.
The effectiveness of traditional methods to prevent cheating that can be used in exams should not be underestimated either. Educators should try all methods, including:
· Use of services to perform digital exams;
· Verify the identity of each student using an identification card with a photo;
· Prohibit the use of cell phones;
· Prepare multiple test variants;
· Provide all the necessary elements for the test writing;
· Mix the seat assignments.
5. Teach students how to write original works.
One of the reasons that encourages students to plagiarize is the inability to write these documents themselves. By not knowing the structure, the stages of the writing procedure, the choice of reliable sources makes students turn to paper-based writing services or look for simple ways to plagiarize.
conclusion
Deception and plagiarism have become an integral part of modern education and, despite all efforts to win the war, students still manage to win some battles. At the same time, professional plagiarism verifiers like Noplag are also involved in this fight. Of course, the desire and all the activities that the professors carry out to diminish the deception give their results, but it is too early to talk about education without plagiarism and deception.
