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we get this result that cheating has a lot of negative effect in our life , we all might try to cheat once but as we know is a negative action and it will takes away our decisions it blocks our mind to create our own goals . cheating might be very exciting action at the beginning for us but it throw us between a lot of serious and major issues in our life . cheating can get in our life in many ways and this is not to try it once but after we find out that cheating doesn’t have any positive point for us we have to find a way to stay away from this trouble. The most effective way that may help us to stay away of this action is to control our feelings, and act opposite way . this could be very hard first but after practicing more we get more stronger than before . so as we see cheating is a really bad action like lying and we don’t have to let that becomes as a habit for us in our life . some times we are able to change things and make up , but some times we cant even get a chance to make up once , so we need to forget about negative actions and stay away from them.

Explanation of the aspects of cheating and how it affects character from the book "The Men They Will Become". Also refer to honesty, trust, boys, school, truth, dishonest, integrity, lying, rewards, recognition, pride, dignity, Ron Kurtus, School for Champions. Copyright © Restrictions

Boys and Cheating
by Eli H. Newberger, M.D. (6 December 2003)

(This lesson is based on an excerpt of the book "The Men They Will Become: The Nature and Nurture of the Male Character" by Dr. Newberger.)

Chapter 19 in my book "The Men They Will Become" addresses the problem of cheating, especially by boys in the academic setting. This section discusses the different attitudes towards cheating. This is the first section of the chapter.

Temptation to cheat
There are several situations in which boys are frequently tempted to cheat—in sports, for example, or in their after-school employment—but I've elected to look mainly at academic cheating because academic work is the equivalent in a boy's life to his parents' jobs. A student who habitually cheated in his schoolwork might find it less guilt-provoking to cheat in his adult work than he would if he had gone through school with academic integrity.

Boys are familiar with cheating well before they are tempted to practice it academically. They may have observed it or done it in family life—cheating in games in order to win, for example—or in play groups. They may have heard parents boast of successful cheating—on expense accounts or tax returns. Cheating is rife in adult life, from white-collar business fraud to falsified research data.

Exposure to cheating
My brother, Henry, is a high school social studies teacher. It was thus natural for me to turn to him first for information on academic cheating by boys today. According to Henry, cheating is prevalent in high school. He told me about a boy he observed using a crib sheet during the first exam of the past school year. Henry reacted with obvious enough indignation that the rest of the class immediately knew of the transgression and teased the student mercilessly for weeks. The academic penalty for the student was to get a grade of zero to begin the year's grading.

In Henry's school, there is no established school policy on cheating penalties—maybe a sign in itself that the school as an institution is uncertain how to deal with cheating. Each teacher has to use his own judgment. There is no written school code of academic and social behavior, nor are students regularly reminded of standards of behavior. It is assumed that "everyone knows" cheating is not permitted.

The happy fallout of the story is that Henry's student responded to the cheating exposure by buckling down to work; by June he was near the top of the class despite having his initial grade of zero averaged in. He became an exemplary student, not only successful in tests but impressive in classroom discussions.

Exposure embarrassing
Others might regard the embarrassing public exposure as contributing to the boy's change of direction, but Henry believes he would just as surely have changed course if Henry had handled the episode firmly but more discreetly—in other words, without shaming the boy publicly. Henry regrets his outburst when he discovered the crib sheet. It is better, he says, not to embarrass students deliberately. Peer status is everything to kids, he believes. The last thing a student wants is to be uncool. Though Henry didn't say so, perhaps what classmates considered socially uncool in this situation was that the student got caught, not that the student had attempted to cheat. A boy who cheats today does so as a member of a society in which appearances are often judged more harshly than underlying social realities. Adultery, for example, is reported by survey research to be a prevalent type of cheating. There is little evidence of public concern about adultery if it is effectively kept secret.

Every boy has to sort out for himself a set of inconsistent social cues that he is given beginning in childhood. One cue is that cheating is wrong, but other cues include the obvious fact that some people think it is more wrong than others do, that society as a whole regards some forms of cheating as morally worse than others, and that sometimes people are more scornful of getting caught than of the cheating offense itself. I don't think it is too exaggerated to say that there is a culture of dishonesty coexistent with a culture of integrity in our society. A boy who is tempted to cheat has many precedents from the culture of dishonesty to use as justification when he elects to cheat. Fortunately, he also has exposure to the culture of integrity that espouses good choices.

Another student came to see Henry late last year to ask about his grade average. Henry consulted his grading book and pointed out that the student had failed to turn in some written assignments, a factor that, if not remedied, would adversely affect his final grade. The student hurried off to complete the missing work. Then he went a step further. He graded the assignments himself (very highly) and tried to slip the papers into Henry's desk. Unwittingly, he used a different color of ink than Henry ever uses, so the cheating strategy was exposed.

Reactions to cheating can be intemperate and have unpredictable consequences. A female high school teacher spoke about getting caught cheating in an English lit course during her freshman year in college. She had plagiarized a published critique of a work for one of her reports, and her professor recognized the passages and knew their source.

The dean suspended her for a semester. He said of her cheating, "You've done well, but not well enough. We suspect you've done this kind of thing in all your classes." His suspicious accusations were untrue. She was deeply affected by the way a single incident had provoked a wholesale condemnation of her character.

Summary
The eighteenth-century philosopher, Jean Paul Richter, commented: "If a child tells a lie, tell him that he has told a lie, but don't call him a liar. If you define him as a liar, you break down his confidence in his own character." I think his is profoundly wise advice. What the dean did to the student was to generalize her single offense and call her a cheater. She might have withdrawn from an academic career, or she might have developed a deep resentment of his unfair characterization of her and resolved to cheat more skillfully. Fortunately, this student resolved to clear her reputation. After serving her suspension, she returned to the same college, graduated with honors, and now counsels all her high school students on the potential consequences of cheating. Her story is sobering, but is her experience the final word on cheating? How prevalent is cheating, and is it best handled with a punishment-as-deterrent policy?

It is costly for faculty to deal with cheating. Keith-Spiegel et al. (1998) identified several of these costs and argued that they can be grouped into four categories: emotionality, difficult, fear, and denial. I argue that the emotional and fear costs for faculty make it unlikely that the common approaches to dealing with plagiarism will be effective. I provide an example of an old approach which diminishes some of the costs for faculty.

Evidence indicates that cheating on written assignments is common, perhaps more common than cheating on exams. For example, statistics reported by Premeaux (2005) indicate that students estimate that the "percentage of students you think cheat on a typical written assignment" is about 45% while the "percentage of students you think cheat on a typical exam" is about 32%. Hollinger and Lanza-Kaduce (1996) report that about 38% of students admitted that they had plagiarized during a fifteen-week period.

While cheating appears to be common, catching students cheating is less common. Roig (1997) reports that 3% of students "admitted to have been caught plagiarizing." Diekhoff et al. (1996) find that about 2% of students say "that they had ever been caught cheating during their tenure as college students." Diekhoff et al. do not single out plagiarism.

The disparity between the statistics on cheating and getting caught is striking. The statistics indicate that the chance that an individual will be caught in a particular instance of cheating is quite small. Given the common approaches to dealing with plagiarism, the statistics suggest that the costs imposed by faculty on students for plagiarism are quite low.

Keith-Spiegel et al. (1998) identify costs for faculty of dealing with cheating. My purpose in this paper is to examine the implications that these costs have for the effectiveness of the common approaches to dealing with plagiarism. This examination suggests a course of action — an oral exam — that may be appropriate for some faculty in some situations.
Common Approaches

Plagiarize is defined in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988) as "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own." Writing manuals provide additional information. For example, the Little, Brown Handbook (1989) states "When you summarize or paraphrase, you do not use quotation marks because the words are your own. However, you must acknowledge the author of the idea." Even though this seems straightforward, Roig (1997) finds that "students are often unclear as to what constitutes plagiarism and correct forms of paraphrasing." Furthermore, Roig (2001) finds that faculty also have difficulty understanding plagiarism. Accordingly, one approach to dealing with plagiarism is education.

Landrau, Druen, and Arcuri (2002) find that simply educating students about plagiarism leads to a decrease in plagiarism. Barry (2006) finds that practice paraphrasing by students leads to a decrease in plagiarism.

A second approach to dealing with plagiarism involves the method of designing and carrying out the assignment. Well-known techniques include assigning a narrow topic and requiring an outline and multiple drafts. Wilhoit (1994) advises instructors to "require students to submit photocopies of documented materials."

A third approach is to emphasize that plagiarism is wrong and that efforts will be made to detect plagiarism and penalize those who are caught. Brown and Howell (2001) find "that having the students read a carefully worded statement about plagiarism was an effective way to change the perceptions of how seriously plagiarism breaches academic guidelines." McLafferty and Foust (2004) describe various electronic tools that can be used to detect electronic plagiarism. Martin (2005) used electronic means to detect plagiarism, told the students he was doing this, and told them that in prior semesters he had detected plagiarism and reduced grades accordingly. Martin found that this approach resulted in a decrease in plagiarism over a period of five semesters.
Costs

Although the common approaches seem like they should work, the high incidence of plagiarism coupled with the low faculty-imposed costs borne by students indicates that frequently, faculty are not effective at deterring plagiarism and faculty choose not to impose costs on students for plagiarism. Presumably, the costs for faculty of dealing with plagiarism are high relative to the benefits for faculty of achieving a low incidence of plagiarism.

Evidence on the costs for faculty is provided by Keith-Spiegel et al. (1998) in their survey of psychology faculty which investigates "why professors ignore cheating." They find that the stated reasons can be grouped into four categories: emotionality, difficult, fear, and denial. The emotional category primarily reflects the stress of the accusation and the ensuing process. The difficult category primarily involves the time and effort of dealing with the cheating. The fear category captures the fear of reprisals. The denial category reflects the sentiment that action is not necessary.

Keith-Spiegel et al. find that emotional costs are stated most frequently, but time and effort are not far behind. Fear is part of the calculus but is not mentioned as frequently as the first two categories. Denial is not stated frequently.

The evidence produced by Keith-Spiegel et al. suggests that the common approaches for dealing with plagiarism are problematic. Even if faculty were willing to devote the time and effort to use the common approaches, the emotional and fear costs would limit their effectiveness. For example, the penalty approach is unlikely to be effective because faculty will choose not to follow through with it; the emotional and fear costs are too high. This is one explanation for the results of Bunn, Caudill, and Gropper (1992) who expect the severity of the penalty to be negatively related to cheating, but find a positive, non-significant relation. Although bluffing may work for a time, it is unlikely to work after students learn that faculty will not follow through with the penalty.

Similarly, the education and assignment design approaches may decrease plagiarism somewhat, but faculty are still left with the problem of what to do when plagiarism does occur. Again, as students learn that faculty will not follow through with the penalty, the effectiveness of these approaches will be limited.
An Old Tool

An examination of the costs for faculty of dealing with cheating suggests that there may be merit in an old tool — using an oral exam along with a paper. Instead of proving plagiarism and penalizing it, the instructor demonstrates and grades the disparity between what the student represents as his own work and what the student understands.

Oral exams, of course, are not new. Prior to 1850 they were widely used, but in the second half of the nineteenth century they were generally displaced first by written exams, and later by objective exams (Ebel 1972). According to Ebel, "the major limitation of the oral examination is the difficulty of obtaining reliable scores in reasonable amounts of time." Since the paper suffers from this same limitation, substituting one for the other in some way — adding an x minute oral exam and subtracting y pages from the paper — does not appear to increase the cost unreasonably, but yields the benefit of giving instructors a palatable approach to dealing with plagiarism.

In a course where the content is specialized knowledge, the instructor chooses a narrow area in which he is qualified to grade papers. The instructor selects a specialized journal appropriate for the course, each student chooses a different article from the journal, and each student writes a paper on the article. For example, either the Journal of Portfolio Management or the Financial Analysts' Journal works well for a senior-level investments course in finance. These journals have short articles, 3-5 pages, written at a level (i.e., the practitioner level) which allows students to understand at least some of the articles. The instructor must read the articles, but by limiting the choice to one journal, he increases the chance that students choose articles he has already read or would read anyway. Students are advised not to select articles that are too simple or too difficult because their goal is to convince the instructor that they have learned enough to read articles in the journal he has selected. This is achieved by writing a clear paper and providing informed answers to the instructor's questions during the oral exam.

The oral exam takes place in the instructor's office and lasts 15 to 20 minutes. Several days in advance of the oral exam, the student turns in his paper and a copy of the article. Before the oral exam, the instructor writes several questions he might ask; he also writes the answers to these questions. This makes it easier for the instructor to take a few notes quickly during the oral exam and helps keep the discussion flowing smoothly. Because the student and the instructor each have a copy of the article during the exam, the instructor can ask detailed questions about tables, equations, words, and explanations.

I have used oral exams along with papers many times. If I suspect that work is not the student's own, then it is easy to question the student intensively about it during the oral exam. If the oral exam demonstrates that the student's understanding is not commensurate with what he has represented as his own work, then I grade accordingly.
Time and Effort

The oral exam is one more use of the instructor's time. Extra time is needed to read the article, to write questions for the oral exam, to conduct the oral exam, and to write comments afterward. These time costs can be managed to some degree by decreasing the length of the students' papers. I have found that using a short paper (e.g., 3 pages) along with an oral exam still takes a little more time than a long paper (e.g., 10 pages) without the oral component. Because an oral exam and a carefully graded paper are time-consuming activities, this approach is only appropriate when used with a small number of students (e.g., 20 or fewer).

Institutional policies sometimes require written assignments in courses which have a large number of students. In this case, it may not be possible for the instructor to become well informed on the topic(s) on which the students are writing, to carefully grade the papers, and to effectively deal with cheating on written assignments. The oral exam/paper does not overcome flawed policy.
Discussion

To the extent that the stated reasons for ignoring cheating are also the actual reasons for ignoring cheating, an oral exam alleviates some of the costs for faculty. Because the instructor avoids an accusation of plagiarism and the ensuing process, the oral exam/paper appears to eliminate, or at least greatly reduce the emotional and fear costs of dealing with plagiarism. A stressful confrontation is replaced with the routine task of grading the disparity between what the student represents as his own work and what the student understands.

The oral exam/paper calls for a low grade when this disparity is large. The common approaches to dealing with plagiarism are often accompanied by penalties such as an "F" for the course, a mark on the student's record, or suspension from college. In contrast to the difficulty of administering the severe penalties used with the common approaches, the moderate penalty used with the oral exam can be easily administered whenever it is warranted. Carter and Punyanunt-Carter (2007) report that students find severe penalties to be less acceptable than moderate penalties for plagiarism. Kuther (2003) finds that 68% of students say that "ignoring strong evidence of plagiarism" is "not ethical under any circumstances."

Conspicuously absent from the Keith-Spiegel et al. list of reasons for ignoring cheating is the lack of benefits for faculty of achieving a low incidence of cheating. Because there do not appear to be any benefits awarded to an instructor by others, the only benefits available are those awarded by oneself, e.g., satisfaction in doing the right thing. Those faculty who experience substantial self-awarded benefits may be willing to incur the time and effort costs of the oral exam/paper.
Conclusion

The high incidence of plagiarism indicates that effective approaches to dealing with plagiarism are not widely adopted by faculty. Part of the problem appears to be that the emotional, time and effort, and fear costs for faculty are too high for the common approaches to be effective. Given the lack of benefits for faculty of achieving a low incidence of plagiarism, new (and old) approaches to dealing with plagiarism should be considered with the costs for faculty in mind. Approaches which diminish the costs for faculty merit more attention.
References

Barry, E. (2006). Can paraphrasing practice help students define plagiarism? College Student Journal, 40(2), 377-384.

Brown, V. and M. Howell. (2001). The efficacy of policy statements on plagiarism: Do they change students' views? Research in Higher Education, 42(1), 103-118.

Bunn, D., S. Caudill, and D. Gropper. (1992). Crime in the classroom: An economic analysis of undergraduate student cheating behavior. Journal of Economic Education, 23(3), 197-207.

Carter, S. and N. Punyanunt-Carter. (2007). Acceptability of treatments for plagiarism. College Student Journal, 41(2), 336-341.

Diekhoff, G., E. LaBeff, R. Clark, L. Williams, B. Francis, and V. Haines. (1996). College cheating: Ten years later. Research in Higher Education, 37(4), 487-502.

Ebel, R. (1972). Essentials of Educational Measurement. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Hollinger, R. and L. Lanza-Kaduce. (1996). Academic dishonesty and the perceived effectiveness of countermeasures: An empirical survey of cheating at a major public university. NASPA Journal, 33(4), 292-306.

Keith-Spiegel, P., B. Tabachnick, B. Whitley, and J. Washburn. (1998). Why professors ignore cheating: Opinions of a national sample of psychology instructors. Ethics and Behavior, 8(3), 215-227.

Kuther, T. (2003). A profile of the ethical professor. College Teaching, 51(4), 153-160.

Landrau, J., P. Druen, and J. Arcuri. (2002). Methods for helping students avoid plagiarism. Teaching of Psychology, 29(2), 112-115.

Little, Brown Handbook. (1989). Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company.

Martin, D. (2005). Plagiarism and technology: A tool for coping with plagiarism. Journal of Education for Business, 80(3), 149-152.

McLafferty, C. and K. Foust. (2004). Electronic plagiarism as a college instructor's nightmare — prevention and detection. Journal of Education for Business, 79(3), 186-189.

Premeaux, S. (2005). Undergraduate student perceptions regarding cheating: Tier 1 versus tier 2 AACSB accredited business schools. Journal of Business Ethics, 62, 407-418.

Roig, M. (1997). Can undergraduate students determine whether text has been plagiarized? Psychological Record, 47(1), 113-122.

Roig, M. (2001). Plagiarism and paraphrasing criteria of college and university professors. Ethics and Behavior, 11(3), 307-323.

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. (1988). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Wilhoit, S. (1994). Helping students avoid plagiarism. College Teaching, 42(4), 161-164.

Students appear less likely to cheat in online classes
There are numerous reasons why students cheat on tests, papers, and assignments, but a new study says that students seem less willing (or able) to cheat when taking part in virtual classes. The study is limited in scope, but gives an early insight into the trends in online learning.

By Jacqui Cheng | Last updated September 17, 2009 3:04 PMText Size Print this article Leave a comment Anyone who has ever taught knows that students sometimes cheat. With the increasing prevalence of online classes, there has been some fear that cheating would shoot through the roof—it's a lot harder to spot answer-sharing on tests when it's all online, after all. A new study, however, suggests that cheating is actually less common among students in virtual classrooms, though limitations in this study mean that further research is needed before declaring a winner between online and traditional classes.

The study, titled "Point, Click, and Cheat: Frequency and Type of Academic Dishonesty in the Virtual Classroom," acknowledges previous reports stating that students who have a close relationship with their professors tend to be more honest—a belief that feeds into the idea that virtual classrooms invite more cheating. "Both students and faculty perceive that cheating occurs more frequently in virtual classrooms because online students are often believed to be more savvy at utilizing online resources than their on ground counterparts, or are less likely to be caught by faculty who are unfamiliar with online detection techniques," wrote the researchers.

However, when they surveyed 225 students at Friends University in Wichita, KS, they found that students appeared to be much more willing to engage in some form of cheating when "on the ground" versus a virtual classroom. Almost three times as many students admitted to engaging in any form of cheating while on campus compared to an online environment—this included cheating on tests, plagiarizing, fabrication of facts, somehow achieving an unfair advantage, aiding/abetting, falsification of records, and gaining unauthorized access to materials. In all instances, these activities occurred less frequently online than in real life, and in some cases (such as falsification of records and unauthorized access), it didn't occur at all online.

Among those who did engage in academic dishonesty in the online classroom, the largest percentage admitted to aiding and abetting—that is, helping someone else cheat by letting them copy answers or a paper. The researchers also noted that students who admitted to cheating in high school were also more likely to admit to cheating in college, and "only a small percentage of students in both samples reported getting caught." Though they acknowledge that going into the reasons why students cheat is beyond this study, the researchers theorize that students on the ground may be more compelled to engage in "panic cheating."

Of course, there are numerous caveats to taking a study like this at face value. Since the results were taken via self-reported survey, we can only count on the results from students who were willing to admit to cheating both on and off campus—a group that may not include everyone who has cheated in either situation. The sample size is also relatively small and only includes students from a single university, and the report notes that instructors may have anticipated more cheating in an online environment, therefore crafting class materials to be more challenging and involved than they would have otherwise.

Despite these limitations, the researchers believe that their findings are a good starting point for further studies on cheating in a virtual environment. One suggestion that sparks our interest is a study looking at the personality traits of students who choose to take online classes and whether those students are more motivated than the traditional campus student. Even if that were the case, however, the researchers acknowledge that a lingering concern over distance and disengagement remains: "Thus, the need for colleges and universities to search for ways to increase online students’ connectedness to the online community cannot be over stated. As online learning becomes more accepted as a means to an educational end and available to more people, it is likely that the prevalence of academic dishonesty will increase."

Recently, a group of students in Hanover, New Hampshire, broke into their high school at night to steal copies of upcoming Advanced Placement exams. The resulting scandal has turned national attention toward the prevalence of cheating in schools: A 2006 survey by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, for instance, found that 60 percent of high school students admit to having cheated on an exam in the past twelve months. Can anything be done to curb these high numbers? Tell us what you think.

(click on the survey which is also useful)