Cheating is always a potential problem in the university or college setting. It is very problematic for students, in that their learning is being circumvented. Cheaters will be less competent as graduates. Would you want, for instance, an accountant performing audits in your office who cheated his way through business school?
Students who cheat also run the risk of being expelled, if caught. Cheating is problematic from an ethical standpoint, in that students who cheat in school will likely behave unethically in real life scenarios, placing the public at risk. The nursing student who cheats or plagiarizes will later become the nurse who falsifies client records and covers up medication errors.
Cheating is problematic for college programs, in that the integrity and competency of the entire program of study are at stake. If a school of nursing, for instance, has a reputation for student dishonesty, then the public loses respect for that nursing program. Employers will be reticent in hiring new grads from that program, due to the notoriety. The entire program suffers. Honest students are placed at a disadvantage because of the actions of the cheaters.
Types of cheating that occur in the classroom involve much more than the "traditional" passing of notes during exams and the sideways furtive glance at a neighbor's test. Students may store "cheat notes" in baseball caps, pullover jackets (sleeves or capes), written on the inside labels of water bottles, "tattooed" on forearms or scribbled on desktops. More techno-savvy forms of cheating involve the use of texting with cell phones, i-pods, buying textbook test banks over the internet, and sharing information about the exams via virtual means. Entire websites exist to give students advice on the latest techniques of cheating.
What can nurse educators do to safeguard the learning process in the classroom during quizzes and examinations?
Here is a list of suggestions that is by no means comprehensive:
Help students know and understand the nursing school's honor code, as well as the ana code of ethics. Also, cover the university or college's academic dishonesty policy and consequences for indiscretions.
Require students to spread out during testing (every other seat), if possible. Rotate seating during examinations.
Use proctors to circulate throughout the classroom during the test. A rule of thumb is one proctor per every 25 students in a room.
Avoid using standard test banks. Create your own multiple choice test items or alter the test bank questions substantially.
Use more than one version of the test during each examination. Change examination items significantly from semester to semester.
Require students to sign a "no cheating" affirmation on each test.
Do not allow cell phones, i-pods, pullover jackets, or baseball caps during the examination. Labels must be removed from water bottles. Bookbags and notebooks should be stored away from the desk (preferably in the aisle).
Do not allow students to take unproctored tests online. This is only asking for trouble.
If the cps "clicker" system is being used, require students to leave their clickers in the classroom (or remove batteries) after completing the test. Otherwise, students can get together in the hall to compare answers and they can still access and change their responses until the exam is officially "closed out" by the instructor.
I have found, in my experience, that the vast majority of nursing students are honest and ethical. Actual incidents of cheating are rare. Therefore, I caution educators to always treat students with respect and dignity. Avoid creating a suspicious environment in which everyone is "assumed" to be cheating. Cheating is a serious offense and students should be considered "innocent" unless caught in the very act. Still, instructors must remain vigilant. Hopefully, the advice given in this column will help the nurse educator prevent and detect any cheating that may be occurring in the classroom.
Or how about HESI cheating. We were divided into three groups to take the HESI with a lime limit of a couple of hours. The first group started at 830, the second started at 1130, and the third group started at 1300. By the time the 1300 group started, their buddies had already called them with "heads up" on questions that were on the exam.
Then it is there fault for scheduling it like that. Like waving a cookie in everyone face and expecting every single one to have the self control to not take it.
I saw some classmates cheatting as well during a test and they were not even shine about it, I think these people should never become nurses because is clear that they do not have any idea of what ethics are. I can not imagine pts in their hands. It is clear that they do not understand the true meaning of the word "NURSE".:angryfire
Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.
Or how about HESI cheating. We were divided into three groups to take the HESI with a lime limit of a couple of hours. The first group started at 830, the second started at 1130, and the third group started at 1300. By the time the 1300 group started, their buddies had already called them with “heads up” on questions that were on the exam.
Wow. This is very poor planning on the part of the nursing school administration. All of the students should have been required to take the test at the same time. If not, three DIFFERENT versions of the HESI test should have been administered. I wonder if the HESI company has any policy concerning this? Were the instructors aware that all this "collaboration" was going on, compromising the integrity of the test?
I heard of an instance where a class was given a "closed book" examination online. The students were told they were on their honor and to avoid collaboration and looking at their textbooks and notes. The results were very predictable: Rampant out-in-the open cheating. My university has a policy forbidding instructors to give unproctored tests online, to help avoid such scenarios.
I am a recent grad and in my school it would have been very difficult to cheat. The pre-req. classes it wouldn't be hard but the nursing classes VERY hard. You are not allowed to bring in anything to the testing center, not even your own pencil, (believe it or not someone took the time to write info all over their pencil), if you are going to take that much time why not just learn it.
