how many students cheat on homework

Research into cheating at the college and university began in 1990 by Dr. Donald McCabe, one of the founders of ICAI. This research continues today, spearheaded by ICAI and its members.

McCabe’s original research and subsequent follow-up studies show that more than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form.

In March 2020, ICAI researchers tested an updated version of the McCabe survey with 840 students across multiple college campuses. This work showed the following rates of key cheating behaviors:

• Cheated in any way on an exam

• Getting someone else to do your academic work (e.g. essay, exam, assignment) and submitting it as your own.

• Using unauthorized electronic resources (e.g. articles, Wikipedia, YouTube) for a paper, project, homework or other assignments.

• Working together on an assignment with other students when the instructor asked for individual work.

• Paraphrasing or copying a few sentences or more from any source without citing it in a paper or assignment you submitted.

*This includes data from 5 institutions including a private university, two large public universities, a small public university, and a small private liberal arts college

Rettinger, et al. (2020) in prep

Cheating in High School

McCabe also conducted surveys of over 70,000 high school students at over 24 high schools in the United States. This work demonstrated that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework.

More about Don McCabe’s surveys and statistics, including sources for these statistics, is available in his excellent book Cheating in College .

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Reports Of Cheating At Colleges Soar During The Pandemic

Mariam Aly, an assistant professor at Columbia University, has tried everything to keep her students from cheating. In her cognitive neuroscience class, she gives her students a week to complete an open-book exam. And, as part of that exam, the nearly 180 students in the class have to sign an honor code.

But they're still cheating. And dealing with student misconduct, she says, is the worst part of her job. "It's just awkward and painful for everybody involved," Aly says. "And it's really hard to blame them for it. You do feel disappointed and frustrated."

Her students are facing unprecedented levels of stress and uncertainty, she says, and she gets that. "I didn't go to school during a pandemic."

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077 — more than three times the previous year's number. At the University of Georgia, cases more than doubled; from 228 in the fall of 2019 to more than 600 last fall. And, at The Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before.

But while students may have had new and different opportunities for cutting corners in the online learning environment, it's unclear how much cheating actually increased. Some educators note that there are other factors at play, such as an increased ability to identify misconduct.

"There was probably increased cheating because there were more temptations and opportunities and stress and pressure. And, faculty were probably detecting it more," says Tricia Bertram Gallant, who researches academic integrity at the University of California, San Diego. "It's easier to catch in the virtual world, in many ways, than it is in the in-person world."

When collaboration morphs into cheating

When colleges shut down or restricted in-person access, students were taking exams in their bedrooms, with unfettered access to cellphones and other technology. This, educators say, spurred cheating to take on new and different forms.

One student at Middle Tennessee State University used his smart speaker to find answers during an exam, according to Michael Baily, the school's director of academic integrity. California State University, Los Angeles, had a large-scale cheating scandal early on in the pandemic, after one student alleged that her peers were sharing exam answers through a GroupMe chat.

Unauthorized collaboration was a big factor in reports of misconduct at Virginia Commonwealth, says Karen Belanger, the university's director of student conduct and academic integrity. "They were so desperate to connect that they were using — or in some courses being encouraged to create — group chats," she says. "Those chats then became a place where they may talk about homework or talk about exam questions."

Students were confused about what was permitted and what wasn't during an exam, Belanger adds. "Sometimes, people just lost track of where the guardrails were in the virtual environment."'

Faculty at the University of Georgia gave more open-book exams during the pandemic. Some students then turned to third-party study sites to complete those exams, which is considered a misconduct violation, explains Phillip Griffeth, the school's director of academic honesty.

"There was a miscommunication. Some students might have saw 'open-book, open-note' as 'open-Internet, open-resources,' " Griffeth explains.

Ohio State also saw a large increase in cases where students shared information during the exam or used unauthorized materials, according to an annual report from the school's committee on academic misconduct.

Schools, including the University of Georgia and Ohio State, are now trying to educate students on what constitutes an academic misconduct violation.

"The university is taking several steps to enhance the resources available related to academic integrity so that students continue to be fully aware of expectations and to support instructors in dealing with this issue," an Ohio State spokesman wrote to NPR.

When cheating feels like the only option

Annie Stearns will be a sophomore this fall at St. Mary's College of California, where misconduct reports doubled last fall over the previous year. During the pandemic, the challenges of learning online were entwined with social isolation and additional family responsibilities, she says.

On top of that, tutoring services and academic resources scaled back or moved online. Some students, facing Zoom burnout, stopped asking for help altogether.

"If you're in class, and then you have to go to office hours, that's another Zoom meeting. And if you have to go to the writing center, that's another Zoom meeting," Stearns explains. "People would get too overwhelmed with being on video calls and just opt out."

Stearns, who logged onto classes from her family's home last year, faced the pressures of online classes herself, but she sits on her school's academic honor council. For other students, she says, cheating can feel like the only option.

"We're going through such an unprecedented time that (cheating is) bound to happen," Stearns says. "They prefer to take the shortcut and risk getting caught, than have an email conversation with their professor because they're too ashamed to be like, 'I need assistance.' "

More cheating? Or just better tracking?

Many factors are at play in the rise in reports of cheating and misconduct, and, in interviews with NPR, experts across the higher education spectrum say they aren't at all certain whether, or how much, cheating actually increased.

"Just because there's an increase in reports of academic misconduct doesn't mean that there's more cheating occurring," says James Orr, a board member of the International Center for Academic Integrity. "In the online environment, I think that faculty across the country are more vigilant in looking for academic misconduct."

Data from before the pandemic showed similar rates of cheating when comparing online and face-to-face learning environments.

And at least one school, the University of Texas at Austin, found that reports of academic misconduct cases actually declined during the pandemic. Katie McGee, the executive director for student conduct and academic integrity there, explains that before the pandemic, UT-Austin had toughened its ability, through software, to detect cheating.

With online learning, educators are using third-party tools, which can make cheating easier to detect. Middle Tennessee State, for example, rolled out an online proctoring tool, Examity, at the start of the pandemic. The tool records testing sessions on students' webcams and uses software to flag possible cheating. The university has seen reports of cheating jump by more than 79% from fall of 2019 to spring of 2021.

"I don't believe that more students started cheating during the pandemic," said Baily. "What I believe is that we then put in place these proctoring systems that enabled us to find these students who were cheating."

And Baily says Examity is here to stay at Middle Tennessee State. Orr calls remote, third-party proctoring tools a "new industry standard."

That could be a problem for some students and faculty who have raised privacy and equity concerns around such services. At the start of the pandemic, students at Florida State University petitioned the school to stop using Honorlock. The petition says using Honorlock "blatantly violates privacy rights."

And at Miami University, in Ohio, petitioners argue that yet another service, Proctorio, discriminates against some students, "as it tracks a student's gaze, and flags students who look away from the screen as 'suspicious' too, which negatively impacts people who have ADHD-like symptoms." The petition also goes on to note, "students with black or brown skin have been asked to shine more light on their faces, as the software had difficulty recognizing them or tracking their movements."

At the University of Minnesota, students are also petitioning against the use of Proctorio, calling the service a "huge invasion of privacy."

Mike Olsen, the head of Proctorio, wrote in a statement to NPR that humans make all final determinations regarding exam integrity. He added that the company has partnered with third-party data security auditors, and an analysis of Proctorio's latest face-detection models found no measurable bias.

Honorlock declined NPR's request for comment.

Ken Leopold, a chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota, says he and other faculty must balance privacy concerns with the need to guard against cheating. He says he has avoided using Proctorio in his classes, saying the software "didn't sit right" with him. But then came the pandemic.

The school is having conversations with students about remote proctoring. But, he says, "I can't see Proctorio or some equivalent entirely vanishing from the university at this point."

"We're sensitive to the students' concerns, but at the same time, we have to uphold academic integrity,'' says Leopold, who advises the university on remote proctoring and academic misconduct. "If you're going to give an exam remotely, you have very little choice."

Correction Aug. 27, 2021

A previous version of this story incorrectly said Tricia Bertram Gallant was affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara. In fact, she researches academic integrity at the University of California, San Diego.

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What do ai chatbots really mean for students and cheating.

The launch of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots has triggered an alarm for many educators, who worry about students using the technology to cheat by passing its writing off as their own. But two Stanford researchers say that concern is misdirected, based on their ongoing research into cheating among U.S. high school students before and after the release of ChatGPT.  

“There’s been a ton of media coverage about AI making it easier and more likely for students to cheat,” said Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE). “But we haven’t seen that bear out in our data so far. And we know from our research that when students do cheat, it’s typically for reasons that have very little to do with their access to technology.”

Pope is a co-founder of Challenge Success , a school reform nonprofit affiliated with the GSE, which conducts research into the student experience, including students’ well-being and sense of belonging, academic integrity, and their engagement with learning. She is the author of Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students , and coauthor of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids.  

Victor Lee is an associate professor at the GSE whose focus includes researching and designing learning experiences for K-12 data science education and AI literacy. He is the faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), a program that provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students. 

Here, Lee and Pope discuss the state of cheating in U.S. schools, what research shows about why students cheat, and their recommendations for educators working to address the problem.

Denise Pope

What do we know about how much students cheat?

Pope: We know that cheating rates have been high for a long time. At Challenge Success we’ve been running surveys and focus groups at schools for over 15 years, asking students about different aspects of their lives — the amount of sleep they get, homework pressure, extracurricular activities, family expectations, things like that — and also several questions about different forms of cheating. 

For years, long before ChatGPT hit the scene, some 60 to 70 percent of students have reported engaging in at least one “cheating” behavior during the previous month. That percentage has stayed about the same or even decreased slightly in our 2023 surveys, when we added questions specific to new AI technologies, like ChatGPT, and how students are using it for school assignments.

Isn’t it possible that they’re lying about cheating? 

Pope: Because these surveys are anonymous, students are surprisingly honest — especially when they know we’re doing these surveys to help improve their school experience. We often follow up our surveys with focus groups where the students tell us that those numbers seem accurate. If anything, they’re underreporting the frequency of these behaviors.

Lee: The surveys are also carefully written so they don’t ask, point-blank, “Do you cheat?” They ask about specific actions that are classified as cheating, like whether they have copied material word for word for an assignment in the past month or knowingly looked at someone else’s answer during a test. With AI, most of the fear is that the chatbot will write the paper for the student. But there isn’t evidence of an increase in that.

So AI isn’t changing how often students cheat — just the tools that they’re using? 

Lee: The most prudent thing to say right now is that the data suggest, perhaps to the surprise of many people, that AI is not increasing the frequency of cheating. This may change as students become increasingly familiar with the technology, and we’ll continue to study it and see if and how this changes. 

But I think it’s important to point out that, in Challenge Success’ most recent survey, students were also asked if and how they felt an AI chatbot like ChatGPT should be allowed for school-related tasks. Many said they thought it should be acceptable for “starter” purposes, like explaining a new concept or generating ideas for a paper. But the vast majority said that using a chatbot to write an entire paper should never be allowed. So this idea that students who’ve never cheated before are going to suddenly run amok and have AI write all of their papers appears unfounded.

But clearly a lot of students are cheating in the first place. Isn’t that a problem? 

Pope: There are so many reasons why students cheat. They might be struggling with the material and unable to get the help they need. Maybe they have too much homework and not enough time to do it. Or maybe assignments feel like pointless busywork. Many students tell us they’re overwhelmed by the pressure to achieve — they know cheating is wrong, but they don’t want to let their family down by bringing home a low grade. 

We know from our research that cheating is generally a symptom of a deeper, systemic problem. When students feel respected and valued, they’re more likely to engage in learning and act with integrity. They’re less likely to cheat when they feel a sense of belonging and connection at school, and when they find purpose and meaning in their classes. Strategies to help students feel more engaged and valued are likely to be more effective than taking a hard line on AI, especially since we know AI is here to stay and can actually be a great tool to promote deeper engagement with learning.

What would you suggest to school leaders who are concerned about students using AI chatbots? 

Pope: Even before ChatGPT, we could never be sure whether kids were getting help from a parent or tutor or another source on their assignments, and this was not considered cheating. Kids in our focus groups are wondering why they can't use ChatGPT as another resource to help them write their papers — not to write the whole thing word for word, but to get the kind of help a parent or tutor would offer. We need to help students and educators find ways to discuss the ethics of using this technology and when it is and isn't useful for student learning.

Lee: There’s a lot of fear about students using this technology. Schools have considered putting significant amounts of money in AI-detection software, which studies show can be highly unreliable. Some districts have tried blocking AI chatbots from school wifi and devices, then repealed those bans because they were ineffective. 

AI is not going away. Along with addressing the deeper reasons why students cheat, we need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology. For starters, at Stanford we’ve begun developing free resources to help teachers bring these topics into the classroom as it relates to different subject areas. We know that teachers don’t have time to introduce a whole new class, but we have been working with teachers to make sure these are activities and lessons that can fit with what they’re already covering in the time they have available. 

I think of AI literacy as being akin to driver’s ed: We’ve got a powerful tool that can be a great asset, but it can also be dangerous. We want students to learn how to use it responsibly.

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Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But 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.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

How Often Are Students Submitting AI Papers? Frequently, Says New Data

More than two million papers reviewed by Turnitin's AI detection tool had at least 80% AI-generated content

Turnitin released its AI detection tool in April 2023 and since then it has reviewed more than 200 million student papers and found that 10.3% included at least 20% AI-generated content. In addition, 3% — more than 2 million papers or other written materials — consisted of at least 80% AI-generated content. 

A separate Turnitin-sponsored survey about use of AI in college among faculty and students also found that between spring 2023 and fall 2023 the number of students who said they used AI at least once a month rose 22%, going from 27% to 49% of respondents. 

These findings mesh with other recent data points on AI use, including a recent survey of college students from Intelligent.com that found that 37% of students used AI, and 29% percent of these students use it to generate entire papers. 

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a steady trend upward in the number of AI-generated papers I am seeing in the introductory English courses I teach. 

I recently spoke with Patti West-Smith, Turnitin’s Senior Director of Customer Engagement and Customer Experience and a former principal. She discussed what this recent AI cheating data from Turnitin means and what we as teachers can do to protect academic integrity, and more importantly, the student learning that occurs through writing. 

Are 1 in 10 Students Really Using AI To Cheat?  

Not exactly. Though the Turnitin data found that roughly 1 in 10 papers submitted contained at least 20% AI-generated content, West-Smith isn’t particularly concerned about those papers because that level of AI writing in a paper might involve legitimate use. 

“Students who are struggling with language might be looking for a little help or have used it for research, and potentially didn't know that they should cite that depending on the instructor and the institution and their requirements,” she says. 

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What About The 3% of Papers That Were More Than 80% AI-Generated? 

