Opinion: Academic Dishonesty In The Age Of Online School
Remember that time you saw someone getting the answers to test questions or writing down questions to give to subsequent test takers? Yeah, that is still happening, but now in online classrooms. We are facing a global pandemic and have been forced to move to online platforms for our education. Modern technology has given us instant access to information, and using this advantage to cheat institutions is tempting. However, performing academic dishonesty puts one’s integrity and morals into question. Cheating may be as simple as taking the easy way out on an assignment or test, but it ultimately lowers personal integrity and sets up a slippery slope to failure.
Cheating academically has been around since, well, forever. It has been viewed as an ethical problem since the creation of educational institutions (and in case you’re curious, that would be around 2000 BCE). In the new school year, we will be taking classes and tests over the internet — the same internet that can be used for instant access to websites, using aliases or anonymity, which have answers readily available for the dishonest student. Online test-taking also opens the door for others to stand in for you and complete your exams without anyone but you and your accomplice knowing.Thus, cheating on exams and inflating the test scores is merely lying to the college admissions offices which are supposed to be making decisions on each student’s merit. No one would want a lawyer who cheated their way through law school. No one would want a mechanic who falsified their certifications. Even more, no one would want to put their dear life into the hands of a doctor who duped medical school by using Google too much.
It is hard to avoid the consequences when caught cheating in a traditional school setting with students, teachers, and staff around. Embarrassment and humiliation in front of peers is a deterrent that discourages cheating during in-person exams. However, modern online testing platforms unwittingly offer methods for cheating and for people to get away with it. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask my fellow peers at Del Norte High School what they thought of cheating in online school as they enter a new school year virtually. Nearly 80% of students surveyed agreed with the statement that “cheating through online schooling would increase as schools in the nation open up through online platforms.” A majority of surveyed students also thought that honest students would be at a disadvantage in online platforms, as there would be a fair amount of pupils who would not hesitate to cheat. Without the peer pressure and presence of other students in their classrooms, cheaters have less of a guilty conscience and disregard of ethics while deceiving from the comfort of their couch. This also brings up the age-old question: Is it unethical when no one will know about my immoral actions?
Since childhood, we’ve learned about ethics, responsibility, and behaving well even when no one is watching. But what about performing unprincipled or adverse actions when no one is watching? You might think your actions do not hurt anyone, right? With online schooling, your teachers and peers are miles away and only names on your screen. Even if you were caught being academically dishonest, it’s just online and there would be no shame as you are enshrouded behind a screen. But this is not true when we pause to consider it. The devil on your left shoulder will have won while you will have lost the integrity and confidence that made you a respectable person. The morals that would define you as an individual would be lost with your dishonest actions. School is preparing you for the future where you will not have the ability to cheat and simply get off scot-free. People will recognize you for the knowledge and responsibility that you claim to have mastered for your vocation, despite how fallacious that may be. You may be simply cheating through school right now, but how will you be able to perform as a master of that field in the future? How will a lawyer who has less of a grasp on the law than he claims cheat while arguing and presenting his case in front of a judge and jury? How will a mechanic who is not proficient in the difference of positive and negative charge be able to fix an electrical appliance? How will a doctor who does not have a thorough knowledge of the human anatomy be able to perform surgery on a heart?
Many of these consequences won’t be simple suspensions or penalties — these can ruin your life as well as the lives of others. The cheater’s reputation will be tarnished forever. It possibly all started because they cheated on one test… and then one more… and soon built up a fake mastery which may get the lawyer debarred, the mechanic disqualified, and the doctor disentitled. So as we face a new year online, we should keep our integrity and ethics in mind and take all of our tests and quizzes honestly. Our own morality and future self depend on it.