The majority of students, if not all, cheat a little bit with their schoolwork. This is just an inconvenient fact that educators have learned to live with. With online college, cheating became rampant during its formative years. But nowadays, the game has changed. It’s basically impossible for a distance learner to cheat. Let’s look at the reasons why in this article.
They make the exams cheat-proof
Cheating is mostly done during exams, so how would they make this cheat-proof? Online educators basically target their students’ critical thinking rather than their ability to memorize things from the lectures. So if you are an online student, you won’t be seeing multiple-choice questions on your exams, as the answers for these can easily be found on the internet.
They may use proctors
This one can be surprising for online education, but it’s true. It varies on the online college, but there are those who require their students to set foot on campus to take their exams, where a proctor will be present to supervise. Sometimes, the online school makes use of the technology available to the students by letting them take exams, while on a video conference call. This way, proctors can view the students.
Schools may use software
Online colleges use technology to educate, so they might as well use it to catch cheaters, too. They use plagiarism checkers for essays. So a student will be caught if they submit papers that they copied off the internet. They also make use of lockdown browsers. These things will keep the student on the exam webpage and will not allow them to go elsewhere, in case they thought of Googling for answers.
Cheaters are only cheating themselves
At the end of the day, those who cheat online college are only cheating themselves. If they find a way to successfully cheat and not get caught, they will be earning a diploma that will not have much value in reality. Exams exist so that the school will be able to assess how much you have learned and to identify which areas you need more help with. So cheating really won’t work.