These 2 million-plus papers are more concerning. “That indicates that the AI is being substituted for the student's own thinking,” West-Smith says. 

This is a problem for several reasons. “You don't want a student to get credit for work that they didn't complete, and from an assessment perspective, that's a really big deal,” she says. 

But more important than academic integrity is how the student is shortchanging their own learning process, West-Smith says. “Writing is a tool for thinking. It's the way that the brain makes sense of information. And if you are outsourcing that to AI on a regular basis on a big scale, like 80% of the writing, then what that indicates to me is that as a student, you're completely disengaged from that learning process, you have essentially outsourced it to a contractor.” 

Has AI Cheating Replaced Other Forms of Cheating?  

I’ve written about how the prevalence of AI-generated papers in my classroom has cost me a lot of time . However, on the bright side, I've started seeing less instances of traditional plagiarism. Unfortunately, this appears to be a fluke. 

“We theorized that potentially we would see this dramatic drop off of more classic instances of plagiarism,” West-Smith says. Turnitin data has not revealed that so far. “We are seeing just as much text similarity that comes in. I think one of the reasons for that is, in some cases, text similarity is not intentional plagiarism. You get a lot of skill deficit that leads to that. Students who don't know how to properly paraphrase. Students who don’t understand citation.” 

What Can I Do To Prevent AI Writing in My Class?  

This is one of the pressing questions in education. For her part, here are West-Smith’s suggestions: 

• Institutions should have clear guidance around AI use that is communicated to teachers and from them to students. 
• Institutions should also have clear guidance around whether AI detection tools are being used, which ones and what educators can do with the information these tools provide. Because of false-positives, educators should use AI detection readings as just one data point in assessing whether a student used AI.
• Educators should educate themselves about AI. Learn the tool’s strengths, weaknesses, etc. 
• Specific class policies around AI should be communicated as many instructors have AI use cases they are okay with and ones they don't allow. These policies sometimes vary from class to class. 

Ultimately, West-Smith says the communication component is critical and all too easy to overlook. 

“A mistake we sometimes make as instructors is that we make these assumptions that students have the same sort of value systems that we do, and they will just implicitly know what is right or wrong from our perspective. And it's been my experience that that's almost always not true,” she says. “The moment that you assume students believe the same thing you do. You already are at a level of miscommunication.” 

• 8 Ways to Create AI-Proof Writing Prompts
• 7 Ways To Detect AI Writing Without Technology

Erik Ofgang is Tech & Learning's senior staff writer. A journalist,  author  and educator, his work has appeared in the Washington Post , The Atlantic , and Associated Press. He currently teaches at Western Connecticut State University’s MFA program. While a staff writer at Connecticut Magazine he won a Society of Professional Journalism Award for his education reporting. He is interested in how humans learn and how technology can make that more effective. 

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Teens Will Use AI for Schoolwork, But Most Think It’s Cheating, Survey Says

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More than 4 in 10 teens are likely to use artificial intelligence to do their schoolwork instead of doing it themselves this coming school year, according to a new survey.

But 60 percent of teens consider using AI for schoolwork as cheating, according to the nationally representative survey of 1,006 13- to 17-year-olds conducted by research firm Big Village in July for the nonprofit Junior Achievement .

The survey findings come as the emergence of ChatGPT —an AI-powered chatbot that can respond instantly to seemingly any prompt—has put discussions about how teachers and students should use it front and center in schools across the country.

Nearly half of educators who responded to an EdWeek Research Center survey conducted this spring said AI would have a negative or very negative impact on teaching and learning in the next five years. Twenty-seven percent said AI’s impact would be positive or very positive.

And in ChatGPT’s early days, some districts—including New York City schools —took a hardline approach and banned the technology in classrooms, because of concerns about cheating and data privacy. (The New York City district has since removed the ban on ChatGPT and is now encouraging students and teachers to learn how to use it effectively.)

When asked why they would use AI to do their schoolwork for them, the top response in the Junior Achievement survey was that AI is just another tool (62 percent). Others said they didn’t like school or schoolwork (24 percent), that they wouldn’t need to know the information because of AI (22 percent), that everybody else is doing it (22 percent), that they would do poorly otherwise (17 percent), and that it’s not important to know the subjects for which they use AI (8 percent).

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

“The misuse of AI to do all schoolwork not only raises ethical concerns, but this behavior could also shortchange many students’ educations since they may not be learning the subjects they are using AI for,” Jack E. Kosakowski, the president and CEO of Junior Achievement USA, said in a written statement. “Given the growing demand for marketable skills, this could become very problematic.”

Experts say educators should teach students how to use it as a tool and an assistant in their learning, instead of using it as a replacement for learning.

But given that 44 percent of teens say they’re likely to use AI to do their schoolwork for them, and 48 percent said they know friends and classmates who have used AI this way, schools have a lot of work cut out for them.

So how can educators incorporate AI use into their lessons, guard against cheating, and teach students to use it as a helper? Here are some examples that experts have shared with Education Week :

• Create assignments that are impossible to complete with these tools, such as assignments about very recent news events or about the local community.
• Allow students to complete assignments in class.
• Ask students to give an oral presentation.
• Create project-based learning assignments.
• Allow the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools but require students to acknowledge and document how they used them. For example, students could use ChatGPT to get feedback on their essay drafts and explain which of the tool’s suggestions they agreed with and which ones they didn’t. This approach allows students to learn how to use the tool as a partner, instead of having it do all the work for them.

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Academic Cheating Statistics Say There’s Lots of Work to Do

You may have seen dozens of them lately. Cases of contract cheating and the recent college scam with celebs involved are still making the headlines.

Eventually, they may sidetrack your attention. But do they have anything to do with academic cheating in higher school or university? What started once with cheating on exams may turn into the long-lasting habit of cutting corners.

The pressure to obtain better grades lessens the value of academic performance. As an outcome, you have to double the effort in helping students focus on learning itself.

Shortcutting is tempting. But this shouldn’t put all students under suspicion. There is something that inclines them to think that cheating is inevitable.

The statistics collected from recent and most large-scale surveys can reveal how common academic dishonesty is today.

So, let’s cut to the chase.

Academic Dishonesty Surveys in the U.S. and the UK

When it comes to cheating detection, the most comprehensive survey that springs to mind is that of Dr. Donald McCabe and The International Center for Academic Integrity . It had been conducted throughout 12 years (2002-2015) across 24 high schools in the U.S.

More than 70,000 students both graduates and undergraduates took part in it. And the results obtained were jaw-dropping, as 95% of the surveyed students admitted to cheating on a test and homework, or committing plagiarism.

Another anonymous study carried out by Lindale High School (LHS) provides more up-to-date numbers with 205 students surveyed. 65.7% of them confessed to having cheated at least once, while 85.9% assured they saw other students cheat.

Interestingly, students also shared their perceptions of academic cheating and when it could be acceptable:

The UK’s Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) also provide annual updates on the number of academic dishonesty cases detected.

Thus, Gov.uk released a curious statistic on school and college malpractice registered during GCSE, AS and A level examinations in 2018. Major academic integrity breaches involved unauthorized usage of materials and mobile phones as well as failure to stick to exam board guidelines by instructors. Here are the key findings:

2,735 number of penalties issued to students in 2018 (the same as in 2017):

Types of penalties issued to students in 2017-18:

Plagiarism among EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students is another growing concern for Higher Ed. In 2018, Voanews.com (VOA) informed that 85% of plagiarism cases registered at the University of Minnesota stemmed from non-native English speakers.

They often feel more anxiety over grades and test scores, while poor language knowledge causes extra difficulties for them. Consequently, plagiarism among international students is twice the rate of the domestic students.

Renowned Colleges Turn to Be as Fragile

As for popular institutions, there’s a widespread belief that they have more strength to resist cheating attempts. However, the multitude of violations reported proves otherwise.

The research conducted by Donald L. McCabe was mainly based on the data collected from 31 most competitive higher academic institutions in the U.S. He stated that careful exam proctoring and honor codes reduce cheating rates, but they don’t nip it in the bud. What matters the most is student culture within a specific college or university.

Speaking about cheating cases among big names in education, here’s a bunch of the most talked-about:

Harvard’s officials plucked up the courage to take plagiarism allegations out in the open in 2012. Back then, 125 students got plagiarism accusations after collaborating on a take-home exam. The tests had a striking number of similarities that signaled of the unethical actions. Since that time Harvard has been refreshing its academic honesty policies and established Harvard Extension School that encourages open exchange of ideas between faculty and students and guides on how to avoid cheating and plagiarism.

On February 7, 2019, a Yale Daily News survey revealed that 14% out of 1,400 undergraduates confessed having cheated at Yale. 24% admitted copying answers from others, while 26% reported to have seen others cheat. 82% of 191 surveyed students affirmed they hadn’t been caught. What’s the reason? High pressure to perform and intense involvement in extracurriculars. One of the solutions suggested – implementation of a flexible deadline policy.

Stanford University reports cheating incidents every quarter. In 2015, the University

was investigating an extremely high number of cases. 120 students (one in five students enrolled) attending a large introductory course were suspected of breaking the honor code policies. This video explains what pushed students to overstep the boundaries.

May Cheating Hinge On Student Culture?

An ever-growing desire to get good grades seems to be nationwide. You can hardly meet a student who assumes it is something unimportant.

However, different nations have different mindsets. Therefore, cheating origins in the U.S. and Ukraine are quite unlike. The research conducted by CEDOS and American Councils for International Education in 2016 said that Ukrainian students cheat way more frequently than their American peers.

Here’s a statistical breakdown for cheating incidents in Ukraine’s Higher Ed:

Students in Ukraine are less motivated to avoid cheating and plagiarism. They’re often hesitant about their future career paths and don’t see the purpose in completing all those written assignments. What is more, many Ukrainian institutions miss out on explaining why academic integrity is so crucial.

For American students, academic integrity breach is usually explained by “pressure to succeed”, since their overall academic success largely depends on written assignments they submit. In contrast, most of Ukrainian peers don’t feel their future is determined by the successful completion of written assignments.

That is, when students choose to graduate from an institution located in countries with a higher level of academic integrity, they usually face a lot more tension to get through college.

No wonder that news is still reporting an avalanche of cheating incidents among foreign students.

The Unicheck text plagiarism checker has also analyzed the major reasons and solutions for academic dishonesty. So, be on the lookout for our next publications!

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Academic dishonesty when doing homework: How digital technologies are put to bad use in secondary schools

• Open access
• Published: 23 July 2022
• Volume 28 , pages 1251–1271, ( 2023 )

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• Juliette C. Désiron   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3074-9018 1 &
• Dominik Petko   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1569-1302 1  

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The growth in digital technologies in recent decades has offered many opportunities to support students’ learning and homework completion. However, it has also contributed to expanding the field of possibilities concerning homework avoidance. Although studies have investigated the factors of academic dishonesty, the focus has often been on college students and formal assessments. The present study aimed to determine what predicts homework avoidance using digital resources and whether engaging in these practices is another predictor of test performance. To address these questions, we analyzed data from the Program for International Student Assessment 2018 survey, which contained additional questionnaires addressing this issue, for the Swiss students. The results showed that about half of the students engaged in one kind or another of digitally-supported practices for homework avoidance at least once or twice a week. Students who were more likely to use digital resources to engage in dishonest practices were males who did not put much effort into their homework and were enrolled in non-higher education-oriented school programs. Further, we found that digitally-supported homework avoidance was a significant negative predictor of test performance when considering information and communication technology predictors. Thus, the present study not only expands the knowledge regarding the predictors of academic dishonesty with digital resources, but also confirms the negative impact of such practices on learning.

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1 Introduction

Academic dishonesty is a widespread and perpetual issue for teachers made even more easier to perpetrate with the rise of digital technologies (Blau & Eshet-Alkalai, 2017 ; Ma et al., 2008 ). Definitions vary but overall an academically dishonest practices correspond to learners engaging in unauthorized practice such as cheating and plagiarism. Differences in engaging in those two types of practices mainly resides in students’ perception that plagiarism is worse than cheating (Evering & Moorman, 2012 ; McCabe, 2005 ). Plagiarism is usually defined as the unethical act of copying part or all of someone else’s work, with or without editing it, while cheating is more about sharing practices (Krou et al., 2021 ). As a result, most students do report cheating in an exam or for homework (Ma et al., 2008 ). To note, other research follow a different distinction for those practices and consider that plagiarism is a specific – and common – type of cheating (Waltzer & Dahl, 2022 ). Digital technologies have contributed to opening possibilities of homework avoidance and technology-related distraction (Ma et al., 2008 ; Xu, 2015 ).

The question of whether the use of digital resources hinders or enhances homework has often been investigated in large-scale studies, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). While most of the early large-scale studies showed positive overall correlations between the use of digital technologies for learning at home and test scores in language, mathematics, and science (e.g., OECD, 2015 ; Petko et al., 2017 ; Skryabin et al., 2015 ), there have been more recent studies reporting negative associations as well (Agasisti et al., 2020 ; Odell et al., 2020 ). One reason for these inconclusive findings is certainly the complex interplay of related factors, which include diverse ways of measuring homework, gender, socioeconomic status, personality traits, learning goals, academic abilities, learning strategies, motivation, and effort, as well as support from teachers and parents. Despite this complexity, it needs to be acknowledged that doing homework digitally does not automatically lead to productive learning activities, and it might even be associated with counter-productive practices such as digital distraction or academic dishonesty. Digitally enhanced academic dishonesty has mostly been investigated regarding formal assessment-related examinations (Evering & Moorman, 2012 ; Ma et al., 2008 ); however, it might be equally important to investigate its effects regarding learning-related assignments such as homework. Although a large body of research exists on digital academic dishonesty regarding assignments in higher education, relatively few studies have investigated this topic on K12 homework. To investigate this issue, we integrated questionnaire items on homework engagement and digital homework avoidance in a national add-on to PISA 2018 in Switzerland. Data from the Swiss sample can serve as a case study for further research with a wider cultural background. This study provides an overview of the descriptive results and tries to identify predictors of the use of digital technology for academic dishonesty when completing homework.

1.1 Prevalence and factors of digital academic dishonesty in schools

According to Pavela’s ( 1997 ) framework, four different types of academic dishonesty can be distinguished: cheating by using unauthorized materials, plagiarism by copying the work of others, fabrication of invented evidence, and facilitation by helping others in their attempts at academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty can happen in assessment situations, as well as in learning situations. In formal assessments, academic dishonesty usually serves the purpose of passing a test or getting a better grade despite lacking the proper abilities or knowledge. In learning-related situations such as homework, where assignments are mandatory, cheating practices equally qualify as academic dishonesty. For perpetrators, these practices can be seen as shortcuts in which the willingness to invest the proper time and effort into learning is missing (Chow, 2021; Waltzer & Dahl,  2022 ). The interviews by Waltzer & Dahl ( 2022 ) reveal that students do perceive cheating as being wrong but this does not prevent them from engaging in at least one type of dishonest practice. While academic dishonesty is not a new phenomenon, it has been changing together with the development of new digital technologies (Anderman & Koenka, 2017 ; Ercegovac & Richardson, 2004 ). With the rapid growth in technologies, new forms of homework avoidance, such as copying and plagiarism, are developing (Evering & Moorman, 2012 ; Ma et al., 2008 ) summarized the findings of the 2006 U.S. surveys of the Josephson Institute of Ethics with the conclusion that the internet has led to a deterioration of ethics among students. In 2006, one-third of high school students had copied an internet document in the past 12 months, and 60% had cheated on a test. In 2012, these numbers were updated to 32% and 51%, respectively (Josephson Institute of Ethics, 2012 ). Further, 75% reported having copied another’s homework. Surprisingly, only a few studies have provided more recent evidence on the prevalence of academic dishonesty in middle and high schools. The results from colleges and universities are hardly comparable, and until now, this topic has not been addressed in international large-scale studies on schooling and school performance.

Despite the lack of representative studies, research has identified many factors in smaller and non-representative samples that might explain why some students engage in dishonest practices and others do not. These include male gender (Whitley et al., 1999 ), the “dark triad” of personality traits in contrast to conscientiousness and agreeableness (e.g., Cuadrado et al., 2021 ; Giluk & Postlethwaite, 2015 ), extrinsic motivation and performance/avoidance goals in contrast to intrinsic motivation and mastery goals (e.g., Anderman & Koenka,  2017 ; Krou et al., 2021 ), self-efficacy and achievement scores (e.g., Nora & Zhang,  2010 ; Yaniv et al., 2017 ), unethical attitudes, and low fear of being caught (e.g., Cheng et al., 2021 ; Kam et al., 2018 ), influenced by the moral norms of peers and the conditions of the educational context (e.g., Isakov & Tripathy,  2017 ; Kapoor & Kaufman, 2021 ). Similar factors have been reported regarding research on the causes of plagiarism (Husain et al., 2017 ; Moss et al., 2018 ). Further, the systematic review from Chiang et al. ( 2022 ) focused on factors of academic dishonesty in online learning environments. The analyses, based on the six-components behavior engineering, showed that the most prominent factors were environmental (effect of incentives) and individual (effect of motivation). Despite these intensive research efforts, there is still no overarching model that can comprehensively explain the interplay of these factors.

1.2 Effects of homework engagement and digital dishonesty on school performance

In meta-analyses of schools, small but significant positive effects of homework have been found regarding learning and achievement (e.g., Baş et al., 2017 ; Chen & Chen, 2014 ; Fan et al., 2017 ). In their review, Fan et al. ( 2017 ) found lower effect sizes for studies focusing on the time or frequency of homework than for studies investigating homework completion, homework grades, or homework effort. In large surveys, such as PISA, homework measurement by estimating after-school working hours has been customary practice. However, this measure could hide some other variables, such as whether teachers even give homework, whether there are school or state policies regarding homework, where the homework is done, whether it is done alone, etc. (e.g., Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 , 2017 ). Trautwein ( 2007 ) and Trautwein et al. ( 2009 ) repeatedly showed that homework effort rather than the frequency or the time spent on homework can be considered a better predictor for academic achievement Effort and engagement can be seen as closely interrelated. Martin et al. ( 2017 ) defined engagement as the expressed behavior corresponding to students’ motivation. This has been more recently expanded by the notion of the quality of homework completion (Rosário et al., 2018 ; Xu et al., 2021 ). Therefore, it is a plausible assumption that academic dishonesty when doing homework is closely related to low homework effort and a low quality of homework completion, which in turn affects academic achievement. However, almost no studies exist on the effects of homework avoidance or academic dishonesty on academic achievement. Studies investigating the relationship between academic dishonesty and academic achievement typically use academic achievement as a predictor of academic dishonesty, not the other way around (e.g., Cuadrado et al., 2019 ; McCabe et al., 2001 ). The results of these studies show that low-performing students tend to engage in dishonest practices more often. However, high-performing students also seem to be prone to cheating in highly competitive situations (Yaniv et al., 2017 ).

1.3 Present study and hypotheses

The present study serves three combined purposes.

First, based on the additional questionnaires integrated into the Program for International Student Assessment 2018 (PISA 2018) data collection in Switzerland, we provide descriptive figures on the frequency of homework effort and the various forms of digitally-supported homework avoidance practices.

Second, the data were used to identify possible factors that explain higher levels of digitally-supported homework avoidance practices. Based on our review of the literature presented in Section 1.1 , we hypothesized (Hypothesis 1 – H1) that these factors include homework effort, age, gender, socio-economic status, and study program.

Finally, we tested whether digitally-supported homework avoidance practices were a significant predictor of test score performance. We expected (Hypothesis 2 – H2) that technology-related factors influencing test scores include not only those reported by Petko et al. ( 2017 ) but also self-reported engagement in digital dishonesty practices. .

2.1 Participants

Our analyses were based on data collected for PISA 2018 in Switzerland, made available in June 2021 (Erzinger et al., 2021 ). The target sample of PISA was 15-year-old students, with a two-phase sampling: schools and then students (Erzinger et al., 2019 , p.7–8, OECD, 2019a ). A total of 228 schools were selected for Switzerland, with an original sample of 5822 students. Based on the PISA 2018 technical report (OECD, 2019a ), only participants with a minimum of three valid responses to each scale used in the statistical analyses were included (see Section 2.2 ). A final sample of 4771 responses (48% female) was used for statistical analyses. The mean age was 15 years and 9 months ( SD  = 3 months). As Switzerland is a multilingual country, 60% of the respondents completed the questionnaires in German, 23% in French, and 17% in Italian.

2.2 Measures

2.2.1 digital dishonesty in homework scale.

This six-item digital dishonesty for homework scale assesses the use of digital technology for homework avoidance and copying (IC801 C01 to C06), is intended to work as a single overall scale for digital homework dishonesty practice constructed to include items corresponding to two types of dishonest practices from Pavela ( 1997 ), namely cheating and plagiarism (see Table  1 ). Three items target individual digital practices to avoid homework, which can be referred to as plagiarism (items 1, 2 and 5). Two focus more on social digital practices, for which students are cheating together with peers (items 4 and 6). One item target cheating as peer authorized plagiarism. Response options are based on questions on the productive use of digital technologies for homework in the common PISA survey (IC010), with an additional distinction for the lowest frequency option (6-point Likert scale). The scale was not tested prior to its integration into the PISA questionnaire, as it was newly developed for the purposes of this study.

2.2.2 Homework engagement scale

The scale, originally developed by Trautwein et al. (Trautwein, 2007 ; Trautwein et al., 2006 ), measures homework engagement (IC800 C01 to C06) and can be subdivided into two sub-scales: homework compliance and homework effort. The reliability of the scale was tested and established in different variants, both in Germany (Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Trautwein & Köller, 2003 ) and in Switzerland (Schnyder et al., 2008 ; Schynder Godel, 2015 ). In the adaptation used in the PISA 2018 survey, four items were positively poled (items 1, 2, 4, and 6), and two items were negatively poled (items 3 and 5) and presented with a 4-point Likert scale ranging from “Does not apply at all” to “Applies absolutely.” This adaptation showed acceptable reliability in previous studies in Switzerland (α = 0.73 and α = 0.78). The present study focused on homework effort, and thus only data from the corresponding sub-scale was analyzed (items 2 [I always try to do all of my homework], 4 [When it comes to homework, I do my best], and 6 [On the whole, I think I do my homework more conscientiously than my classmates]).

2.2.3 Demographics

Previous studies showed that demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status, could impact learning outcomes (Jacobs et al., 2002 ) and intention to use digital tools for learning (Tarhini et al., 2014 ). Gender is a dummy variable (ST004), with 1 for female and 2 for male. Socioeconomic status was analyzed based on the PISA 2018 index of economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS). It is computed from three other indices (OECD, 2019b , Annex A1): parents’ highest level of education (PARED), parents’ highest occupational status (HISEI), and home possessions (HOMEPOS). The final ESCS score is transformed so that 0 corresponds to an average OECD student. More details can be found in Annex A1 from PISA 2018 Results Volume 3 (OECD, 2019b ).

2.2.4 Study program

Although large-scale studies on schools have accounted for the differences between schools, the study program can also be a factor that directly affects digital homework dishonesty practices. In Switzerland, 15-year-old students from the PISA sampling pool can be part of at least six main study programs, which greatly differ in terms of learning content. In this study, study programs distinguished both level and type of study: lower secondary education (gymnasial – n  = 798, basic requirements – n  = 897, advanced requirements – n  = 1235), vocational education (classic – n  = 571, with baccalaureate – n  = 275), and university entrance preparation ( n  = 745). An “other” category was also included ( n  = 250). This 6-level ordinal variable was dummy coded based on the available CNTSCHID variable.

2.2.5 Technologies and schools

The PISA 2015 ICT (Information and Communication Technology) familiarity questionnaire included most of the technology-related variables tested by Petko et al. ( 2017 ): ENTUSE (frequency of computer use at home for entertainment purposes), HOMESCH (frequency of computer use for school-related purposes at home), and USESCH (frequency of computer use at school). However, the measure of student’s attitudes toward ICT in the 2015 survey was different from that of the 2012 dataset. Based on previous studies (Arpacı et al., 2021 ; Kunina-Habenicht & Goldhammer, 2020 ), we thus included INICT (Student’s ICT interest), COMPICT (Students’ perceived ICT competence), AUTICT (Students’ perceived autonomy related to ICT use), and SOIACICT (Students’ ICT as a topic in social interaction) instead of the variable ICTATTPOS of the 2012 survey.

2.2.6 Test scores

The PISA science, mathematics, and reading test scores were used as dependent variables to test our second hypothesis. Following Aparicio et al. ( 2021 ), the mean scores from plausible values were computed for each test score and used in the test score analysis.

2.3 Data analyses

Our hypotheses aim to assess the factors explaining student digital homework dishonesty practices (H1) and test score performance (H2). At the student level, we used multilevel regression analyses to decompose the variance and estimate associations. As we used data for Switzerland, in which differences between school systems exist at the level of provinces (within and between), we also considered differences across schools (based on the variable CNTSCHID).

Data were downloaded from the main PISA repository, and additional data for Switzerland were available on forscenter.ch (Erzinger et al., 2021 ). Analyses were computed with Jamovi (v.1.8 for Microsoft Windows) statistics and R packages (GAMLj, lavaan).

3.1 Additional scales for Switzerland

3.1.1 digital dishonesty in homework practices.

The digital homework dishonesty scale (6 items), computed with the six items IC801, was found to be of very good reliability overall (α = 0.91, ω = 0.91). After checking for reliability, a mean score was computed for the overall scale. The confirmatory factor analysis for the one-dimensional model reached an adequate fit, with three modifications using residual covariances between single items χ 2 (6) = 220, p  < 0.001, TLI = 0.969, CFI = 0.988, RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) = 0.086, SRMR = 0.016).

On the one hand, the practice that was the least reported was copying something from the internet and presenting it as their own (51% never did). On the other hand, students were more likely to partially copy content from the internet and modify it to present as their own (47% did it at least once a month). Copying answers shared by friends was rather common, with 62% of the students reporting that they engaged in such practices at least once a month.

When all surveyed practices were taken together, 7.6% of the students reported that they had never engaged in digitally dishonest practices for homework, while 30.6% reported cheating once or twice a week, 12.1% almost every day, and 6.9% every day (Table  1 ).

3.1.2 Homework effort

The overall homework engagement scale consisted of six items (IC800), and it was found to be acceptably reliable (α = 0.76, ω = 0.79). Items 3 and 5 were reversed for this analysis. The homework compliance sub-scale had a low reliability (α = 0.58, ω = 0.64), whereas the homework effort sub-scale had an acceptable reliability (α = 0.78, ω = 0.79). Based on our rationale, the following statistical analyses used only the homework effort sub-scale. Furthermore, this focus is justified by the fact that the homework compliance scale might be statistically confounded with the digital dishonesty in homework scale.

Descriptive weighted statistics per item (Table  2 ) showed that while most students (80%) tried to complete all of their homework, only half of the students reported doing those diligently (53.3%). Most students also reported that they believed they put more effort into their homework than their peers (77.7%). The overall mean score of the composite scale was 2.81 ( SD  = 0.69).

3.2 Multilevel regression analysis: Predictors of digital dishonesty in homework (H1)

Mixed multilevel modeling was used to analyze predictors of digital homework avoidance while considering the effect of school (random component). Based on our first hypothesis, we compared several models by progressively including the following fixed effects: homework effort and personal traits (age, gender) (Model 2), then socio-economic status (Model 3), and finally, study program (Model 4). The results are presented in Table  3 . Except for the digital homework dishonesty and homework efforts scales, all other scales were based upon the scores computed according to the PISA technical report (OECD, 2019a ).

We first compared variance components. Variance was decomposed into student and school levels. Model 1 provides estimates of the variance component without any covariates. The intraclass coefficient (ICC) indicated that about 6.6% of the total variance was associated with schools. The parameter (b  = 2.56, SE b  = 0.025 ) falls within the 95% confidence interval. Further, CI is above 0 and thus we can reject the null hypothesis. Comparing the empty model to models with covariates, we found that Models 2, 3 and 4 showed an increase in total explained variance to 10%. Variance explained by the covariates was about 3% in Models 2 and 3, and about 4% in Model 4. Interestingly, in our models, student socio-economic status, measured by the PISA index, never accounted for variance in digitally-supported dishonest practices to complete homework.

Summary of the two-steps Model 4 (estimates - β, with standard errors and significance levels, *** p < 0.001)

Further, model comparison based on AIC indicates that Model 4, including homework effort, personal traits, socio-economic status, and study program, was the better fit for the data. In Model 4 (Table  3 ; Fig.  1 ), we observed that homework effort and gender were negatively associated with digital dishonesty. Male students who invested less effort in their homework were more prone to engage in digital dishonesty. The study program was positively but weakly associated with digital dishonesty. Students in programs that target higher education were less likely to engage in digital dishonesty when completing homework.

3.3 Multilevel regression analysis: Cheating and test scores (H2)

Our first hypothesis aimed to provide insights into characteristics of students reporting that they regularly use digital resources dishonestly when completing homework. Our second hypothesis focused on whether digitally-supported homework avoidance practices was linked to results of test scores. Mixed multilevel modeling was used to analyze predictors of test scores while considering the effect of school (random component). Based on the study by Petko et al. ( 2017 ), we compared several models by progressively including the following fixed effects ICT use (three measures) (Model 2), then attitude toward ICT (four measures) (Model 3), and finally, digital dishonesty in homework (single measure) (Model 4). The results are presented in Table  4 for science, Table  5 for mathematics, and Table  6 for reading.

