Cheating the cheaters....

Today, I give Exam #1 in my class--one week later than planned. I pushed the date back both because I missed a day due to the illness, and because we'd somehow fallen way behind. No matter how much I cut out of the front few weeks of the schedule, and no matter how much more time I add between the first week and the first exam, we ALWAYS fall behind. I nearly always push back the first exam. And, oddly enough, we usually make it to Exam II right on time. I have no idea how this happens, especially since it happens regardless of how I reorder or reduce the material in the first section. So, I just do what I need to do, never panic, and somehow we end up back on track.

The exam I'm giving is a recycled version of my Spring 05 Exam I for this course. I make notes to myself about what I want to change/edit/delete and then revise each semester. I rarely toss out an entire exam and start over--why on earth would I when I've spent a lot of time writing and revising the current set of exams?

Anyway... we've had a lot of discussions recently about student cheating--primarily focused on plagiarism--and some of my colleagues are v. distraught and reluctant to believe that their students might cheat. Most of us hope that our students will not cheat, but we're a bit more familiar with educational lit and resigned to the fact that some will probably try. We were talking the other day about various cheat-discouraging strategies that we use in the classroom. Examples included:

• Multiple exam versions and explicit "dont bother trying to cheat" messages.
  
• One colleague uses exam cover sheets in 3-5 different colors and calls the exams "Version 1, Version 2, etc" but actually the exams are the same underneath. This, he says, provides a way to discourage students from looking at one another's papers but cuts down on the hassle factor associated with multiple versions of an exam (especially annoying if you are using exams that are scored electronically).
• Various strict rules about bags/papers/phones. Some require students to keep all personal materials, including phones, in a central location. Others require students to keep all personal belongings under the desk at all times. One has a "no baseball hats" rule--claiming that lots of students use them so that they can have less conspicuous wandering eyes.

I think that these are all pretty typical and I've tried some versions of most of these. These days, though, I take a new strategy. I dont WANT to police them, but I dont want cheaters to benefit from cheating, either, so I came up with a new plan: multiple unmarked versions of the exam. In other words, I make 2-4 versions of the exam (mixed up questions, but sometimes I mix up the answer choices--e.g., on Version 1 the answer to #1 is A, but on Version 2, the answer to #1 is in position C) but do NOT mark them as different versions. I use an identical cover/answer sheet so that it is not obvious to students that there are multiple versions--in case they do peek. But, if they cheat and copy what their neighbor wrote down for #6, they're automatically getting it wrong because, unbeknownst to them, their neighbor has a different test.

I know that this is an imperfect plan. I know that sometimes students do more than merely glance up... and I'm sure that some of them figure out right away that there are different versions of the exam... but that's ok, too, because then, perhaps, they wont be as likely to try to cheat. But at least this way I feel somewhat more comfortable with the fact that some students may try to cheat because in all likelihood they are actually going to to WORSE than if they'd just made their own best guess. And, yes, I do my "Dont cheat or you'll be sorry" disclaimer at the beginning.

When I shared my strategy with my colleagues, some were ready to jump on board this plan with their next exams. Some said, "oh, that's not a bad idea." and 2 of them were horrified! They both said that they thought that it was unfair to trick students into thinking that the exams were identical, and to nearly guarantee failure to students who checked their neighbor's paper. Their rationale was that it is deceptive to have several unmarked versions, and that students who might not cheat if they knew about the versions might be tempted to cheat in this case.

Are they kidding me?? I still dont see how I'm the bad guy here??

Totally still using my strategy. Giving the exam in 45 mins.