Back in the day, all cheating involved was spying at a neighbor’s paper or copying your friend’s homework. The really hardened ones wrote the answers to a test or examination on little scraps of papers called chips, wrote on their thighs, on desks, or mathematical sets. But in today’s world, cheating has taken a new dimension with the help of technology, of course.
While some students are unaware that what appears to be the simple task of copying and sharing a friend’s homework is cheating, some are well-aware and choose to do it for various reasons. Some cheat because they feel the pressure to succeed outweighs the risk of getting caught; others want to get top grades that will get them into top universities and earn them scholarships, and feel the best way to achieve this is by cheating. Yet others are just looking for shortcuts, because cheating is much easier than doing the hard work of studying.
Consider below some modern cheating methods as provided by verywell.com:
1. Text Messaging
Texting is one of the fastest ways for students to get answers to test questions from other students in the room. Even though phones are not allowed in exam halls, some still manage to sneak them in, text one another, and copy the answers while the teacher isn’t paying attention. Teens admit the practice is easy to get away with even when phones aren’t allowed (provided the teacher isn’t walking around the room to check for cellphones).
2. Storing Notes
Some teens store notes for test time on their phones and calculators to access them later in class. As with texting, this is done by hiding the phone from view.
3. The Internet
The internet offers other unusual tips for cheating too. For example, several sites guide teens to print their notes out in the nutrition information portion of a water bottle label, providing a downloadable template to do so. Teens then replace the water or beverage bottle labels with their own and can get away with it especially in a large class. This, of course, only works if the teacher allows beverages during class.
There are also free math apps like Photomath that allow a student to take a picture of the math problem. The app scans the problem and spits out the answers, even for complex algebra problems; even as students quickly copy it without actually understanding the material.
Other apps like HWPic send a picture of the problem to an actual tutor who offers a step-by-step solution to the problem. While some students may use this to better understand their homework, others just copy down the answers, complete with the steps that justify the answer.
4. Copying and Pasting
You may think that copying and pasting material from online sources when writing essays and reports isn’t cheating, but it is! This act is called plagiarising, and involves passing off a report done by someone else as yours. Yet you can be caught if your teacher pastes only a few sentences of the submitted report into a search engine to identify if the content was taken from a website.
Another way teachers detect this type of cheating is when a student’s paper seems to be written in a different voice, or when the report is too perfect for a student’s level of knowledge and expertise.
5. Social Media Sneak Peak
Teenagers also use social media to help one another on tests too. A picture of an exam is taken when the teacher isn’t looking, then shared with friends who want a sneak peak of the test before they take it. The photo may be uploaded to a special Facebook group or simply shared via text message; then others can look up the answers to the exam once they know the questions ahead of time.
The Dangers of Teaching
- While it is possible to get away with cheating, it is equally possible to get caught! And should that happen, you might get a zero, get kicked out of for cheating, and even worse lose the trust of people who will see you as untrustworthy. It could also go on your transcripts, which could affect you later in future.
- It’s better for you to learn lessons about cheating now rather than later in life, because cheating at the university could get you expelled. Also, cheating at a future job could get you fired or even lead to legal action; while cheating on a future partner could lead to the end of that relationship.
- You should also know that honesty is the best policy. Keep in mind also that even when students who cheat seem to get ahead without getting caught, in the end they really are only cheating themselves as they would have lost the opportunity to learn the things they ought to know for a bright future.