Variance components were decomposed into student and school level. ICC for Model 1 indicated that 37.9% of the variance component without covariates was associated with schools.

Taking Model 1 as a reference, we observed an increase in total explained variance to 40.5% with factors related to ICT use (Model 2), to 40.8% with factors related to attitude toward ICT (Model 3), and to 41.1% with the single digital dishonesty factor. It is interesting to note that we obtained different results from those reported by Petko et al. ( 2017 ). In their study, they found significant effects on the explained variances of ENTUSE, USESCH, and ICTATTPOS but not of HOMESCH for Switzerland. In the present study (Model 3), HOMESCH and USESCH were significant predictors but not ENTUSE, and for attitude toward ICT, all but INTICT were significant predictors of the variance. However, factors corresponding to ICT use were negatively associated with test performance, as in the study by Petko et al. ( 2017 ). Similarly, all components of attitude toward ICT positively affected science test scores, except for students’ ICT as a topic in social interaction.

Based on the AIC values, Model 4, including ICT use, attitude toward ICT, and digital dishonesty, was the better fit for the data. The parameter ( b  = 498.00, SE b  = 3.550) shows that our sample falls within the 95% confidence interval and that we can reject the null hypothesis. In this model, all factors except the use of ICT outside of school for leisure were significant predictors of explained variance in science test scores. These results are consistent with those reported by Petko et al. ( 2017 ), in which more frequent use of ICT negatively affected science test scores, with an overall positive effect of positive attitude toward ICT. Further, we observed that homework avoidance with digital resources strongly negatively affected performance, with lower performance associated with students reporting a higher frequency of engagement in digital dishonesty practices.

For mathematics test scores, results from Models 2 and 3 showed a similar pattern than those for science, and Model 4 also explained the highest variance (41.2%). The results from Model 4 contrast with those found by Petko et al. ( 2017 ), as in this study, HOMESCH was the only significant variable of ICT use. Regarding attitudes toward ICT, only two measures (COMPICT and AUTICT) were significant positive factors in Model 4. As for science test scores, digital dishonesty practices were a significantly strong negative predictor. Students who reported cheating more frequently were more likely to perform poorly on mathematics tests.

The analyses of PISA test scores for reading in Model 2 was similar to that of science and mathematics, with ENTUSE being a non-significant predictor when we included only measures of ICT use as predictors. In Model 3, contrary to the science and mathematics test scores models, in which INICT was non-significant, all measures of attitude toward ICT were positively significant predictors. Nevertheless, as for science and mathematics, Model 4, which included digital dishonesty, explained the greater variance in reading test scores (42.2%). We observed that for reading, all predictors were significant in Model 4, with an overall negative effect of ICT use, a positive effect of attitude toward ICT—except for SOIAICT, and a negative effect of digital dishonesty on test scores. Interestingly, the detrimental effect of using digital resources to engage in dishonest homework completion was the strongest in reading test scores.

4 Discussion

In this study, we were able to provide descriptive statistics on the prevalence of digital dishonesty among secondary students in the Swiss sample of PISA 2018. Students from this country were selected because they received additional questions targeting both homework effort and the frequency with which they engaged in digital dishonesty when doing homework. Descriptive statistics indicated that fairly high numbers of students engage in dishonest homework practices, with 49.6% reporting digital dishonesty at least once or twice a week. The most frequently reported practice was copying answers from friends, which was undertaken at least once a month by more than two-thirds of respondents. Interestingly, the most infamous form of digital dishonesty, that is plagiarism by copy-pasting something from the internet (Evering & Moorman, 2012 ), was admitted to by close to half of the students (49%). These results for homework avoidance are close to those obtained by previous research on digital academic plagiarism (e.g., McCabe et al., 2001 ).

We then investigated what makes a cheater, based on students’ demographics and effort put in doing their homework (H1), before looking at digital dishonesty as an additional ICT predictor of PISA test scores (mathematics, reading, and science) (H2).

The goal of our first research hypothesis was to determine student-related factors that may predict digital homework avoidance practices. Here, we focused on factors linked to students’ personal characteristics and study programs. Our multilevel model explained about 10% of the variance overall. Our analysis of which students are more likely to digital resources to avoid homework revealed an increased probability for male students who did not put much effort into doing their homework and who were studying in a program that was not oriented toward higher education. Thus, our findings tend to support results from previous research that stresses the importance of gender and motivational factors for academic dishonesty (e.g., Anderman & Koenka,  2017 ; Krou et al., 2021 ). Yet, as our model only explained little variance and more research is needed to provide an accurate representation of the factors that lead to digital dishonesty. Future research could include more aspects that are linked to learning, such as peer-related or teaching-related factors. Possibly, how closely homework is embedded in the teaching and learning culture may play a key role in digital dishonesty. Additional factors might be linked to the overall availability and use of digital tools. For example, the report combining factors from the PISA 2018 school and student questionnaires showed that the higher the computer–student ratio, the lower students scored in the general tests (OECD, 2020b ). A positive association with reading disappeared when socio-economic background was considered. This is even more interesting when considering previous research indicating that while internet access is not a source of divide among youths, the quality of use is still different based on gender or socioeconomic status (Livingstone & Helsper, 2007 ). Thus, investigating the usage-related “digital divide” as a potential source of digital dishonesty is an interesting avenue for future research (Dolan, 2016 ).

Our second hypothesis considered that digital dishonesty in homework completion can be regarded as an additional ICT-related trait and thus could be included in models targeting the influence of traditional ICT on PISA test scores, such as Petko et al. ( 2017 ) study. Overall, our results on the influence of ICT use and attitudes toward ICT on test scores are in line with those reported by Petko et al. ( 2017 ). Digital dishonesty was found to negatively influence test scores, with a higher frequency of cheating leading to lower performance in all major PISA test domains, and particularly so for reading. For each subject, the combined models explained about 40% of the total variance.

4.1 Conclusions and recommendations

Our results have several practical implications. First, the amount of cheating on homework observed calls for new strategies for raising homework engagement, as this was found to be a clear predictor of digital dishonesty. This can be achieved by better explaining the goals and benefits of homework, the adverse effects of cheating on homework, and by providing adequate feedback on homework that was done properly. Second, teachers might consider new forms of homework that are less prone to cheating, such as doing homework in non-digital formats that are less easy to copy digitally or in proctored digital formats that allow for the monitoring of the process of homework completion, or by using plagiarism software to check homework. Sometimes, it might even be possible to give homework and explicitly encourage strategies that might be considered cheating, for example, by working together or using internet sources. As collaboration is one of the 21st century skills that students are expected to develop (Bray et al., 2020 ), this can be used to turn cheating into positive practice. There is already research showing the beneficial impact of computer-supported collaborative learning (e.g., Janssen et al., 2012 ). Zhang et al. ( 2011 ) compared three homework assignment (creation of a homepage) conditions: individually, in groups with specific instructions, and in groups with general instructions. Their results showed that computer supported collaborative homework led to better performance than individual settings, only when the instructions were general. Thus, promoting digital collaborative homework could support the development of students’ digital and collaborative skills.

Further, digital dishonesty in homework needs to be considered different from cheating in assessments. In research on assessment-related dishonesty, cheating is perceived as a reprehensible practice because grades obtained are a misrepresentation of student knowledge, and cheating “implies that efficient cheaters are good students, since they get good grades” (Bouville, 2010 , p. 69). However, regarding homework, this view is too restrictive. Indeed, not all homework is graded, and we cannot know for sure whether students answered this questionnaire while considering homework as a whole or only graded homework (assessments). Our study did not include questions about whether students displayed the same attitudes and practices toward assessments (graded) and practice exercises (non-graded), nor did it include questions on how assessments and homework were related. By cheating on ungraded practice exercises, students will primarily hamper their own learning process. Future research could investigate in more depth the kinds of homework students cheat on and why.

Finally, the question of how to foster engaging homework with digital tools becomes even more important in pandemic situations. Numerous studies following the switch to home schooling at the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have investigated the difficulties for parents in supporting their children (Bol, 2020 ; Parczewska, 2021 ); however, the question of digital homework has not been specifically addressed. It is unknown whether the increase in digital schooling paired with discrepancies in access to digital tools has led to an increase in digital dishonesty practices. Data from the PISA 2018 student questionnaires (OECD, 2020a ) indicated that about 90% of students have a computer for schoolwork (OECD average), but the availability per student remains unknown. Digital homework can be perceived as yet another factor of social differences (see for example Auxier & Anderson,  2020 ; Thorn & Vincent-Lancrin, 2022 ).

4.2 Limitations and directions

The limitations of the study include the format of the data collected, with the accuracy of self-reports to mirror actual practices restricted, as these measures are particularly likely to trigger response bias, such as social desirability. More objective data on digital dishonesty in homework-related purposes could, for example, be obtained by analyzing students’ homework with plagiarism software. Further, additional measures that provide a more complete landscape of contributing factors are necessary. For example, in considering digital homework as an alternative to traditional homework, parents’ involvement in homework and their attitudes toward ICT are factors that have not been considered in this study (Amzalag, 2021 ). Although our results are in line with studies on academic digital dishonesty, their scope is limited to the Swiss context. Moreover, our analyses focused on secondary students. Results might be different with a sample of younger students. As an example, Kiss and Teller ( 2022 ) measured primary students cheating practices and found that individual characteristics were not a stable predictor of cheating between age groups. Further, our models included school as a random component, yet other group variables, such as class and peer groups, may well affect digital homework avoidance strategies.

The findings of this study suggest that academic dishonesty when doing homework needs to be addressed in schools. One way, as suggested by Chow et al. ( 2021 ) and Djokovic et al. ( 2022 ), is to build on students’ practices to explain which need to be considered cheating. This recommendation for institutions to take preventive actions and explicit to students the punishment faced in case of digital academic behavior was also raised by Chiang et al. ( 2022 ). Another is that teachers may consider developing homework formats that discourage cheating and shortcuts (e.g., creating multimedia documents instead of text-based documents, using platforms where answers cannot be copied and pasted, or using advanced forms of online proctoring). It may also be possible to change homework formats toward more open formats, where today’s cheating practices are allowed when they are made transparent (open-book homework, collaborative homework). Further, experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic have stressed the importance of understanding the factors related to the successful integration of digital homework and the need to minimize the digital “homework gap” (Auxier & Anderson, 2020 ; Donnelly & Patrinos, 2021 ). Given that homework engagement is a core predictor of academic dishonesty, students should receive meaningful homework in preparation for upcoming lessons or for practicing what was learned in past lessons. Raising student’s awareness of the meaning and significance of homework might be an important piece of the puzzle to honesty in learning.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in SISS base at https://doi.org/10.23662/FORS-DS-1285-1 , reference number 1285.

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List of abbreviations related to PISA datasets

students’ perceived autonomy related to ICT use

students’ perceived ICT competence

frequency of computer use at home for entertainment purposes

index of economic, social, and cultural status (computed from PARED, HISEI and HOMEPOS)

parents’ highest occupational status

home possessions

frequency of computer use for school-related purposes at home

digital cheating for homework items for Switzerland

homework engagement items for Switzerland

positive attitude towards ICT as a learning tool

student’s ICT interest

parents’ highest level of education

students’ ICT as a topic in social interaction

frequency of computer use at school

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Désiron, J.C., Petko, D. Academic dishonesty when doing homework: How digital technologies are put to bad use in secondary schools. Educ Inf Technol 28 , 1251–1271 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11225-y

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Academic Dishonesty Statistics

Definition Of Academic Cheating

• Cheating refers to using various types of materials, information, or devices that are not allowed when completing an academic task. It can include communicating with other test-takers without the consent of the proctor, using a phone to search for information on the Internet, etc.
• Plagiarism implies using the works of other people (their ideas, words, designs, etc.) without their consent. One of the most common forms of plagiarism is copying text written by one or more other authors and pasting it into your paperwork without citation.
• Fabrication involves using data that doesn't exist. For example, having failed to find evidence for their theories, some students opt for counterfeiting the necessary information.

Why Do Students Prefer to Cheat?

• Lack of time or poor time management
• Fear of failure
• Anxiety about grades
• Desire to help classmates
• Academic overload
• Stress, etc.

What’s more, some students not only cheat, but also find it acceptable in particular situations. Eric M. Anderman, a professor from Ohio State University, published a survey in 2017 stating that the majority of the 400 respondents admitted that it’s not a big deal to cheat if you are not interested in a subject. This perspective was also considered in research from Lindale High School (LHS). According to the results, 44.4% of students consider it ethical to behave dishonestly while doing homework, but not during a test.

Could Cheating Hinge on Student Culture?

What’s more, East European countries, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, and former Soviet Union countries tend to be less strict and more accepting of academic cheating than Western European countries and the US. According to a survey carried out by CEDOS together with American Councils for International Education, American and European universities often have different or even opposite opinions about academic misconduct.

Academic Cheating Fact Sheet

The cheating rate among high school and college students is tremendously high, and it isn’t losing momentum. There is an avalanche of cheating incidents happening worldwide. Students who have been lured by cheating once usually tend to continue shortcutting. Unsurprisingly, the statistics are supported by ample evidence. Here are some jaw-dropping facts about cheating in school and college:

60.8% of polled college students admitted to cheating

According to a survey conducted by the CollegeHumor website among 30,000 respondents, 60.8% of college students admitted to committing some form of cheating. Moreover, 16.5% of them didn’t feel guilty about it. This data was supported by the results of Rutgers University research showing that 68% of the polled students acted dishonestly during their studies.

Cheaters have higher GPAs

Many students opt for cheating to get good grades. Although it may be upsetting for their honest counterparts, cheaters manage to achieve their goals. Statistics provided by Fordham University show that dishonest students have a Grade Point Average (GPA) of about 3.41, while non-cheaters can boast of only 2.85. It’s important to understand that these numbers not only indicate the decreasing amount of opportunities for honest students, but also may push more of them to commit the same unethical acts.

95% of cheaters don't get caught

Research carried out by ETS and the Ad Council indicates that the majority of cheaters stay unnoticed and don’t get caught for their misconduct. This is another motive for other students to break the established rules of academic integrity. According to U.S. News and World Report, 90% of polled college students are sure that they will not be caught cheating.

Dishonesty among college students stems from high school

According to ETS and Ad Council research, 75% to 98% of students who admitted to cheating at college confessed to have started doing it in high school. Moreover, academic dishonesty is showing up among even younger students, meaning that it is starting to take place not only in high school, but also in elementary school.

There is no gender difference in cheating

The Ad Council and ETS survey states that there is no significant gender difference in academic misconduct. However, men tend to confess to it slightly more than women. When it comes to subjects, disciplines like math and science are more prone to cheating incidents.

