A professor emailed us the other day: “My graduate students tell me there’s such a thing as cheating websites. What are the main ones so I can keep on top of them?”
We don’t have a list. Cheat sites are like wack-a-mole– when one closes, another pops up in its place. So, it’s fairly difficult to keep up with them. And cheating websites vary in the type of cheating service provided:
Some focus on essays.
Some focus on subjects.
Some focus on textbook answers (yes, the Teacher’s Edition is public now).
Some focus on instant answers– text the question and the answer is delivered right back to your phone.
Some cheat sites focus on the whole individual– whatever the need, they have a solution.
One thing these sites have in common? They all take Visa.
Why students cheat
The reasons why students cheat varies, too. In his Edutopia article “Why Students Cheat” author Andrew Simmons outlines some of the most common reasons student cheat including:
- Rationalization
- Consequences of failure too high
- Not seeing seeing the value of work
- Peer pressure: “contagious” among young people– everyone else is doing it
- Simplicity: technology makes cheating easy
Simmons writes: “…educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.”
We can’t shut down cheating sites. But we can help students understand that cheating is wrong and we can disincentivize cheating so students don’t feel they have to resort to cheating to pass a test, assignment or class.
