Concern about cheating — what do you do?

[Lecka]

I am newly homeschooling my daughter and currently limiting her Internet access.  It’s not a huge limit, but she does her schoolwork without access to the Internet.  

Unfortunately I have been hearing that with the pandemic online school stuff they have had here, it is very easy to cheat and cheating is rampant.  How rampant?  I don’t know.  

I had wanted her to be off her laptop anyway, and chose things along those lines for this semester.

Now I go back and forth about next year, because if she might homeschool during high school, I think we need to make an informed situation with her knowing what an online class would be like.  

But I don’t want to get into a situation where I wonder if she is cheating.

Right now I have zero concerns about her reading and writing subjects.

But I check on her when she is doing math to make sure she isn’t using a calculator or looking up answers.  I don’t actively think she is going to cheat, but I feel like it’s not out of the question that she would. 

I am curious what others think about this issue?  Do you look for classes that have more interaction or more open-ended assignments?  Do you look for classes set up to have some work be done off line?

Do you err on the side of being more strict or more trusting?

 

[HomeAgain]

If she's doing online classes from home, why not just keep the computer/laptop in communal rooms when she's working?

I don't think there's a single answer for all kids, but this is something you have to work out parameters for yourself.

[Miss Tick]

28 minutes ago, Lecka said:

Do you err on the side of being more strict or more trusting?

I make sure I'm trusting (even if I have doubts). I really don't want to get into some kind of competitive cheating/lock down situation. I have spoken bluntly to my dc that they could surely cheat on some things if they wanted to, but where would that get us?

I look for the best class I can find to teach particular material to my specific students. I don't consider cheating possibilities when I do that. Keep in mind that many online providers for homeschool classes have been doing this for a long time. The pandemic pushed many, many teachers into a new medium without a lot of parent or student buy-in.

One thing I wish I had done explicitly before we started would be to state that all tests should be done at the kitchen table. That way I would or could be in the room while the test is going on. I discovered people taking tests in other rooms and that made me wonder about the temptation of cheating.

Something that concerns me more than cheating are all the electronic distractions available. I'm not convinced any of my dears yet own the carrot and stick concept. When somebody complains about having a lot to do and not enough time, I will occasionally ask if keeping a time card for a day or two might help them discover where their time is going. My assumption is that they are not spending as much focused time on difficult subjects as they think they are, but I could be wrong! A time card would give us some data to look at.

You've got to work with the personality of the child(ren) you have. If she has been trustworthy to now there's no reason to think she will change.

[Lecka]

It had honestly not occurred to me to say to work in the kitchen!  I think that would make a huge difference, in how I felt about the level of temptation.  
 

She likes to do a lot of her work in the living room right now anyways.  Which — ties into her brothers being at public school, and not having a laptop in her room anymore.  

Previously I had my younger son in the living room and this daughter and my older son would be in their rooms, and not disturb each other.  But it turned out that wasn’t working well for my daughter even though I think it was fine at the beginning.  
 

I took her laptop to turn in to her previous school last week 🙂  

 

I think for now she needs higher supervision and lower temptation, but I can do that while being trusting.  

 

[Lecka]

I think if I were going to decide today, I would not look at anything online, for next year.  There is no reason to borrow trouble.  

[Clemsondana]

I've been teaching homeschoolers for 10 years and I have anywhere from 20-40 students each year in my biology class.  Some are online, and some come to a live co-op class (since we only meet 2 hrs/week, they do a lot of work at home).  I catch students cheating every year, in both formats.  But, the majority of students aren't cheating.  The biggest issue is copying-and-pasting of answers - students will sometimes just type the question into a search engine and then copy and paste a few sentences or paragraph from one of the results. This is usually easy to spot because search engines don't actually find answers, they just match keywords, so the answer doesn't always actually answer the question.  Over the years, I've learned to word questions such that the search engines are bad at finding the right answer.  It's also a tip-off when the answers are grad school-level from high school freshmen, or if their test answers differ markedly from their homework.  As a parent, this would actually be fairly easy to catch - if a parent picked a few questions and said 'Huh...I don't know a lot about how proteins are made - can you explain it to me?' and their student couldn't do it while having an answer on their test...  I also have students cheat on completely open-ended assignments.  I have students do a couple of article reveiws - basically, pick any article about a science topic and write a few paragraphs about it.  Sometimes these are plagiarized.  I also have them write a 2ish page report about an ecosystem of their choosing and those are sometimes plagiarized, with entire paragraphs lifted from various websites.  