Cheating is getting worse

According to research from the Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics, the number of cheating students is not only high, but also shows an uptrend potential. The study provided statistics from two academic years. In the first year, it revealed 59% of cheating high-school students, but in the next year, the number surged to 95%.

Renowned Colleges Turn Out to Be Vulnerable Too

Despite the common belief that renowned educational institutions have managed to eliminate cheating, statistics and news headlines provide a different view. According to McCabe research, reputable colleges and universities have significantly reduced the level of academic misconduct due to stricter honor codes and a more developed academic culture, but they haven’t managed to eradicate it. Even world-famous elite institutions are found to be involved in cheating scandals.

In 2012, Harvard University was involved in one of the biggest cheating scandals in its history. About 125 of its students were suspected of working in collaboration on an exam despite being asked to do it alone. As a result, around 70 students were forced out.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

• Avoid student overload. When placed under continuous pressure, students often fail to manage their time and start looking for easier ways to get a good grade.
• Be thoughtful about language . It’s important to choose the right words for praising your students. It’s recommended to use phrases that include both praising and stimulus for further progress. For example, “You did a great job but there are still more areas you can develop in.”
• Develop academic culture . Educational institutions are advised to devote more time to discussing ethical matters with their students. Moreover, they could consider including these types of lessons in their curriculum.
• Proctoring . The increasing popularity of e-learning and continuous technological development has fostered a surge in academic misconduct. However, why not turn the tide in your favor? Nowadays, there are many innovative digital proctoring solutions, such as ProctorEdu.com, that help educational institutions increase the effectiveness of online learning and protect their reputation.

What is the percentage of students cheating?

How often do students get caught cheating, is academic cheating getting worse, what percentage of high schoolers have cheated.

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Another problem with shifting education online: cheating

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When universities went online in response to Covid-19, so did the tests their students took. But one of the people who logged on to take an exam in a pre-med chemistry class at a well-known mid-Atlantic university turned out not to be a student at all.

He was a plant. An imposter. A paid ringer.

Proctors — remote monitors some schools have hired to watch test-takers through their webcams — discovered by reviewing video recordings that this same person had taken tests for at least a dozen different students enrolled at seven universities across the country. The camera caught a spreadsheet tacked to the wall of his workspace with student names, course schedules, remote login information and passwords for websites that could feed him answers.

“We can only imagine what the rate of inappropriate testing activity is when no one is watching.” Scott McFarland, CEO, ProctorU

But he was in Qatar, beyond the reach of any attempts to hold him accountable, according to proctors familiar with the situation. They could not say what happened to the students who allegedly hired him.

It was a dramatic case, but far from unique. Universal online testing has created a documented increase in cheating, often because universities, colleges and testing companies were unprepared for the scale of the transformation or unable or unwilling to pay for safeguards, according to faculty and testing experts.

Even with trained proctors watching test-takers and checking their IDs, cheating is up. Before Covid-19 forced millions of students online, one of the companies that provides that service, ProctorU, caught people cheating on fewer than 1 percent of the 340,000 exams it administered from January through March. During the height of remote testing, the company says, the number of exams it supervised jumped to 1.3 million from April through June, and the cheating rate rose above 8 percent.

“We can only imagine what the rate of inappropriate testing activity is when no one is watching,” said Scott McFarland, CEO of ProctorU.

Related: As students fill summer courses, many ask: Why aren’t all colleges open in the summers?

And for most online test-takers, no one has been watching. One reason is that, as demand for online testing spiked, proctoring capacity was overwhelmed. One company, Examity, suspended its live proctoring services during the demand surge when its 1,000 proctors in India were locked down to curb the spread of the coronavirus there.

Ninety-three percent of instructors think students are more likely to cheat online than in person , according to a survey conducted in May by the publishing and digital education company Wiley. Only a third said they were using some type of proctoring to prevent it. Many colleges and universities moved ahead with online testing without supervision to save money. Others opted instead for less expensive, scaled-down kinds of test security, such as software that can lock a web browser while a student takes a test.

While locking a browser during an exam may help — and about 15 percent of instructors take that step, the Wiley survey found — it can’t stop other forms of cheating.

“You cannot give an exam if it is not proctored,” said Charles M. Krousgrill, a professor of engineering at Purdue, where faculty have been more willing to publicly discuss cheating than their counterparts at many other schools.

When, after the Covid shutdowns, Purdue gave students extra time to take their tests online, said Krousgrill, “there was rampant dishonesty.” He described some students in his department organizing videoconferences and sharing answers. “Once we went to online instruction, we could not watch. [The students] knew it, and knew the game was up for grabs. There were lots of kids who got caught up in that.”  

ProctorU, which provides proctors to be sure online test-takers follow the rules, caught people cheating on fewer than 1 percent of exams it administered before the Covid-19 outbreak. Since then the number has jumped to more than 8 percent.

Online tests have also meant a booming business for companies that sell homework and test answers, including Chegg and Course Hero. Students pay subscription fees to get answers to questions on tests or copies of entire tests with answers already provided. The tests are uploaded by other students who have already taken them, in exchange for credits, or answers are quickly provided by “tutors” who work for the sites.

For $9.95 a month, Chegg is offering a new service that provides fast answers to math problems submitted by smartphone camera, step-by-step solution included. Snap a pic, get the answer.

Related: While focus is on fall, students’ choices about college will have a far longer impact

Though these sites have been around since before the pandemic, their use appears to have exploded as more tests are given online. Students used Chegg to allegedly cheat on online exams and tests in the spring at schools including Georgia Tech, Boston University, North Carolina State and Purdue, according to faculty at those institutions and news reports. Universities prefer not to talk about cheating incidents, and federal privacy law limits how much detail they can provide.

At North Carolina State, more than 200 of the 800 students in a single Statistics 311 class were referred for disciplinary action for getting answers to exam questions from a company that offers online tutoring services.

At North Carolina State, more than 200 of the 800 students in a single Statistics 311 class were referred for disciplinary action for using “tutor-provided solutions” to exam questions from Chegg, said Tyler Johnson, the course coordinator.

After the exam, Johnson said, he asked his university to get Chegg to remove the questions, citing copyright law. Chegg did, and furnished a report of users who had either posted or accessed the exam materials.

“I was initially really naive to the extent to which these services are utilized by students,” he said.

Related: Amid pandemic, graduate student workers are winning long-sought contracts

The North Carolina State students have protested in a petition that they didn’t know using Chegg would be considered cheating, and that Johnson showed “no regard to the personal stresses we are enduring and have endured throughout the semester.”

Krousgrill and his colleagues at Purdue asked Chegg to remove their exam materials, too, and asked for help identifying cheaters. They found “a massive number” of students who had used Chegg to get test answers, he said. In one class, Krousgrill said, as many as 60 students out of 250 had done it, and 100 students in a colleague’s class were identified as having used Chegg in a similar fashion.

“I do feel for the students,” Eric Nauman, a professor of engineering and director of the engineering honors program at Purdue, told a web panel for engineering faculty and majors convened to discuss the use of Chegg and similar services for cheating. “If one person starts using it and gets a better grade and these exams are graded on a curve, then they’re in big trouble.”

The number of students who are cheating is almost certainly higher than the number being caught or reported. Research has shown that instructors believe cheating happens much less often than students do , which means they may not be looking for it. When they do find it, many choose to simply give cheaters an F, without reporting the incidents further.

“I do feel for the students. … If one person starts using [an online service] and gets a better grade and these exams are graded on a curve, then they’re in big trouble.” Eric Nauman, professor of engineering and director of the engineering honors program, Purdue University

“I had a conversation with a group of students several months ago,” said James Pitarresi, vice provost at Binghamton University. “And one of the students said, ‘Look, you know, probably 80 percent of the class is looking at Chegg. What are you going to do, expel all of us?’ ”

For most faculty, their only recourse is to ask the companies to remove their exam materials and identify cheaters. But that can take days or even weeks, and happens after the materials have already been shared and an exam is over. It also puts the burden on professors to go site by site, search for their material and ask that it be taken down. “I go through every couple of months and write to them and say, ‘Please take these 200 or 300 items off your site,’ ” said Krousgrill. “But that takes a lot of time.” Especially, he said, when his students are getting answers in 10 minutes.

The cheaters are often way ahead. Message boards at Reddit are filled with warnings to students not to use their school email addresses or real names when signing up for Chegg or similar services. That makes catching cheaters nearly impossible. Even when professors try to preempt Chegg and other sites ahead of time, as one did by embedding a trackable code in test questions, students figured it out and worked around it, according to faculty familiar with the example, although they wouldn’t identify which institution did this.

Chegg, which offers online tutoring services, declined to comment at length. A spokesman said the company supports academic integrity and hasn’t seen “any relative increase in honor code issues since the Covid-19 crisis began.” In an interview with The New York Times, Chegg chief executive Dan Rosensweig, when  asked whether his company’s services were being used for cheating, said: “Let’s face it: Students have always found a way, whether it’s in fraternities, or whether they go to Google. But Chegg is not built for that.”

The company reported  $153 million in revenue for the second quarter , when the pandemic shutdowns were at their peak — a 63 percent year-over-year increase. 

Related: Could the online, for-profit college industry be “a winner in this crisis”?

Chegg CFO Andy Brown told investors in a video call, “We’ve clearly been seeing tailwinds since the shelter in place and kids were learning off campus.”

Colleges were not the only institutions to rush examinations online. Advanced placement and other tests also went virtual in the spring and the parent College Board said it was prepared to move the SAT online in the fall if necessary but then reversed itself.*  So did law school entrance and placement exams, professional certification tests for financial managers and food handlers and many others.

The College Board , which administers the AP tests, reconfigured these exams to be “open book” when they were moved online, but without proctoring. Students reportedly used private messaging apps to collaborate on answers. Even before the exams began, College Board officials tweeted about “a ring of students who were developing plans to cheat” and canceled their registrations.

The College Board won’t disclose whether any cheating actually happened. A spokesman would say only that “at-home testing presents some different security challenges” and that the organization took steps to prevent it.

There are other reasons besides just having the opportunity that students are cheating online. About a quarter of students “indicated that it should be expected that students will use whatever is available to them in a take-home or online test ,” according to research published in the spring by the Journal of the National College Testing Association. It said “any inaction on the part of the faculty to provide a secure exam administration was seen [by students] as an indication that the faculty did not care about” cheating.

“One student with a pattern of cheating is an ethical problem for that student. Multiple students with a pattern of cheating devalues any grade or degree they might be receiving,” Steve Saladin, a co-author of the study, said. “And when cheating spreads to many students in many programs and schools, degrees and grades cease to provide a measure of an individual’s preparedness for a profession or position. And perhaps even more importantly, it suggests a society that blindly accepts any means to an end as a given.”

*This story has been updated to correct that the SAT was not moved online in the spring.

This story about online testing was produced by  The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our  higher education newsletter .

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Why do students cheat? Listen to this dean’s words

Associate Dean, Director Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution, University of Florida

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Chris Loschiavo is affiliated with the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management and the Association for Student Conduct Administration.

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Editor’s note: Since the publication of this article, the University of Florida terminated Chris Loschiavo’s employment when it learned he used his UF work computer account to purchase pornography.

Cheating in college has been with us since the inception of higher education. In recent months, cases of cheating, including large-scale cheating at elite colleges , have led to considerable turmoil.

Many of these behaviors could well start to take shape right at the level of high school. A survey conducted by renowned academic integrity researcher Don McCabe shows how widespread the problem is in high schools.

Large-scale cheating

In a survey of 24,000 students at 70 high schools, McCabe found “64% of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58% admitted to plagiarism and 95% said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework.”

Statistics for cheating for college students are much the same. Surveys indicate as high as 70% of students report some kind of cheating in college. These survey results, which have remained consistent over time, represent a variety of behaviors.

So, what could possibly lead to such behaviors?

As Director of Student Conduct, I have been responsible for addressing these behaviors for the last 16 years. I have also served as president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration (ASCA) , an organization of over 3,300 professionals doing student conduct work at over 1,800 institutions across the US and Canada. All these positions have given me unique insights into the issue of cheating beyond my institution. And I can say these results are not at all surprising to me.

Students cheat for a variety of reasons:

It can be an intentional, calculated decision in order to get ahead. Often, it is motivated by the path to success that they see around them – people cheating without incurring any real consequences.

From politicians cheating, to corporate scandals such as Enron , to the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball , to the NFL’s “deflategate,” our students are surrounded by examples of dishonest acts.

What’s worse, society seemingly rewards these individuals for their dishonest behaviors. Students then come to believe that dishonest behavior is rewarded and often do not hesitate to engage in it.

My experience shows students engage in a cost/benefit analysis that goes like this: “If I cheat and don’t get caught, the reward is an ‘A’ in the class, admission to a graduate/professional school of my choice or a great job. If I get caught, it isn’t as bad as what Enron did, so the consequence won’t be so bad.”

The example we set as a society is what I have found to be the most significant reason for students cheating.

This also gets combined with a pressure to succeed. These students have grown up in a culture where even the team that scores the least gets a trophy. So they are not prepared for failure.

When they believe they are going to fail (which nowadays is often anything less than an “A”), students will do whatever it takes to avoid it, because they don’t want to let others (often family) down.

High schools are not teaching research

Another reason for student cheating is being unprepared for college level work. Over my many years addressing the issue of plagiarism, I have seen student after student who has written a research paper and not given proper attribution. This is not because they were taking credit for someone else’s words, but simply because they were never taught how to write a research paper.

I have had many conversations over the years with students who truly don’t understand how to write a research paper. So much of high school these days is teaching to the large number of standardized tests. As a result, learning how to research is being lost.

Also, students aren’t being taught how to paraphrase. So, they just cut and paste from the articles they read on the internet – it is easy, quick and takes very little effort to do this.

Some others don’t have any confidence in their own thoughts. So when given the chance to write a paper in which they must share their own ideas, they simply go to the internet and cut and paste someone else’s words or ideas, thinking they are worth more than their own.

I once had a student who cut and pasted large parts of her paper from the internet. When she was asked why she did it, she stated that the author had said what she wanted to say much more eloquently. She said she was afraid of changing it using her own words, as it could be an incorrect interpretation.

This student lacked confidence in her ability to interpret what she read and then translate it in her own words. Another student once shared that he didn’t know as much as the author he took his information from. He concluded, “Why would the professor want to hear the student’s own thoughts?”

This has been a potential downfall of teaching to the test, as many of our secondary educators are being forced to do – students aren’t able to think and problem-solve for themselves.

And when they are forced to do so, they simply take someone else’s ideas.

Cheating could be a cry for help

Some others cheat because they have poor time management skills. College work is challenging, and some students underestimate how long it will take them. When they run out of time, they panic and take a shortcut.

