Cheaters

This past week I gave four classes their midterm exams. And, not too unexpectedly, I caught students cheating. But what was suprising was that these students were women. Not that I am an authority on the subject but usually I only catch men (boys?) copying answers. When I mentioned this to some of my colleagues, they weren't the least bit shocked. Boys don't care enough to cheat here.

Just a few minutes after the exam was over, I began running through the vocabulary portion of the test and noticed that one student had yet to get a single answer correct. Sure, I'm usually tough but not that tough. Looking more closely, I realized that the reason for the problem was that she had written the answers for the second version of the test - the version that a classmate sitting on either side of her. I was howling mad.

Later, I shared this with Amanda who took on the challenge of identifying who it was that this student cheated off of. With 80 or so students, I thought this was unlikely but within a couple of minutes, the co-cheater was found (their short answers were too alike to be coincidence). I think Amanda has a future in law enforcement.

The next day, I called in both of them where the first student admitted to the crime while the second acknowledged that she allowed but did encourage her friend to cheat. Neither student apologized or even indicated that what they did was wrong.

Both students recieve an F for the exam and the cheater will get an automatic 0 for the course.

Yeah, things are the same all over.