Greetings All,
I am hoping to get some sage advice about what to do in a situation where I strongly suspect a student has cheated on a test - but I cannot be sure.
Here is the situation: I am a brand new instructor at our nearby community college. I am teaching intro chemistry for non-majors and it is my only class - a summer course. It has been a challenge for me - I have never taught before and I was unprepared for how - unprepared - the students are. So much hand-holding needed - and seemingly simple instructions need several repeats.
But anyway - it has been a sharp learning curve for me, and I am trying to keep up. So - last week I gave a second exam for the course. Most everyone did fine - in particular one student who has been doing fairly poorly up til now. This one student turned in his test along with everyone else - and I took all the exams home and graded them. So - lo and behold - he got the same exact grade - with the SAME ERRORS - as the hard-working student he was sitting next to. An uncharacteristically high grade for him.
I did not see him cheat - but I was not watching with an eagle eye - because I am a naive fool who can’t believe anyone would actually cheat on an exam. So - what do I do now? Approach the good student and tell her to be careful? I plan on watching the suspect like a hawk after this - but do I just let this go, since I can’t prove anything?
I would ask to see both of them together at the same time. It’s possible Hard Working Student let Alleged Cheater copy off her, it’s possible she didn’t know. But I’d check school policy in what to do in this situation.
In the meantime, can you move Alleged Cheater to another seat in the room?
You only handle this via the school’s policy. Don’t pay attention to our suggestions otherwise.
Go talk to someone who knows the school rules, find out how to officially handle it, etc.
You might not be satisfied with the punishment, if any, the student gets. But you will be personally a lot happier than if you don’t go by the book and it backfires all over you.
I’ve had students I’m fairly certain are cheating meet with me. I go over their work and ask for explanations of terms, concepts, and so on; this has often resulted in confessions when the student realizes they aren’t gonna squiggle out of the situation.
However: as folks up thread have expressed, don’t do a thing until you know what the school’s academic dishonesty policies are and how your department generally treats cheating. Sometimes there’s a wide gap between the letter and spirit of the law . . .
It looks like the policy is to meet with said student - or both - what if the 2nd student is completely unaware? And see what they say. Then notify the Academic Coordinator - and see what they say. This will be a ball of laughs.
Agree with ivylass that you need to be conversant with the school policy on cheating, and in particular, the standard by which cheating is ascertained and the associated penalty scale.
Having an exact copy of answers and errors is pretty much damning evidence, and the prior experience with his poor performance tells you who is cheating from whom. If you wanted to handle this in a more low key fashion, you might sit him down quietly, show him your evidence, allow him to confess, and offer to having him retake a comparable ‘makeup’ test with new answers. But that’s on your to decide if you really want to go through that much effort for a student that likely won’t appreciate it. Personally, I’d flunk the turkey as a life lesson in not only cheating but being so stupid about it that he thinks that everyone else is stupid enough not to catch him.
I think I’m going to take both of them aside and give them the tests back and ask them to explain it for me. I’ll take their reactions as evidence - but the guy is a real player if I have him pegged correctly - he’ll be able to roll it off him like nothing. I think she might at least have a new perspective on the guy going forward.
Going forward I like the idea of two separate test versions - I’ll do that this week and watch carefully.
For the future, find out if you’re allowed to give different tests. I always used two or four different forms. You can simply mix up the order of the questions, change the problems but have them check the same info, etc. If you do this, do it with every exam. There is no need to tell any student unless you’re asked directly.
If i was good at chemistry, I would not have had to go to law school. That noted, why not? “Johnny has 3 Oz of Sodium. He drops it into a bucket of water. How long will it take the Department of Homeland Security to waterboard his grandmother to learn where he got the sodium?” Or less irreverently, anything you could write as an equation to be balanced could probably also be described in words…
As mentioned before, follow the school’s procedure on suspected cheating. Going forward, however, I like the idea of the same questions in different order on the tests. Then check to see if he gives the same answers as the student next to him every time. (In other words, if question number four is “B” for her and “C” for him, did he put B? Of course, in that case, he’ll just get an F.
Where is your department chair in all of this? Unless your chair is demonstrably incompetent or has a record of blaming instructors for all instructor-student conflicts, you should be talking to him / her before you meet with the students or do anything else.