Sometimes these students also have inappropriately prioritized social or extracurricular events over their academic work.

Finally, some students cheat because it is a cry for help. I will never forget a student I met with many years ago for a cheating case.

He admitted responsibility and accepted the consequence of a failing grade in his class. I felt convinced that he truly learned from this incident. However, within the week, he was accused of engaging in the very same behavior in the same class again.

This was very early in my career, and I was ready to remove him from our institution. However, as I found out more, I learned that his girlfriend had just broken up with him, his grandmother (to whom he was very close) had recently passed away and his mother had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer (I did actually have proof of every one of these events).

The combination made it impossible for this student to focus on his academics. While these incidents certainly didn’t excuse his behavior, they helped explain why he made such bad choices.

He was afraid to ask for help. It was only when there appeared to be no other option, did he open up about what he was dealing with. I was able to hold him accountable appropriately while also making sure he had access to the resources that would help him address his current emotional state.

He went on to graduate from the institution once he was able to get his life back together. Had his faculty not bothered to address the behavior, he would have likely dropped out.

I have never forgotten the lesson this student taught me.

What can administrators, faculty do to help?

I learned to ask more questions. Now, I try to dig a little deeper when trying to find out why a student made a certain choice. Additionally, it has shaped how I present to faculty on the importance of reporting cheating.

So often I hear from faculty either that they don’t want to be the reason a student gets into trouble, or that they shouldn’t have to deal with these issues.

When I tell the story of this student, it reframes for faculty the importance of reporting. It really isn’t about getting the student in trouble; rather, it is about making sure someone with training can interact with the student to help and set the student up for success when dealing with life’s challenges.

When faculty see it as potentially helping the student, they become much more willing to report.

Cheating is a challenge for our society, both at the high school and college levels. We need to remember, however, that it is rarely a thought-out, premeditated act. More often, it is an impulsive act.

To have a real impact, we need to address the underlying issues.

Tomorrow: Students cheat for good grades. Why not make the classroom about learning and not testing?

• Deflategate
• Extracurricular activities
• College students
• Corporate scandals
• Dishonest acts

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Regional Engagement Officer - Shepparton

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Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

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Why Do Students Cheat?

• Posted July 19, 2016
• By Zachary Goldman

In March, Usable Knowledge published an article on ethical collaboration , which explored researchers’ ideas about how to develop classrooms and schools where collaboration is nurtured but cheating is avoided. The piece offers several explanations for why students cheat and provides powerful ideas about how to create ethical communities. The article left me wondering how students themselves might respond to these ideas, and whether their experiences with cheating reflected the researchers’ understanding. In other words, how are young people “reading the world,” to quote Paulo Freire , when it comes to questions of cheating, and what might we learn from their perspectives?

I worked with Gretchen Brion-Meisels to investigate these questions by talking to two classrooms of students from Massachusetts and Texas about their experiences with cheating. We asked these youth informants to connect their own insights and ideas about cheating with the ideas described in " Ethical Collaboration ." They wrote from a range of perspectives, grappling with what constitutes cheating, why people cheat, how people cheat, and when cheating might be ethically acceptable. In doing so, they provide us with additional insights into why students cheat and how schools might better foster ethical collaboration.

Why Students Cheat

Students critiqued both the individual decision-making of peers and the school-based structures that encourage cheating. For example, Julio (Massachusetts) wrote, “Teachers care about cheating because its not fair [that] students get good grades [but] didn't follow the teacher's rules.” His perspective represents one set of ideas that we heard, which suggests that cheating is an unethical decision caused by personal misjudgment. Umna (Massachusetts) echoed this idea, noting that “cheating is … not using the evidence in your head and only using the evidence that’s from someone else’s head.”

Other students focused on external factors that might make their peers feel pressured to cheat. For example, Michima (Massachusetts) wrote, “Peer pressure makes students cheat. Sometimes they have a reason to cheat like feeling [like] they need to be the smartest kid in class.” Kayla (Massachusetts) agreed, noting, “Some people cheat because they want to seem cooler than their friends or try to impress their friends. Students cheat because they think if they cheat all the time they’re going to get smarter.” In addition to pressure from peers, students spoke about pressure from adults, pressure related to standardized testing, and the demands of competing responsibilities.

When Cheating is Acceptable

Students noted a few types of extenuating circumstances, including high stakes moments. For example, Alejandra (Texas) wrote, “The times I had cheated [were] when I was failing a class, and if I failed the final I would repeat the class. And I hated that class and I didn’t want to retake it again.” Here, she identifies allegiance to a parallel ethical value: Graduating from high school. In this case, while cheating might be wrong, it is an acceptable means to a higher-level goal.

Encouraging an Ethical School Community

Several of the older students with whom we spoke were able to offer us ideas about how schools might create more ethical communities. Sam (Texas) wrote, “A school where cheating isn't necessary would be centered around individualization and learning. Students would learn information and be tested on the information. From there the teachers would assess students' progress with this information, new material would be created to help individual students with what they don't understand. This way of teaching wouldn't be based on time crunching every lesson, but more about helping a student understand a concept.”

Sam provides a vision for the type of school climate in which collaboration, not cheating, would be most encouraged. Kaith (Texas), added to this vision, writing, “In my own opinion students wouldn’t find the need to cheat if they knew that they had the right undivided attention towards them from their teachers and actually showed them that they care about their learning. So a school where cheating wasn’t necessary would be amazing for both teachers and students because teachers would be actually getting new things into our brains and us as students would be not only attentive of our teachers but also in fact learning.”

Both of these visions echo a big idea from “ Ethical Collaboration ”: The importance of reducing the pressure to achieve. Across students’ comments, we heard about how self-imposed pressure, peer pressure, and pressure from adults can encourage cheating.

Where Student Opinions Diverge from Research

The ways in which students spoke about support differed from the descriptions in “ Ethical Collaboration .” The researchers explain that, to reduce cheating, students need “vertical support,” or standards, guidelines, and models of ethical behavior. This implies that students need support understanding what is ethical. However, our youth informants describe a type of vertical support that centers on listening and responding to students’ needs. They want teachers to enable ethical behavior through holistic support of individual learning styles and goals. Similarly, researchers describe “horizontal support” as creating “a school environment where students know, and can persuade their peers, that no one benefits from cheating,” again implying that students need help understanding the ethics of cheating. Our youth informants led us to believe instead that the type of horizontal support needed may be one where collective success is seen as more important than individual competition.

Why Youth Voices Matter, and How to Help Them Be Heard

Our purpose in reaching out to youth respondents was to better understand whether the research perspectives on cheating offered in “ Ethical Collaboration ” mirrored the lived experiences of young people. This blog post is only a small step in that direction; young peoples’ perspectives vary widely across geographic, demographic, developmental, and contextual dimensions, and we do not mean to imply that these youth informants speak for all youth. However, our brief conversations suggest that asking youth about their lived experiences can benefit the way that educators understand school structures.

Too often, though, students are cut out of conversations about school policies and culture. They rarely even have access to information on current educational research, partially because they are not the intended audience of such work. To expand opportunities for student voice, we need to create spaces — either online or in schools — where students can research a current topic that interests them. Then they can collect information, craft arguments they want to make, and deliver their messages. Educators can create the spaces for this youth-driven work in schools, communities, and even policy settings — helping to support young people as both knowledge creators and knowledge consumers. 

Additional Resources

• Read “ Student Voice in Educational Research and Reform ” [PDF] by Alison Cook-Sather.
• Read “ The Significance of Students ” [PDF] by Dana L. Mitra.
• Read “ Beyond School Spirit ” by Emily J. Ozer and Dana Wright.

Related Articles

Part of the Conversation: Rachel Hanebutt, MBE'16

Fighting for change: estefania rodriguez, l&t'16, notes from ferguson.

11 Surprising Homework Statistics, Facts & Data

The age-old question of whether homework is good or bad for students is unanswerable because there are so many “ it depends ” factors.

For example, it depends on the age of the child, the type of homework being assigned, and even the child’s needs.

There are also many conflicting reports on whether homework is good or bad. This is a topic that largely relies on data interpretation for the researcher to come to their conclusions.

To cut through some of the fog, below I’ve outlined some great homework statistics that can help us understand the effects of homework on children.

Homework Statistics List

1. 45% of parents think homework is too easy for their children.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that parents are almost twice as likely to believe their children’s homework is too easy than to disagree with that statement.

Here are the figures for math homework:

• 46% of parents think their child’s math homework is too easy.
• 25% of parents think their child’s math homework is not too easy.
• 29% of parents offered no opinion.

Here are the figures for language arts homework:

• 44% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is too easy.
• 28% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is not too easy.
• 28% of parents offered no opinion.

These findings are based on online surveys of 372 parents of school-aged children conducted in 2018.

2. 93% of Fourth Grade Children Worldwide are Assigned Homework

The prestigious worldwide math assessment Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) took a survey of worldwide homework trends in 2007. Their study concluded that 93% of fourth-grade children are regularly assigned homework, while just 7% never or rarely have homework assigned.

3. 17% of Teens Regularly Miss Homework due to Lack of High-Speed Internet Access

A 2018 Pew Research poll of 743 US teens found that 17%, or almost 2 in every 5 students, regularly struggled to complete homework because they didn’t have reliable access to the internet.

This figure rose to 25% of Black American teens and 24% of teens whose families have an income of less than $30,000 per year.

4. Parents Spend 6.7 Hours Per Week on their Children’s Homework

A 2018 study of 27,500 parents around the world found that the average amount of time parents spend on homework with their child is 6.7 hours per week. Furthermore, 25% of parents spend more than 7 hours per week on their child’s homework.

American parents spend slightly below average at 6.2 hours per week, while Indian parents spend 12 hours per week and Japanese parents spend 2.6 hours per week.

5. Students in High-Performing High Schools Spend on Average 3.1 Hours per night Doing Homework

A study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) conducted a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California. 

Across these high-performing schools, students self-reported that they did 3.1 hours per night of homework.

Graduates from those schools also ended up going on to college 93% of the time.

6. One to Two Hours is the Optimal Duration for Homework

A 2012 peer-reviewed study in the High School Journal found that students who conducted between one and two hours achieved higher results in tests than any other group.

However, the authors were quick to highlight that this “t is an oversimplification of a much more complex problem.” I’m inclined to agree. The greater variable is likely the quality of the homework than time spent on it.

Nevertheless, one result was unequivocal: that some homework is better than none at all : “students who complete any amount of homework earn higher test scores than their peers who do not complete homework.”

7. 74% of Teens cite Homework as a Source of Stress

A study by the Better Sleep Council found that homework is a source of stress for 74% of students. Only school grades, at 75%, rated higher in the study.

That figure rises for girls, with 80% of girls citing homework as a source of stress.

Similarly, the study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) found that 56% of students cite homework as a “primary stressor” in their lives.

8. US Teens Spend more than 15 Hours per Week on Homework

The same study by the Better Sleep Council also found that US teens spend over 2 hours per school night on homework, and overall this added up to over 15 hours per week.

Surprisingly, 4% of US teens say they do more than 6 hours of homework per night. That’s almost as much homework as there are hours in the school day.

The only activity that teens self-reported as doing more than homework was engaging in electronics, which included using phones, playing video games, and watching TV.

9. The 10-Minute Rule

The National Education Association (USA) endorses the concept of doing 10 minutes of homework per night per grade.

For example, if you are in 3rd grade, you should do 30 minutes of homework per night. If you are in 4th grade, you should do 40 minutes of homework per night.

However, this ‘rule’ appears not to be based in sound research. Nevertheless, it is true that homework benefits (no matter the quality of the homework) will likely wane after 2 hours (120 minutes) per night, which would be the NEA guidelines’ peak in grade 12.

10. 21.9% of Parents are Too Busy for their Children’s Homework

An online poll of nearly 300 parents found that 21.9% are too busy to review their children’s homework. On top of this, 31.6% of parents do not look at their children’s homework because their children do not want their help. For these parents, their children’s unwillingness to accept their support is a key source of frustration.

11. 46.5% of Parents find Homework too Hard

The same online poll of parents of children from grades 1 to 12 also found that many parents struggle to help their children with homework because parents find it confusing themselves. Unfortunately, the study did not ask the age of the students so more data is required here to get a full picture of the issue.

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Interpreting the Data

Unfortunately, homework is one of those topics that can be interpreted by different people pursuing differing agendas. All studies of homework have a wide range of variables, such as:

• What age were the children in the study?
• What was the homework they were assigned?
• What tools were available to them?
• What were the cultural attitudes to homework and how did they impact the study?
• Is the study replicable?

The more questions we ask about the data, the more we realize that it’s hard to come to firm conclusions about the pros and cons of homework .

Furthermore, questions about the opportunity cost of homework remain. Even if homework is good for children’s test scores, is it worthwhile if the children consequently do less exercise or experience more stress?

Thus, this ends up becoming a largely qualitative exercise. If parents and teachers zoom in on an individual child’s needs, they’ll be able to more effectively understand how much homework a child needs as well as the type of homework they should be assigned.

Related: Funny Homework Excuses

The debate over whether homework should be banned will not be resolved with these homework statistics. But, these facts and figures can help you to pursue a position in a school debate on the topic – and with that, I hope your debate goes well and you develop some great debating skills!

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
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How Teens Use Technology to Cheat in School

Why teens cheat, text messaging during tests, storing notes, copying and pasting, social media, homework apps and websites, talk to your teen.

• Expectations and Consequences

When you were in school, teens who were cheating were likely looking at a neighbor’s paper or copying a friend’s homework. The most high-tech attempts to cheat may have involved a student who wrote the answers to a test on the cover of their notebook.

Cheating in today’s world has evolved, and unfortunately, become pervasive. Technology makes cheating all too tempting, common, and easy to pull off. Not only can kids use their phones to covertly communicate with each other, but they can also easily look up answers or get their work done on the Internet.

In one study, a whopping 35% of teens admit to using their smartphones to cheat on homework or tests. 65% of the same surveyed students also stated they have seen others use their phones to cheat in school. Other research has also pointed to widespread academic indiscretions among teens.

Sadly, academic dishonesty often is easily normalized among teens. Many of them may not even recognize that sharing answers, looking up facts online, consulting a friend, or using a homework app could constitute cheating. It may be a slippery slope as well, with kids fudging the honesty line a tiny bit here or there before beginning full-fledged cheating.

For those who are well aware that their behavior constitutes cheating, the academic pressure to succeed may outweigh the risk of getting caught. They may want to get into top colleges or earn scholarships for their grades. Some teens may feel that the best way to gain a competitive edge is by cheating.

Other students may just be looking for shortcuts. It may seem easier to cheat rather than look up the answers, figure things out in their heads, or study for a test. Plus, it can be rationalized that they are "studying" on their phone rather than actually cheating.

