Titansbinary

Education is the Best Thing you can have

Why do students cheat and what to do about it?

by · March 25, 2024

Students cheating in the class is unfair, not only for their learning but also for the students working hard in the class, exams, and assignments. Cheating habit in students is such a problem for the schools and just saying that these students are not into studying, don’t want to learn, and are lazy enough wouldn’t be ethical and correct. There is a lot of science behind cheating in the class, in the exams, or the assignments irrespective of the type of school. As the students get old or children grow up with cheating habit if ignored can become a concrete habit in them, which ultimately leads them to the dark and bad activities indeed to even pass the exams and not even trying to learn anything. 

Here are the elaborative reasons why the students chea5 in class, what causes them to cheat in assignments, homework, etc.

 Reasons why students cheat: 

The common reasons why students cheat are:

  1. Poor study skills: it is observed that the students with poor study skills are likely to cheat in the class. These students are not able to get the concepts of the topics, they are habitual of cramming, skipping classes, try to multitask while studying, listening music, not well organized, etc, al these lead them to be overwhelmed, feel unprepared and making them to not keep up with the content and ultimately they cheat in the class.
  2. Bad time management: This is another common reason for students’ academic dishonestly. Poor time management though can be correct, if interposed in students, it gets stuck in them like a parasite and can affect their whole college, university, or life. Good time management is really important for success in students’ life. Those who can manage time well, are less aligned to the stress, failure and can sort the whole day’s schedule really well.
  3. Pressure: External expectations, getting in the good books of parents, teachers, and students, looking good in the class as n intelligent, smart students, work overload, assignments, too many tasks, fear of getting failed, test anxiety are some of the leading agendas that cause pressure on the students, not letting them learn better. These students then, make cheating the only solution so that their grades don’t get affected. Where is the learning happening here? Even some students get depressed and psychologically affected as subconsciously they are realizing of not getting anything but actually want to learn and not just gain good grades.
  4. Social and cultural encouragement: Students observe and learn a lot from their surroundings. Watching people succeed from the dishonest ways, shortcuts and politics influence the students to adopt this way and get benefits by cheating. But cheating, in reality, has zero benefits, trust me! 

Many students cheat in order to help their buddies, peers deciding to cheat and not study, or some kind of social obligation. The students helping their friend is a good gesture but keep in mind helping your friend in the studies will cause no benefit to your friend’s learning. Students should be taught there is no solution helping their pals because everyone’s way of learning is differen=, that learning is shown to the instructor, and teachers can easily catch the material and differentiate. 

  1. Exam anxiety: This happens in case of high-stakes assignments or examinations, when students get too much anxious about what to do and are not able to cover the syllabus, resulting in low expectations for success from their own self. Competition in the class, feeling competent with the students’ counterparts in the class can also lead to class anxiety out of which students cheat.
  2. Technology: Technology is making everything easy. Students have become persistent in grabbing the hone and searching everything on the internet whether that’s a problem, homework answers, or trial for cheating. The Internet has made students accessible with the tricks they have recently started using in cheating methods. Depending on the internet too much, is a curse for sure and students’ future get downgraded. The covid-19 era has surprisingly changed the whole setup of the education structure. It has lately been seen that students in online classes cheat frequently as compared to offline types. The students get anxious about everything in the new world. They should be taught patience and mindfulness.
  3.  Fear of failure or no fear at all: by the statement fear of failure or no fear at all, we mean, students are seen to cheat when they fear of getting failure, seeing consequences of cheating, getting insulted in classes by poor grades, and for the reputations. In contrast to this, it is also seen that students cheat when they lack any fear of consequences, which may happen when the school structure is not responsive enough, they know they won’t suffer even they cheat. It is really important for making students understand the relationship between the learning process and getting just grades. 
  4. Improper understanding of academic integrity policies: Students, in many cases, have an improper or completely different understanding of dishonesty in education and learning. They should be made familiar with the academic integrity policies and categories of behavior that are unacceptable by the school authority.
  5. Students chat in the class because they believe that are not going to be caught by the instructor, if caught school won’t take any action. Students should be warned of all the repercussions they would be facing if get caught. 
  6. Non-engaging assignments: students have shared that they cheat because assignment seems less interesting to them, making them less like that class. It is important that students get monitored well and assignments are well designed so that they feel tempted to do them and feel less overwhelmed to cheat.

How can you prevent students from cheating in class:

You might be thinking and feeling disheartened on what to do about students cheating in the class: 

Here is what you can do:

  • Vacate the whole of the sitting spots for the test, make sure students are just sitting with a test paper, answer sheet, and stationery that too as opened so that they are not looking for any place to hide the chits or stuff for cheating purpose.
  • Make the test hall spacious enough, the rows should be set apart so that they are many ways to walk through and around the class. Allot students’ particular seats don’t let them sit according to their choice otherwise they simply sneak near to their friend’s seat
  • The students should be made aware of all the rules of cheating prior to providing them with test papers. 
  • The assignments should be well structured and more engaging to empower therein memorization and enforce more study skilled in ti the students than to provide standardized assignments and set a race in the class.
  • Normalize seeking help in the mindset of the students. Let them know that asking for help in their studies is not bad and can resist exam anxiety. You need to help the students in every way possible. 
  • Making a good relationship with the students can really prevent cheating. Students opening up with the teacher has drastically shown positive effects on the learning and teacher being able to tackle the strengths and weak points of the students, guiding them well and encouraging them to not cheat in class, be more focused on learning.

.

Carter Martin
Latest posts by Carter Martin (see all)

Tags:

Carter Martin

Hi, I am Carter, and Welcome to Answerout. I started writing on this Blog to share with you guys the tips, Facts and Research which I did in Education Field. & Unlike Some Students, I loved Learning Since a very young age and the best part which excites me are the new Findings in this Field and Increasing more Knowledge.

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *