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I was watching a news report this morning about students using ChatGPT that asked whether this was considered cheating. That got me to thinking about how we encourage cheating in education..

Think about it: The purpose for education is to provide the student with the foundational knowledge they need to be successful in work and life. We all want to be successful, so cheating to get there doesn't seem to me to be a very profitable endeavor. After all, at the end of the day you still have to know how to do things in order to be successful. I used to remind my nursing students of this all the time: If you want to be a good nurse you're going to need to actually know what you're doing. Cheating might get you through the class, it might even allow you to pass the licensing exam but the real test is whether you can function in the real world. It's a hell of a lot less stressful to actually know what you're doing when in an emergency than to try to wing it because you lack the knowledge to actually perform correctly.

Why We Cheat

My experience, after twenty years of teaching, is that the reason we cheat is that we want to get a good grade and pass the class, but we don't want to do the actual work needed to earn that good grade. Student's rarely understand the purpose of education. For them going to class, reading, studying and so on are simply obstacles to becoming an adult or, if they're in college, obstacles to becoming a teacher, engineer, doctor, or whatever it is they want to be when they graduate. We look for shortcuts.

But why do we cheat to get good grades? The simple reason is that schools (and parents) focus on grades rather than learning. There is an assumption that grades reflect the level of learning the student has achieved and, in an ideal world, this is at least partly true¹. Unfortunately, we put so much emphasis on grades that the relationship between what the student learns and what the grade reflects has been lost. (Here's a great comic strip that sums this all up quite well!) Some students are quite adept at test-taking and can pass an exam even with little or no knowledge of the content. Add a bit of cheating into the mix and students can complete a course while taking nothing from it. That's pretty damn sad in my view.

Moreover, grades are often used as measures of the quality of instruction. That is, the teacher is rated based on the number of students who pass the course. Some years ago I had an anatomy and physiology teacher who tended to give students the test questions or answers prior to the test so that the students would be successful on the exams. The problem, of course, is that when they got to my class where they needed to apply the knowledge they were expected to have brought from that class they struggled. Rather than realize that the A&P teacher failed them, the students blamed me for demanding that they know the information. Sorry -- if you're going to take care of cardiac patients, you need to know how the heart works.

But, because students didn't do well in my class I was reviewed as an ineffective instructor rather than the victim of an incompetent prior instructor. It never seemed to occur to my higher-ups that my class depended on knowledge provided by a prerequisite course. If that course failed the student, that negatively affected me. (We won't get into how that whole process reeks of a lack of critical thinking on the part of the manager.)

So, How Do We Fix This?

In an ideal world, we would, first, do away with grading. Rather, we would work to determine whether or not the student understands the concepts that are being taught, identify the areas where they are still struggling then work to ensure that those areas are properly addressed so that the student does, in fact, master the concepts. Grading really accomplishes nothing except to demoralize the student who is struggling. It reinforces the notion that the student cannot achieve success. It also establishes a "pecking order" both for the teacher and for students. With grades, the goals becomes the grade rather than mastery of the material.

Unfortunately, the reality is that this approach is not practical when working with large numbers of students. It also would not be accepted by legislators because they would no longer have something to complain about. After all, if all students actually achieved their goals, that would show that the educational system is working, which is anathema to politicians.

Another issue is how to go about determining if the student understands the concepts. In fact, there are multiple ways to accomplish this though designing and implementing those approaches may prove daunting in a larger classroom. Some schools use peer grading where students evaluate each other's work for quality, etc. Evaluating the same content using multiple approaches helps to tease out those areas where the student has on-going weaknesses so that they can be addressed. Oral exams, rather than written tests, may allow the student to more fully express their understanding of the content. Allowing the student to describe or apply 'every thing they know about' a topic may help identify what is important to the student and what their actual level of understanding is. Remember that when teachers write a test they are identifying what they believe is important, not what the student feels is most important. This approach, in particular, allows the student to apply their understanding to their specific situation and may actually provide the teacher new insights into the topic.

There are other approaches, such as standards based testing, equity grading, and so on that have the potential to improve education and achieve the true goal of education -- learning. Unfortunately, too many people cling to the old ways because "that's the way it's always been done." Then complain because it isn't working. And until that problem is resolved nothing will change and cheating will continue.

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