Creative Cheats

Photo by Greg Ebersole

With the advent of the Internet and the popularity of handheld electronic devices, such as iPods and cell phones, educators say students are becoming more creative in the ways that they cheat. But they still use low-tech methods, such as writing answers in a hat or on the labels of pop bottles.

Sunday, November 6, 2005 10:21 PM PST

By Hope Anderson

Mike Poindexter knew his student had potential. But when he turned in a term paper that sounded a little too good to be true, the Mark Morris High School teacher had a hunch.

He typed in his student's name in an Internet search engine -- and discovered that the teen reviewed work submitted to a term paper clearinghouse, called www.cheathouse.com. As a reviewer, he could get discounted or free papers, which he had turned in as his own.

"He was a good writer. He was capable of writing the paper," said Poindexter, an English teacher who's been in the business for 25 years. "It just didn't feel right, didn't quite sound like what I'd heard from that student before. ... I'd been interacting with students on their writing up to that point, and I hadn't seen evidence of that kind of paper."

With polished term papers and millions of pages of research just a mouse click away, educators say students are finding more creative ways to beat the system. Cheating has gone digital, from downloading essays to sending text messages on cell phones during exams.

In response, local school districts are tightening up academic honesty policies and considering subscriptions to an online detection service to catch plagiarism in students' work.

"Cheating is no longer copying somebody's paper, (although) it could be. It's much in the same way (that) stealing has taken a new life of its own, with computers and the Internet," said Pat Spear, principal of Kelso High School. "If you can pull it off the Internet instead of 10 or 11 hours of work -- quick and dirty."

According to a survey released in June, 70 percent of high school students admitted to one or more occasions of serious cheating on a test and more than 60 percent confessed to some sort of plagiarism.

The survey, conducted by Don McCabe, the founding director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University, polled 18,000 students at 61 schools over the last four years.

Local statistics were unavailable, but educators say they've noticed that cheating has gotten easier -- and more efficient -- over the years.

Tech-savvy students, raised on a diet of electronics and accustomed to downloading copyrighted music, may not realize that a cut-and-paste job of sentences or paragraphs without citing sources constitutes plagiarism, educators say, an offense that can result in a zero on an assignment to an 'F' for an entire course.

"Kids get in the habit in middle school of going to Web sites and sticking together chunks of data," Poindexter said. Students don't understand teacher don't want papers to sound like an encyclopedia entry. "We want it to come from you. It's very difficult to learn."

Some students feel the pressure to be successful or meet their parents' expectations.

"They're afraid. They don't want their cell phones taken away, or games or keys to the car," said Jimmie Hawkins, a 16-year-old Mark Morris junior.

Others don't take their classwork seriously -- or feel overwhelmed by their obligations, teens say.

"We get assigned a lot of stuff," said Sydney Deal, a 17-year-old Mark Morris senior. Students, caught up in a cyclone of activities, get stressed out, "and people just copy it right before class."

Or teens are just lazy, "they're just like, 'Oh, it's high school,' " Deal said.

Technology as a tool

Local educators say they're trying to make it more difficult for students to counterfeit their work, from adopting new academic honesty policies to educating students on citing sources and assigning more specialized paper topics.

Mark Morris officials adopted a new academic honesty policy this year, defining cheating and plagiarism and spelling out the consequences, which range from failing an assignment to failing an entire semester.

"Our way is to educate that honesty is the best policy," said Noma Hudson, the chairwoman of the school's English Department. "Just the purpose of your being here, your job, the 13 years you're in public school, is to learn. And handing in somebody else's paper hasn't taught you anything."

Schools also are using technology as a weapon to fight back.

"You know, it's easier to cheat, but it's also easier to catch them," Hudson said. "I can take a sentence out of a paper and type it into Google, and there it appears."

Some local schools, including the high schools in Longview and Kelso, are considering a subscription to an Internet detection service, Turnitin.com, which surveys more than 5 billion Web pages and identifies copied material in students' work.

Schools would pay $400 for a license fee and 75 cents per student for unlimited use. For a school with an enrollment of 1,000 students, the annual cost would be $1,150, according to a representative from Turnitin.com.

Students or teachers submit the work online, and then teachers receive a report that highlights material copied from other sources. The site also retains a copy of each students' paper, thwarting students from trading papers.

Educators also say preventing cheating takes common sense and a watchful eye: Hudson says before administering a test, she asks students to pull up their sleeves and prove their hands are ink-free. She doesn't allow students to use headphones or cell phones in class.

Bob Gustin, who teaches language arts at Kelso High School, said teachers keep portfolios of students' writing to track their progress during the year -- and for a comparison if some students' work seems suspicious.

The vocabulary students employ in a paper often can be a tip-off, he said.

"To tell you the truth, most are so obvious. They are using words and phrases they wouldn't normally use," Gustin said. "Not only are they cheating themselves, they often rat themselves out by using things they don't understand."

Schools must stay a step ahead of students who may be dishonest, said Spear, Kelso's principal.

"I just think with the Internet we're always playing catch up."