The Rise Of Techno-Cheating & Fall Of Memorization
- July 17th, 2009
- 8 Comments
I’m doing an interview on Monday related to the Common Sense Media survey released in June about teens using tech to cheat, and thought I would use a post to sort out some initial thoughts about the results. Just to recap, here are the main findings nicely summarized in eSchool News:
According to the poll, more than a third of teens with cell phones (35 percent) admit to cheating at least once with them, and two-thirds of all teens (65 percent) say others in their school cheat with them.
Of the teens who admit to cheating with their cell phones, 26 percent say they store information on their phone to look at during a test, 25 percent text friends about answers during a test, 17 percent take pictures of the test to send to friends, and 20 percent search the internet for answers during tests using their phones.
Also, nearly half (48 percent) of teens with cell phones call or text their friends to warn them about pop quizzes.
What’s more, just over half of students polled (52 percent) admitted to some form of cheating involving the internet.
Twenty-one percent of students say they’ve downloaded a paper or report from the internet to turn in, while 50 percent have seen or heard about others doing this; 38 percent have copied text from web sites and turned it in as their own work, while 60 percent have seen or heard this; and 32 percent have searched for teachers’ manuals or publishers’ solutions to problems in textbooks they are currently using; while 47 percent have seen or heard this.
Even more concerning is that many students do not consider this behavior as cheating. Only about half of students polled admit that cell phone use during tests is a serious cheating offense, and just 16 percent say calling or texting friends to warn them of a pop quiz is cheating; instead, they believe they’re simply helping a friend.
Students who cheat using the internet generally view plagiarism as more serious an offense than other types of cheating, yet more than a third of teens (36 percent) said downloading a paper from the internet was not a serious offense, and 42 percent said coping text from web sites was a either a minor offense or not cheating at all.
Most of the media have picked up on the disconnect between what we consider cheating and what teens consider “helping a friend” or using their phone to reference past notes or other answers. While the helping a friend response feels like a creative spin on what they know is questionable, this generation has certainly grown up learning to depend on the internet for instant answers (just as many adults have). It might feel like a waste of time to have to memorize information we can all easily find by typing key words into Google or Wikipedia. Accessing the answers digitally during a test may just seem like an extension of how they do their homework. Maybe they think being able to FIND the right answer is just as valid as being able to memorize the answers in advance.
When I interviewed an English teacher for Totally Wired, I remember her talking about the lack of teaching about what plagiarism actually is at her school. My guess is that some students literally don’t realize copying and pasting text from the internet for a paper is plagiarism. Still, students I interviewed also told me stories about how easy it was to use “the technology excuse” to get out of situations like not having completed assignments. Instead of “my dog ate my homework,” it’s “didn’t you get it? I emailed it to you?” when they really didn’t.
Are today’s teens bigger cheaters than teens from previous generations? Have we as a society become more comfortable cutting corners and being less ethical? According to Josephson, it sounds like the answer is a resounding yes. But I would also argue that teens aren’t raised in a vacuum. They are learning behaviors modeled not only by their peers but by adults and our society as a whole.
As for the role of technology, it appears to be amplifying this behavior (making it easier and faster for more teens to cheat), though I would also question the paradigm of memorization and challenge educators to focus on developing the important 21st century skills around searching smarter and thinking critically about information sources (i.e. information literacy) as well.
The premise of memorization is the problem here. What’s far more important than memorizing some formulas is knowing where to find them and how to apply them.
In NO industry is collaboration considered cheating. Only in SCHOOL is this a problem. What are we teaching our kids?
I’m an employer. I want my employees reaching out and building networks of people that can help them. I struggle with this whole ‘that’s cheating’ attitude. It’s something I need to UNTEACH my employees. It does NOT matter to me if you know how to do something, it matters to me that you can figure out how to do it. Most businesses, especially information based, need employees who know how to find and apply information, not that have a repository of facts in their heads. We are creating everything new - NO ONE knows how to do the things many companies deal with on a daily basis unless you are a clerk of some kind. We are figuring it all out on the fly. Building alliances, search skills, knowing where and how to find information - all these are what’s valuable.
The argument that school, memorization, and solitary work teaches you how to think is absolutely wrong. If we really want to teach people how to think, we should have a class called How To Think, not Ancient Greek History. You don’t teach thinking skills by forcing 30 people to memorize the same names, dates, and events. You do it by teaching principles, and by teaching directly the actual skills the education system claims to want to create.
We need more ‘How to Think’, ‘How to Collaborate’, ‘How to Negotiate’, ‘How to Resolve Conflict’ and less ‘Memorize a bunch of stuff for a test’
Plagiarism is an exception. Passing off someone elses work as your own is clearly wrong. But forcing kids to memorize facts and not giving them what’s truly important - that is to say thinking skills is the big problem here.
Thinking about plagiarism some more. I’m always telling my employees to research before writing - cobble together a collection of other people’s work and give me an opinion. Build on whats already out there, don’t start from scratch.
If kids don’t realize copying someone else’s work from the internet is plagiarism, who’s fault is that? This reinforces my argument that we’re not teaching important principles.
As I was reading this, I had the thought “they need to change the focus away from memorization” - so I personally think you are right on target with this.
At it’s greatest level, school should help people learn how to think and behave. At times memorization might play a role in that but it seems like it’s time for a wholesale reevaluation.
Students must learn basic principles and rules of logic, and be tested accordingly, not tested for facts one can memorize. Stressing this would help curb cheating. See “Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better” on amazon.
RE “just 16 percent say calling or texting friends to warn them of a pop quiz is cheating.”
I’m a grownup, and I don’t consider that cheating, either.
Students don’t take an oath after a pop-quiz not to tell other people that they took one.
[...] I’d never really thought of it that way. Someone who ought to remain anonymous alerts me to a discussion of a recent study on student “cheating” on exams via mobile phones and similar technology, which found, not only that lots of kids do it, but that [...]
I cannot agree more with the very thesis of this thread. I still find it hard to fathom why memorization is such a critical concept in education. The ability to work within a group is so critical that it’s almost too late to teach when in the field. My wife is a research chemist, she has to deal with this conundrum every day, brilliant people with no ability to communicate. The statement that Johnny/Susie dosen’t work and play well together needs to be taken much more seriously than they don’t have the 12x tables memorized. It appears to both of us that the higher your level of education, the less communacative you are!
[...] from a Common Sense Media survey on teens using technology to cheat and several excerpts from previous Ypulse posts on the topic. From there, rest assured, I responded in my own words and properly cited and linked [...]