Teens with busy schedules may be especially tempted to cheat. The demands of sports, a part-time job , family commitments, or other after-school responsibilities can make academic dishonesty seem like a time-saving option.

Sometimes, there’s also a fairly low risk of getting caught. Some teachers rely on an honor system, and in some cases, technology has evolved faster than school policies. Many teachers lack the resources to detect academic dishonesty in the classroom. However, increasingly, there are programs and methods that let teachers scan student work for plagiarism.

Finally, some teens get confused about their family's values and may forget that learning is the goal of schooling rather than just the grades they get. They may assume that their parent would rather they cheat than get a bad grade—or they fear disappointing them. Plus, they see so many other kids cheating that it may start to feel expected.

It’s important to educate yourself about the various ways that today’s teens are cheating so you can be aware of the temptations your teen may face. Let's look at how teens are using phones and technology to cheat.

Texting is one of the fastest ways for students to get answers to test questions from other students in the room—it's become the modern equivalent of note passing. Teens hide their smartphones on their seats and text one another, looking down to view responses while the teacher isn't paying attention.

Teens often admit the practice is easy to get away with even when phones aren't allowed (provided the teacher isn't walking around the room to check for cellphones).

Some teens store notes for test time on their cell phones and access these notes during class. As with texting, this is done on the sly, hiding the phone from view.  The internet offers other unusual tips for cheating with notes, too.

For example, several sites guide teens to print their notes out in the nutrition information portion of a water bottle label, providing a downloadable template to do so. Teens replace the water or beverage bottle labels with their own for a nearly undetectable setup, especially in a large class. This, of course, only works if the teacher allows beverages during class.

Rather than conduct research to find sources, some students are copying and pasting material. They may plagiarize a report by trying to pass off a Wikipedia article as their own paper, for example.

Teachers may get wise to this type of plagiarism by doing a simple internet search of their own. Pasting a few sentences of a paper into a search engine can help teachers identify if the content was taken from a website.

A few websites offer complete research papers for free based on popular subjects or common books. Others allow students to purchase a paper. Then, a professional writer, or perhaps even another student, will complete the report for them.

Teachers may be able to detect this type of cheating when a student’s paper seems to be written in a different voice. A perfectly polished paper may indicate a ninth-grade student’s work isn’t their own. Teachers may also just be able to tell that the paper just doesn't sound like the student who turned it in.

Crowdsourced sites such as Homework Helper also provide their share of homework answers. Students simply ask a question and others chime in to give them the answers.

Teenagers use social media to help one another on tests, too. It only takes a second to capture a picture of an exam when the teacher isn’t looking.

That picture may then be shared with friends who want a sneak peek of the test before they take it. The photo may be uploaded to a special Facebook group or simply shared via text message. Then, other teens can look up the answers to the exam once they know the questions ahead of time.

While many tech-savvy cheating methods aren’t all that surprising, some methods require very little effort on the student’s part. Numerous free math apps such as Photomath allow a student to take a picture of the math problem. The app scans the problem and spits out the answers, even for complex algebra problems. That means students can quickly complete the homework without actually understanding the material.

Other apps, such as HWPic , send a picture of the problem to an actual tutor, who offers a step-by-step solution to the problem. While some students may use this to better understand their homework, others just copy down the answers, complete with the steps that justify the answer.

Websites such as Cymayth and Wolfram Alpha solve math problems on the fly—Wolfram can even handle college-level math problems. While the sites and apps state they are designed to help students figure out how to do the math, they are also used by students who would rather have the answers without the effort required to think them through on their own.

Other apps quickly translate foreign languages. Rather than have to decipher what a recording says or translate written words, apps can easily translate the information for the student.

The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages parents to talk to teens about cheating and their expectations for honesty, school, and communication. Many parents may have never had a serious talk with their child about cheating. It may not even come up unless their child gets caught cheating. Some parents may not think it’s necessary to discuss because they assume their child would never cheat. 

However, clearly, the statistics show that many kids do engage in academic discretions. So, don’t assume your child wouldn’t cheat. Often, "good kids" and "honest kids" make bad decisions. Make it clear to your teen that you value hard work and honesty.

Talk to your teen regularly about the dangers of cheating. Make it clear that cheaters tend not to get ahead in life.

Discuss the academic and social consequences of cheating, too. For example, your teen might get a zero or get kicked out of a class for cheating. Even worse, other people may not believe them when they tell the truth if they become known as dishonest or a cheater. It could also go on their transcripts, which could impair their academic future.

It’s important for your teen to understand that cheating—and heavy cell phone use—can take a toll on their mental health , as well. Additionally, studies make clear that poor mental health, particularly relating to self-image, stress levels, and academic engagement, makes kids more likely to indulge in academic dishonestly. So, be sure to consider the whole picture of why your child may be cheating or feel tempted to cheat.

A 2016 study found that cheaters actually cheat themselves out of happiness. Although they may think the advantage they gain by cheating will make them happier, research shows cheating causes people to feel worse.

Establish Clear Expectations and Consequences

Deciphering what constitutes cheating in today's world can be a little tricky. If your teen uses a homework app to get help, is that cheating? What if they use a website that translates Spanish into English? Also, note that different teachers have different expectations and will allow different levels of outside academic support.

Expectations

So, you may need to take it on a case-by-case basis to determine whether your teen's use of technology enhances or hinders their learning and/or is approved by their teacher. When in doubt, you can always ask the teacher directly if using technology for homework or other projects is acceptable.

To help prevent cheating, take a firm, clear stance so that your child understands your values and expectations. Also, make sure they have any needed supports in place so that they aren't tempted to cheat due to academic frustrations or challenges.

Tell your teen, ideally before an incident of academic dishonesty occurs, that you don’t condone cheating of any kind and you’d prefer a bad grade over dishonesty.

Stay involved in your teen’s education. Know what type of homework your teen is doing and be aware of the various ways your teen may be tempted to use their laptop or smartphone to cheat.

To encourage honesty in your child, help them develop a healthy moral compass by being an honest role model. If you cheat on your taxes or lie about your teen’s age to get into the movies for a cheaper price, you may send them the message that cheating is acceptable.

Consequences

If you do catch your teen cheating, take action . Just because your teen insists, “Everyone uses an app to get homework done,” don’t blindly believe it or let that give them a free pass. Instead, reiterate your expectations and provide substantive consequences. These may include removing phone privileges for a specified period of time. Sometimes the loss of privileges —such as your teen’s electronics—for 24 hours is enough to send a clear message.

Allow your teen to face consequences at school as well. If they get a zero on a test for cheating, don’t argue with the teacher. Instead, let your teen know that cheating has serious ramifications—and that they will not get away with this behavior.

However, do find out why your teen is cheating. Consider if they're over-scheduled or afraid they can’t keep up with their peers. Are they struggling to understand the material? Do they feel unhealthy pressure to excel? Ask questions to gain an understanding so you can help prevent cheating in the future and ensure they can succeed on their own.

It’s better for your teen to learn lessons about cheating now, rather than later in life. Dishonesty can have serious consequences. Cheating in college could get your teen expelled and cheating at a future job could get them fired or it could even lead to legal action. Cheating on a future partner could lead to the end of the relationship.

A Word From Verywell

Make sure your teen knows that honesty and focusing on learning rather than only on getting "good grades," at all costs, really is the best policy. Talk about honesty often and validate your teen’s feelings when they're frustrated with schoolwork—and the fact that some students who cheat seem to get ahead without getting caught. Assure them that ultimately, people who cheat truly are cheating themselves.

Common Sense Media. It's ridiculously easy for kids to cheat now .

Common Sense Media. 35% of kids admit to using cell phones to cheat .

Isakov M, Tripathy A. Behavioral correlates of cheating: environmental specificity and reward expectation .  PLoS One . 2017;12(10):e0186054. Published 2017 Oct 26. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186054

Marksteiner T, Nishen AK, Dickhäuser O. Students' perception of teachers' reference norm orientation and cheating in the classroom .  Front Psychol . 2021;12:614199. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.614199

Khan ZR, Sivasubramaniam S, Anand P, Hysaj A. ‘ e’-thinking teaching and assessment to uphold academic integrity: lessons learned from emergency distance learning .  International Journal for Educational Integrity . 2021;17(1):17. doi:10.1007/s40979-021-00079-5

Farnese ML, Tramontano C, Fida R, Paciello M. Cheating behaviors in academic context: does academic moral disengagement matter?   Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences . 2011;29:356-365. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.250

Pew Research Center. How parents and schools regulate teens' mobile phones .

Mohammad Abu Taleb BR, Coughlin C, Romanowski MH, Semmar Y, Hosny KH. Students, mobile devices and classrooms: a comparison of US and Arab undergraduate students in a middle eastern university .  HES . 2017;7(3):181. doi:10.5539/hes.v7n3p181

Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B, Seksenbayev B, Trukhachev VI, Kostyukova EI, Kitas GD. Plagiarism in the context of education and evolving detection strategies .  J Korean Med Sci . 2017;32(8):1220-1227. doi:10.3346/jkms.2017.32.8.1220

Bretag T. Challenges in addressing plagiarism in education .  PLoS Med . 2013;10(12):e1001574. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001574

American Academy of Pediatrics. Competition and cheating .

Korn L, Davidovitch N. The Profile of academic offenders: features of students who admit to academic dishonesty .  Med Sci Monit . 2016;22:3043-3055. doi:10.12659/msm.898810

Abi-Jaoude E, Naylor KT, Pignatiello A. Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health .  CMAJ . 2020;192(6):E136-E141. doi:10.1503/cmaj.190434

Stets JE, Trettevik R. Happiness and Identities . Soc Sci Res. 2016;58:1-13. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.04.011

Lenhart A. Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015 . Pew Research Center.

By Amy Morin, LCSW Amy Morin, LCSW, is the Editor-in-Chief of Verywell Mind. She's also a psychotherapist, an international bestselling author of books on mental strength and host of The Verywell Mind Podcast. She delivered one of the most popular TEDx talks of all time.

Millions of college students use Chegg, which professors say enables cheating – and possibly blackmail

An apparent good Samaritan had bad news for math professor Juan Gutiérrez: One of his students cheated on an exam. 

The person, who identified himself as an incoming graduate student in the USA, said he helped an undergraduate on a test after the two connected online. The emailer said he worked for Chegg, a website that sells itself as a one-stop shop for collegians who need help with their studies.

Some academics and students know Chegg for another reason: claims it enables   cheating in the classroom. 

“It pains me to see students taking undue advantage of the pandemic situation to boost their GPA without putting any effort,” the emailer   told Gutiérrez. 

Gutiérrez snapped into action and got in touch with his student, who complicated the narrative.   Days earlier, the Texas student said, he had received an email threatening to disclose he had used Chegg to fraudulently complete his coursework unless he paid off the person via PayPal. 

“I have sources everywhere and understand you have an exam coming up," the threatening email read. "It will be a shame if something happened regarding the score." 

Gutiérrez was angry, but his ire probably surprised the would-be whistleblower. 

“Extorting anyone is a crime,” he wrote back. 

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Vulnerable to blackmail?

For years, professors have lamented the use of college-help websites such as Chegg in academic dishonesty. Students who use the sites, especially with their real names, make themselves vulnerable to possible attempts of blackmail, experts said. 

To Gutiérrez, chair of the mathematics department at the University of Texas, San Antonio, the possible blackmail was a far more serious issue. He told the sender, whom he suspected was an Indian national, that he had alerted the State Department. The emailer went dark, but Gutiérrez posted screenshots of the incident on Twitter with a warning to students.

Kshitij Karan, whose name was on both the threat and the note to the professor, told USA TODAY he had not sent the threatening message to the student, but he had reached out to Gutierrez. He suggested the email containing the threat had been doctored. 

The Texas undergraduate did not respond to requests for comment.

Chegg denied the student and the alleged blackmailer had met on its platform. Despite a screenshot showing a Chegg question that was referenced in emails between the two, Chegg said it could not find a record of the question being sent. 

"We immediately conducted our own internal investigation and can categorically say that we have found no evidence that this exchange took place on the Chegg platform," the company said in a statement to USA TODAY. "It is technically impossible for there to be no record of the question if it was in fact posted on our platform."

Misuse of online platforms for cheating is not unique to Chegg. The company is one of many that operate alongside the country’s higher education system without the same   rules or responsibilities colleges bear. The business started as a purveyor of textbook rentals in 2005 – a service it still offers – but added services such as writing help, test prep and other homework help. 

It had 6.6 million subscribers across 190 countries in the 2020 fiscal year, making it one of the largest education technology companies in the world. The company's market capitalization was as high as $14 billion this year but is now about $4.5 billion.  

College help is a lucrative business: Harvard grad made millions on US college admissions for international students

Chegg's test prep and homework help come either through live experts or a cache of questions from textbooks and exams. If students need help with a math problem, they can upload a photo of it to Chegg. An answer, complete with how to solve it, can come back within minutes. 

Professors said students have used the service in exams, snapping pictures surreptitiously with their phones and peeking when the answers come in.

Cheating in college is nothing new, but some feared the increased online learning spurred by the pandemic would lead to even more academic dishonesty, enabled by websites such as Chegg. 

Chegg denies that characterization and said its users agree in its terms of service not to use the platform to cheat. It cooperates with schools looking to find cheaters.

A new product, Chegg said, even allows professors to upload their tests before the scheduled exam dates. The tool prevents students from accessing the material in the given time range. 

“We constantly work to prevent misuse of our site,” the company's statement said, “including reminding subscribers about our Honor Code before they submit questions, and providing tips and information to students and faculty on how to properly use and not use Chegg services.”

What is Chegg?

Chegg, like other education technology websites, saw major growth during the pandemic as  universities were forced to pivot instruction online . A company spokesman said Chegg grew by 67% in 2020   from the previous year. 

Students can pay $15 to $20 a month to access the site.   Along with receiving help with questions from their course material, they can get help with essays, view flashcards or take practice exams. 

Company officials said they're aware some students use its services to cheat but that Chegg works with universities to try to address the behavior. David Rettinger, a professor at the University of Mary Washington who studies academic dishonesty, said Chegg is notable for its transparency and willingness to work with academic institutions compared with other sites offering similar services. 

Cheating may be on the company’s radar, but officials said it has never dealt with an accusation of extortion. 

The Texas incident, according to Gutiérrez’s account and screenshots of the alleged exchange, started on Chegg. The student told Gutiérrez he posted a question about his calculus homework involving tangent lines. The company specifically denied the existence of the post.

Two days later, the email threatening the student arrived. It read, “I posted a solution on your Chegg post a few days ago regarding tangent lines.” The sender, according to the return email, was named Kshitij Karan. 

Gutiérrez’s class had an exam that month. The email accusing the student of cheating arrived the next day, again bearing Karan's name. 

