Facebook study groups = cheating?

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I seems to me that all the students who posted the information should be facing misconduct or academic honesty charges.

I suspect what you'll see instead is that 10% part of the grade being redistributed to other assignments and the students won't get any credit for the homework in the future.

If you're supposed to work independently and you are getting academic credit for the work and you instead share answers, hey, kids, you're cheating.

I wonder what colleges are going to do as technology makes it easier and easier to cheat. I wonder if the day will come where everything that counts in the grade will be done in proctored situations?

Colleges are constantly making adjustments for the technology age and instructors and faculty are updated everytime there's a new "cheating technique." For instance, when camera phones first became big, some high school and college smartasses decided to take pics of exams and send them to classmates. The classmates would either come to the exam late or say they were sick and had to take the exam at another time.

In response, faculty members implement strategies such as telling students that if they're more than 5 minutes late, they will have a big fat ZERO on the exam. Or telling students that the only thing that they can have in their hands is their exam and their pencil/pen and that all bags should be away from them. However, a lot of faculty are still going on the honor system which assumes that students are generally honest enough not to cheat on proctored exams or take home exams. I've even known faculty to leave the room as students take exams, knowing that those who feel the need to cheat are usually going to get average or below average grades anyway.

As a technology flashback of sorts, I remember hearing of "computer savvy" graduate students of the 1980s getting caught cheating on in-camera preliminary examinations. Switching the disk that the university gives them with their own disk that has detailed notes. Of course, these people got caught everytime. Plus, it's really pathetic because if studying didn't work out by the time you take an exam of that much weight, you're S.O.L regardless of how desperate you get.