Nowadays, cheating has gone far beyond simply looking at a neighbor's paper for an answer. Cheating is done in most classrooms, and teachers know that cheating has been done in schools since the time group schooling began. While cheating might not go away, today's students are finding new and more creative ways to get their work done for them.
Cheating in Class
Cheating can be done in person. Oftentimes, this is the easiest form of cheating because students engage in this type of cheating very passively. Cheating on the Internet requires actively seeking out help on an assignment whereas cheating in person may start in a random conversation. Students may begin talking about an assignment and then the conversation turns into getting the assignment done for them. In this scenario, it is very difficult for the essay to be checked for plagiarism and cheating. If the essay written for the student is an original work and is not copied from anywhere, it may be virtually impossible for the teacher to find out if the student wrote the paper or had the paper written for them. However, the risk of getting a paper done for you by a friend is that the essay might not earn you a high mark.
Cheating Online
The Internet is used by almost all of today's students. Most students use the web to research or check formatting for their papers. However, there are also online avenues where students can easily cheat. Student cheating is no longer limited to paying the best writer in the class to draft something for you. Now students can have their essays written for money. It's as simple as locating a website and placing an offer. These websites connect students with people who are willing to write an essay for strangers in exchange for payment. A student can get professional essays written for them simply by uploading the assignment guidelines and paying for the finished essay. Writing essays for another person can be a very lucrative business. Many people who cheat for others online can make a lot of money.
How Teachers Fight Cheating
Many tech-savvy teachers thought that something should be done about online student cheating. For every website where a student can have their homework done for them, there is another website developed to fight that cheating. Teachers often have their student's work checked for plagiarism by using online resources such as turnitin.com. This website is designed to scan a paper for matches to any other paper produced. Copied text is found by the website and the teacher is alerted of the cheating. Catching a copied paper is easy for non tech-savvy teachers. A quick search of a plagiarized sentence will come back with a positive result. Matching results means that the cheating is caught by the teacher. Students must be aware of the fact that teachers have just as many options to check for cheating as students have options to cheat. Likewise, teachers should be aware that students are developing new and innovative ways to get away with cheating.