I think that a bit of parental involvement goes a long way with this - even a simple conversation with your kid can give you an idea of whether they understand the material.  Even if you don't know it yourself, if your kid is frequently unable to explain their work and then they earn a 97%, you'd wonder if something was up and ask the teacher.  Generally, if I suspect an issue I first give no credit for the answers in question, with a note to contact me because this answer looks suspiciously like the first paragraph of wikipedia.  Usually students will apologize and stop.  If I see further instances, I'll contact parents.  Most are appalled and intervene, but some will say that their student studies by memorizing paragraphs.  

[Ting Tang]

I wish I had some advice. This is our second year homeschooling, and I have avoided online academy classes except a 6 week winter literature intensive that didn't issue formal grades.  My main reason for being so hesitant about online programs is that I'm not sure my children are the type who will be engaged in that format as the main format, though my life would be easier!

On the other hand...  my kids often "check" with me while they are doing their written quizzes/tests.  I tried to be better about that this year---not giving them too much help and leading them to the correct answers.  I have a good grasp of what they truly understand and if they aren't quite there on certain topics. 

I feel like the best way to avoid cheating is to ensure they know their stuff.  But I suspect it gets harder at the high school level.  Academic integrity is very important.  I am sure online schools have them, and all students should review the rules.  Infractions are very serious.  Make sure your child understands.

[Lecka]

I think there are some classes where I would not be suspicious and then I would want to talk to her and check up and do tests in the living room, and things like that.  But those are the areas where I feel little interest in looking online right now.  That is the stuff that is going well.  
 

The area where I wonder about an online class is the area that is not going as well, and then I would be suspicious.  So it’s probably not something I should make be online anyways.  
 

I think it makes a lot of sense to be able to check up in ways that aren’t like — spying on everything being done or something like that.
 

 

[kiwik]

It probably depends on the course as well as the kid.  Ds12 has just started Derek Owens prealgebra  and the homework and exams are hand written and scanned so there is no need to have a device until after they have finished.

[kristin0713]

We have moved to almost all online classes this year and cheating is not an issue here. For math, they need to show work. The answers are in the back of the book so they can check their work but the problems aren't worked out. So just copying the answers wouldn't suffice. Same with quizzes and tests. They need to take pictures and send them in to their instructor and showing work is required. Once you get up into high school math, most problems are multi-step and calculators are used anyway. For writing, it would be pretty obvious to me if my kids were cheating. I know their writing style and abilities and I'm pretty confident that I could spot a copy and pasted essay that they tried to pass off as their own. But their classes have required such specific homework assignments that I don't think it would even be that easy to cheat. DD's German class allows open book tests for the written portion and then there is a speaking portion directly with the teacher so either she knows it on the spot or she doesn't. They only subject where it would be easy to cheat is the physical science class that DS is taking. It's a traditional textbook approach and he could theoretically look up test answers in the book or online. Quizzes are actually open book but the teacher asks that a parent proctor tests. And then I think it comes down to knowing your own kids. My kids don't even like me to help them if they think it might be cheating for me to help. So I'm not concerned that they would actively try to cheat on their own. 

[Lecka]

I have turned out not to be concerned at home, but at the same time, my daughter continues to need to be off the Internet and out of her bedroom.  That is fine since she is in middle  school.

I am still concerned about cheating at the high school here and I don’t know what we will do when she gets to that age.  My son talks to me about it, but he is a different kid, but he is also more mature just by being older and was also immature when he was younger!  

[Lecka]

I do believe it is incredibly easy to cheat in a few of my son’s local b and m high school classes.  
 

And my daughter was probably cheating in some of her middle school classes before we pulled her out.  We are just moving on in life and I don’t think she was cheating for a long time — but I do suspect that she was going in that direction.  

[Lecka]

I am jealous of classes where it seems like there is an effort made to not make it SO easy to cheat.  Some of my son’s classes are that way, too, clearly more personal and expecting more individual work and with that level of personal feedback from the teacher.  
 

But a few not so much.  
 

And then for my daughter I think the pandemic changes were just problematic for her.  

[Janeway]

You can white list the sites she needs to do her classes so she cannot access any other sites during school time other than the ones she needs for school. This does not always work well with public school because teachers will frequently rely on many different websites for schoolwork. When my kids were in public school, teachers were using stuff like Twitter. Quizlet actually is one of the main places that I can tell for cheating. All you have to do is Google one question and you can find all the questions from a form test or assignment. So for example my child might have an assignment in history and then he will Google one question from his history assignment and it’ll pull up the Quizlet for that assignment. this is something that happens when it’s a program that’s being used widely. this happened when my son was in public school and it was also happening when he was using a private school that used Alpha Omega’s program. However I will say a bonus was when he had to read every question to cross reference what the answer was he actually ended up remembering the answers to the questions. 

[Lecka]

Thanks for this information!