I HATE it when people try to take the easy road. It hurts the individual in the end, I know if I had cheated my way through school I would not have been able to pass boards on the first try. I couldn't imagine anyone could guess their way to a passing grade.
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
My anatomy instructor said one time that he was wondering why on at least three occasions in a row that people kept looking at the ceiling until during the 3rd exam, he looked up himself and saw that someone actually wrote the answers to the tests on the ceiling. He said it was so amazing because it was a HIGH ceiling! Since then, for awhile, he would never announce the room an exam would be in. He'd leave a note on the door of our regular classroom telling us where to meet on exam days.
Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.
My anatomy instructor said one time that he was wondering why on at least three occasions in a row that people kept looking at the ceiling until during the 3rd exam, he looked up himself and saw that someone actually wrote the answers to the tests on the ceiling. He said it was so amazing because it was a HIGH ceiling! Since then, for awhile, he would never announce the room an exam would be in. He'd leave a note on the door of our regular classroom telling us where to meet on exam days.
OMG! Some of these "creative" forms of cheating take so much time and effort, that actually studying for the test would be easier I heard of an instance where a student actually broke into an instructor's office to steal a copy of the test. (Climbed up the wall and went in through an open window.) The outcome was not so good for this student, as he was caught in the act.
Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.
I taught briefly in an LPN program and cheating was rampant there, as well. The policy was that confirmed cheaters were to fail the class and would need to reapply to the program for the next year. Sadly, had that actually been implemented, we would not have had a graduating class for the two years that I was there. Although exams were well-proctored, I would estimate that 90% or more plagiarized their term papers, at least in part, and the majority of them cut and pasted entired paragraphs from the internet. Several turned in papers that were printed directly from the source, complete with web address at the bottom, and one went so far as to purchse his. What a disappointment.
You bring up an important point. Plagiarism is another very common form of cheating, in that a student is stealing another individual's ideas and hard work. Most colleges and universities have strict policies and severe penalties regarding plagiarism. Here are just a few examples:
Some schools go so far as to forbid "Self-Plagiarism" - using your own original work already submitted in one class for an entirely different assignment in another class.
This article has some great advice on detecting plagiarism in student papers: http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/mbugeja01.htm One simple but effective method is to insert a few key sentences from a suspect paper into a metasearch engine such as dogpile.com
Specializes in Hospice & Palliative Care, Oncology, M/S.
I'm not yet in a nursing program, however in the last few years I've been in school I have noticed many things that made me sad, because it seems that cheating is almost accepted by many teachers/professors.
A large part of my History class is writing papers and personal reflections on what we've read. He offered two choices when it came time for our Midterm... take it in class or a take-home exam. This guy took the time to go online to sites that search for plagiarized phrases, and what he told us was amazing. One couple who were taking the class together actually had the exact same papers. They didn't bother changing the wording, even! Another student simply took an entire page straight off of Wikipedia. Sadly, this student didn't think to actually read the page, because some joker had altered some of the information to make it so far off base that it was blatantly obvious.
I think that cheating needs to be addressed as soon as children get into school. They can't be allowed to skate through years of school cheating, and expect to get away with it once they enter into a specific program.
I sure wouldn't want someone as my nurse or CPA or lawyer who had cheated all the way through!!!
while doing my pre_reqs i sat next to a friend who was cheating on an quiz, i confronted her about it. her response was that "it was worth 25points!!!" i explained to her that her character as a person was worth more than 25points and so was our friendship. she turned herself in.
One simple but effective method is to insert a few key sentences from a suspect paper into a metasearch engine such as dogpile.com
And that is exactly how I discovered most of them. It's quite easy to tell when a student's "voice" isn't reflected in his/her paper. And to have a failing student turn in a paper in perfect MLA format, and then to not know that it was formatted as such, well . . . how stupid did they think I was?
Sadly, the other teachers in the program had no clue and continued to accept papers that were clearly not the students' own works. Even after I explained the easy procedure to uncover plagiarism, the director insisted that it was too much trouble or that it somehow wasn't worth it to call them out for it. I suspect that it was to prevent the loss of state funding and to make sure that we actually had some students that would graduate at the end of it. One of the many reasons I left nursing education.
i'm in the end of my first year of nursing school and my school has just had a bout of cbeating. my entire level was then penalized for the cheating even though the majority of us weren't. i can never cheat, one it takes too much time and concentration and too i'm a goner if i get caught! i guess people are desperate, real desperate, sad.
I heard of an instance where a student actually broke into an instructor's office to steal a copy of the test. (Climbed up the wall and went in through an open window.) The outcome was not so good for this student, as he was caught in the act.
libnat
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Then it is there fault for scheduling it like that. Like waving a cookie in everyone face and expecting every single one to have the self control to not take it.