Cheating With Technology

Running head: CHEAING IN AN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT

Cheating in an Academic Environment

Pressures from society to obtain a successful career require achieving an education in most cases. In today's economy having a thriving career could depend on our educational background as part of the ingredient to fuel our lifestyles. Students attending high school or college can relate to the pressures of sustaining adequate grades. Students who are overwhelmed with trying to maintain higher GPA standards push the academic barriers using technology to cheat. Our society is more advanced with technology such as computers, cell phones, text message systems, as well as various other electronic devices that could provide the avenue for a desperate student seeking a way to cheat in order to receive a higher GPA score. According to Ad Council (1999),"Grades, rather than education, have become the major focus of many students" (Ad Council, 1999). For those students in high school maintaining high GPA's could equal college scholarship programs needed to attend college. Students with peer pressures as well as pressures from parents to achieve higher grades could thrust students who are not motivated to study, to resort to cheating as an easy solution to an unethical problem. This research paper will discuss ways in which students are using technology to cheat. Other aspects of this paper will include statistics on academic cheating as well as ways instructors are catching students cheating. The pros and cons after using cheating detection programs as well as statistics that show significant changes after using the detection programs will also be discussed.

Furthermore, when we hear about students cheating using high technology in the classroom, we often wonder how this is happening. Students no longer use scribbles on the hand, glance over at the next students, or writing under their hat rim as cheat sheets. These new technology forms of cheating are otherwise known as "crib sheets". In addition, students are using their cell phones to instant message questions and answers as well as storing notes on their graphing calculators. Other devices are camera phones, text messaging, PDA's that are also being used. In a California High school, students used a device called a KEYKatcher; a battery-sized cheating device used to record computer keystrokes, to capture a teacher's password and steal tests and answers. Students create what is otherwise known as" crib sheets" ( J.D. Heyman, 2005).

Downloading from the internet is the most common form of cheating that takes place today (Heyman, 2005). Several internet sites such as Duenow.com,

Monsterpapers.com offer students, for a fee, a large selection of papers. In class cheating has become so common that it has become "normal" in some cases, states an anonymous student from Rutgers University (Current Events, 2004). Some students will do what it takes to succeed in life even if that means cheating. The important thing is that the students want to get ahead, but are taking the easy way out. Donald McCabe, a study researcher, of Rutgers states," I think kids today are looking to adults...for a moral compass, and when they see behavior occurring there, they don't understand why they should be held to a higher standard" (Heyman, 2005). When we search for the recent statistics of students using technology to cheat, the numbers are astounding.

In the course of time the complexity in cheating has become much easier and a more common problem among high school and college students. From the complex way of cheating such as writing "cheat-cheat" notes on the palm of one's hand, classroom desks, to crumbled up paper, to now using new technology as a simple and easy way of cheating. Such developments in technology have created a new and easy way of being discrete in the dishonest behavior of cheating. These acts of dishonesty have been a frequent occurrence through the history of time.

At this present time, now, our children are growing up with this technology which is providing them with the help and resources to gain more depth in knowledge towards certain things or topics so in some cases these kids are growing up not thinking they are acting in a cheating sense. It is believed that the course of cheating is starting up as early as with our young children in elementary (k-6th grade) due to the sense of competition when it come to getting better grades, sports, or any games played at recess, P.E., or in a classroom. The percentage of cheating increases as our children move or will be moving through middle school. As a survey was conducted among middle school children (7th-8th grade) it provided the results showing 2/3 of respondents reported cheating on exams, while 9/10 reported copying another's homework. Last but not least, due to the results of the 1998 poll of Who's Who Among American High School Students, 80% of the country's best high school students cheated to get to the top of their class. More than half the students involved in the poll said they don't think cheating is a big deal and some of them are yet to get caught. The high percentage increase of academic dishonest behavior of cheating in our children attending high school (9th-12th grade) is a dramatic severeness that we should or shall become well aware of. With the vulnerability and extreme exposure to new technology inside or outside of school a lot of students do not see the actions taken under their use of this technology as cheating. The following graph examples were created as a great way to view the percentages in writing, which was created by a study created by Donald L. McCabe among 4, 500 students in high school-college:

* Cheating on...

* Cheating using plagiarism and internet...

It is a fact that technological programs alone will not have the ability to stop cheating in the classroom. Internet, cell phones, I pods are just a few methods in which technology has become a tool for students to better their grade without very much work. The use of the internet is, without a doubt, a very effective tool which is being used to help students of all age's complete homework of many different types. Unfortunately, the internet has also become a tool that allows the opportunity to make it extremely simple for the students to plagiarize, cheat, or use