Mon moleskine

I had the chance to talk with a class of college undergraduates (real, live people in an actual classroom) a few weeks ago and one of the topics that came up made me re-examine a common problem for online teachers– cheating.

Academic cheating is nothing new but the impact it has on online education seems easier, and more widespread, than in face-to-face classrooms. This is a gut feeling, and the research suggests cheating and plagiarism are widespread in every educational environment, at any age, across every culture.

(Those of us in direct, live contact with smiling students are fooling ourselves to think classroom cheating is less prevalent, or that we can somehow catch evil-doers more easily in person.) I’ve written about ways to prevent online cheating here at On Teaching Online before, here.