To Gutiérrez, it seems clear his student posted a question to Chegg and was blackmailed. He was further convinced when the student was able to produce Karan’s name before Gutiérrez shared it with him.

“By chance, is this regarding a person by the name of Kshitij?” the student wrote to Gutierrez on Sept. 29. “I have been getting harassed by him, but I just thought he was trying to get money out of me.” 

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Karan disagrees with that account. He said he works for Chegg and other learning platforms to supplement his income.

He said he sometimes takes practice tests for students and charges them a fee for his services. In this case, Karan said, the student contacted him through Discord, a messaging app.

Karan said he completed the test as requested by the student, then realized it was a real exam. He reached out to Gutiérrez, and that’s when he said he learned of the threatening email sent to the student. He suggested the student could have doctored the sender's information.

Karan's Discord tag calls into question his account. The same username appears in multiple posts on Reddit forums where students seek others to do their assignments for pay. In one post with Karan's Discord tag, the writer identifies himself as a "verified" Chegg tutor and says he can offer help with homework, for pay. In other posts, Karan's Discord tag appears in forums with names such as "Paid homework" or "hwforcash." The latter forum bears a simple description: "Pay reddit to do your homework for you."  

Karan said he was trying to reach people who might need a tutor, not trying to complete their coursework for cash. 

Gutiérrez doesn’t buy Karan’s story. 

“Everything follows a perfect timeline,” Gutiérrez said. “And everything fits perfectly.”

Gutiérrez has been communicating with Chegg, and he described its answers as a smokescreen. He said he never claimed the incident occurred on the company’s platform. Instead, he said, the student used Chegg, then made an error by including his personal information on the website. That made him vulnerable to harassment outside the platform, Gutiérrez said. 

Chegg denied Karan has worked for its site. The company said it can't find an account tied to the student. Students often share Chegg accounts, so it can be difficult to track individual users. 

Joe Izbrand, a spokesman for the University of Texas, San Antonio, confirmed the university was aware of the incident and addressing it, but it would not provide more details in compliance with federal laws regarding students' privacy. The university released a statement saying it had "previously addressed alleged academic dishonesty incidents involving students and Chegg."

'Chegg will narc' 

In October 2020, months after the pandemic forced many classes online, Redditors on a forum for Ohio State University students had a problem. They had heard some of their peers were busted using Chegg on an organic chemistry test in April, and they weren't sure they could trust Chegg to protect their identities. 

Jake Conway, then a student   at OSU, had an idea to get to the bottom of what happened. He’d use a public records request to   ask for the emails between the professor in question, Andrea Baldwin, and Chegg.

His plan worked. He shared the documents in a post. 

The emails show Baldwin coordinated with the university’s Office of Academic Affairs to ask Chegg for the names of students who would have accessed relevant material at the time of her test. Chegg handed over   the email addresses and other non-financial   information tied to the student profiles.

Conway said he expected to learn the company shared the names and emails. He questioned how Chegg could have been sure the people listed had actually been the ones using the account since students commonly share accounts. 

Conway's takeaway was clear. He warned his classmates: “Chegg will narc you out upon request.”

To the Redditors, the solution was simple: Don’t cheat, or if you do, use a different name and email address. 

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Benjamin Johnson, an Ohio State University spokesman, confirmed that in 2020, several professors raised concerns about students using Chegg during exams and quizzes. He said the university coordinated with the company to learn which students visited the site during tests. 

Johnson stopped short of saying whether students were punished for using the site, but he did say, "Students can be charged with violating the Student Code of Conduct."

Though the university and Chegg streamlined the process for reporting academic misconduct cases, Baldwin said cheating hasn't stopped. 

Can laws stop cheating?

To deter cheating, it helps to understand its motive. Many students who cheat feel as though they can’t ask their professors for help. They may have fallen behind in their coursework and see an outsider as their only option, said Rettinger, who oversees the University of Mary Washington's academic integrity programs.

“The bulk of students make a bad choice on a bad day,” he said. “We have a responsibility to educate them.”

It’s likely students cheated more during pandemic shutdowns, Rettinger said. Students cheat, he said, when they're not engaged in their classes or suspect their professors are indifferent about them.

Cats in class, porn on Zoom: How online learning went in the early days of the pandemic

Cheating knows no nationality, and some countries have taken aggressive steps to curb the behavior. Among them is Australia, which in 2014 saw a massive cheating scandal in which students paid ghostwriters to craft their essays. 

The Australian government passed a law in 2018 aiming to stop this type of academic fraud. Its law is directed at “those who provide and advertise cheating services and not at students,” according to Australia's Department of Education, Skills and Employment.  

In Australia, cheating probably increased during pandemic shutdowns, but that's hard to quantify, said Cath Ellis, an associate dean and professor studying academic cheating at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Ellis said blackmail is a known issue in the industry, but it remains difficult to document. Even web forums focused on helping students cheat on their coursework tell potential customers to be wary of people who might extort them.  

Arc – UNSW Student Life at Ellis' institution offers guidance for those who may find themselves the target of blackmail . It stresses the university will help the victims navigate the situation but only if they're willing to admit their academic dishonesty. 

Despite the support for curbing online cheating, it's difficult to craft legislation that does so, Ellis said. Often, tutors are in different countries than the students they help. Cheating on a test isn’t a crime, so it doesn’t make sense for laws to target students. 

Instead, these types of laws have focused on intermediaries. Law prevents some essay-writing services from operating in Australia; they are legal in the USA.

Part of the challenge, Ellis said, is navigating the distinction between how companies advertise themselves and how students actually use the product.

On the front end, an essay-writing company may promise original content that students can use as their own. Yet in the fine print, they say their product is supposed to be used only as a model for learning. 

“The story they tell in the shop window," Ellis said, "is very different to the story they’re telling in the terms and conditions."

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Common Reasons Students Cheat

Poor Time Management

The most common reason students cite for committing academic dishonesty is that they ran out of time. The good news is that this is almost always avoidable. Good time management skills are a must for success in college (as well as in life). Visit the Undergraduate Academic Advisement website  for tips on how to manage your time in college.

Stress/Overload

Another common reason students engage in dishonest behavior has to do with overload: too many homework assignments, work issues, relationship problems, COVID-19. Before you resort to behaving in an academically dishonest way, we encourage you to reach out to your professor, your TA, your academic advisor or even  UB’s counseling services .

Wanting to Help Friends

While this sounds like a good reason to do something, it in no way helps a person to be assisted in academic dishonesty. Your friends are responsible for learning what is expected of them and providing evidence of that learning to their instructor. Your unauthorized assistance falls under the “ aiding in academic dishonesty ” violation and makes both you and your friend guilty.

Fear of Failure

Students report that they resort to academic dishonesty when they feel that they won’t be able to successfully perform the task (e.g., write the computer code, compose the paper, do well on the test). Fear of failure prompts students to get unauthorized help, but the repercussions of cheating far outweigh the repercussions of failing. First, when you are caught cheating, you may fail anyway. Second, you tarnish your reputation as a trustworthy student. And third, you are establishing habits that will hurt you in the long run. When your employer or graduate program expects you to have certain knowledge based on your coursework and you don’t have that knowledge, you diminish the value of a UB education for you and your fellow alumni.

"Everyone Does it" Phenomenon

Sometimes it can feel like everyone around us is dishonest or taking shortcuts. We hear about integrity scandals on the news and in our social media feeds. Plus, sometimes we witness students cheating and seeming to get away with it. This feeling that “everyone does it” is often reported by students as a reason that they decided to be academically dishonest. The important thing to remember is that you have one reputation and you need to protect it. Once identified as someone who lacks integrity, you are no longer given the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Additionally, research shows that once you cheat, it’s easier to do it the next time and the next, paving the path for you to become genuinely dishonest in your academic pursuits.

Temptation Due to Unmonitored Environments or Weak Assignment Design

When students take assessments without anyone monitoring them, they may be tempted to access unauthorized resources because they feel like no one will know. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, students have been tempted to peek at online answer sites, Google a test question, or even converse with friends during a test. Because our environments may have changed does not mean that our expectations have. If you wouldn’t cheat in a classroom, don’t be tempted to cheat at home. Your personal integrity is also at stake.

Different Understanding of Academic Integrity Policies

Standards and norms for academically acceptable behavior can vary. No matter where you’re from, whether the West Coast or the far East, the standards for academic integrity at UB must be followed to further the goals of a premier research institution. Become familiar with our policies that govern academically honest behavior.

More From Forbes

Educators battle plagiarism as 89% of students admit to using openai’s chatgpt for homework.

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Who's teaching who?

A large majority of students are already using ChatGPT for homework assignments, creating challenges around plagiarism , cheating, and learning. According to Wharton MBA Professor Christian Terwisch, ChatGPT would receive “a B or a B-” on an Ivy League MBA-level exam in operations management. Another professor at a Utah-based university asked ChatGPT to tweet in his voice - leading Professor Alex Lawrence to declare that “this is the greatest cheating tool ever invented”, according to the Wall Street Journal . The plagiarism potential is potent - so, is banning the tool a realistic solution?

New research from Study.com provides eye-opening insight into the educational impact of ChatGPT , an online tool that has a surprising mastery of learning and human language. INSIDER reports that researchers recently put ChatGPT through the United States Medical Licensing exam (the three-part exam used to qualify medical school students for residency - basically, a test to see if you can be a doctor). In a December report, ChatGPT “performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any training or reinforcement.” Lawrence, a professor from Weber State in Utah who tested via tweet, wrote a follow-up message to his students regarding the new platform from OpenAI: “I hope to inspire and educate you enough that you will want to learn how to leverage these tools, not just to learn to cheat better.” No word on how the students have responded so far.

Machines, tools and software have been making certain tasks easier for us for thousands of years. Are we about to outsource learning and education to artificial intelligence ? And what are the implications, beyond the classroom, if we do?

Considering that 90% of students are aware of ChatGPT, and 89% of survey respondents report that they have used the platform to help with a homework assignment, the application of OpenAI’s platform is already here. More from the survey:

• 48% of students admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had it write an essay, and 22% had it write an outline for a paper.
• 72% of college students believe that ChatGPT should be banned from their college's network. (New York, Seattle and Los Angeles have all blocked the service from their public school networks).
• 82% of college professors are aware of ChatGPT
• 72% of college professors who are aware of ChatGPT are concerned about its impact on cheating
• Over a third (34%) of all educators believe that ChatGPT should be banned in schools and universities, while 66% support students having access to it.
• Meanwhile, 5% of educators say that they have used ChatGPT to teach a class, and 7% have used the platform to create writing prompts.

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A teacher quoted anonymously in the Study.com survey shares, “'I love that students would have another resource to help answer questions. Do I worry some kids would abuse it? Yes. But they use Google and get answers without an explanation. It's my understanding that ChatGPT explains answers. That [explanation] would be more beneficial.” Or would it become a crutch?

Modern society has many options for transportation: cars, planes, trains, and even electric scooters all help us to get around. But these machines haven’t replaced the simple fact that walking and running (on your own) is really, really good for you. Electric bikes are fun, but pushing pedals on our own is where we find our fitness. Without movement comes malady. A sedentary life that relies solely on external mechanisms for transport is a recipe for atrophy, poor health, and even a shortened lifespan. Will ChatGPT create educational atrophy, the equivalent of an electric bicycle for our brains?

Of course, when calculators came into the classroom, many declared the decline of math skills would soon follow. Research conducted as recently as 2012 has proven this to be false. Calculators had no positive or negative effects on basic math skills.

But ChatGPT has already gone beyond the basics, passing medical exams and MBA-level tests. A brave new world is already here, with implications for cheating and plagiarism, to be sure. But an even deeper implication points to the very nature of learning itself, when ChatGPT has become a super-charged repository for what is perhaps the most human of all inventions: the synthesis of our language. (That same synthesis that sits atop Blooms Taxonomy - a revered pyramid of thinking, that outlines the path to higher learning ). Perhaps educators, students and even business leaders will discover something old is new again, from ChatGPT. That discovery? Seems Socrates was right: the key to strong education begins with asking the right questions. Especially if you are talking to a ‘bot.

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Why Students Cheat on Homework and How to Prevent It

One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching in today’s world is the cheating epidemic. There’s nothing more irritating than getting halfway through grading a large stack of papers only to realize some students cheated on the assignment. There’s really not much point in teachers grading work that has a high likelihood of having been copied or otherwise unethically completed. So. What is a teacher to do? We need to be able to assess students. Why do students cheat on homework, and how can we address it?

Like most new teachers, I learned the hard way over the course of many years of teaching that it is possible to reduce cheating on homework, if not completely prevent it. Here are six suggestions to keep your students honest and to keep yourself sane.

ASSIGN LESS HOMEWORK

One of the reasons students cheat on homework is because they are overwhelmed. I remember vividly what it felt like to be a high school student in honors classes with multiple extracurricular activities on my plate. Other teens have after school jobs to help support their families, and some don’t have a home environment that is conducive to studying.

While cheating is  never excusable under any circumstances, it does help to walk a mile in our students’ shoes. If they are consistently making the decision to cheat, it might be time to reduce the amount of homework we are assigning.

I used to give homework every night – especially to my advanced students. I wanted to push them. Instead, I stressed them out. They wanted so badly to be in the Top 10 at graduation that they would do whatever they needed to do in order to complete their assignments on time – even if that meant cheating.

When assigning homework, consider the at-home support, maturity, and outside-of-school commitments involved. Think about the kind of school and home balance you would want for your own children. Go with that.

PROVIDE CLASS TIME

Allowing students time in class to get started on their assignments seems to curb cheating to some extent. When students have class time, they are able to knock out part of the assignment, which leaves less to fret over later. Additionally, it gives them an opportunity to ask questions.

When students are confused while completing assignments at home, they often seek “help” from a friend instead of going in early the next morning to request guidance from the teacher. Often, completing a portion of a homework assignment in class gives students the confidence that they can do it successfully on their own. Plus, it provides the social aspect of learning that many students crave. Instead of fighting cheating outside of class , we can allow students to work in pairs or small groups  in class to learn from each other.

Plus, to prevent students from wanting to cheat on homework, we can extend the time we allow them to complete it. Maybe students would work better if they have multiple nights to choose among options on a choice board. Home schedules can be busy, so building in some flexibility to the timeline can help reduce pressure to finish work in a hurry.

GIVE MEANINGFUL WORK

If you find students cheat on homework, they probably lack the vision for how the work is beneficial. It’s important to consider the meaningfulness and valuable of the assignment from students’ perspectives. They need to see how it is relevant to them.

In my class, I’ve learned to assign work that cannot be copied. I’ve never had luck assigning worksheets as homework because even though worksheets have value, it’s generally not obvious to teenagers. It’s nearly impossible to catch cheating on worksheets that have “right or wrong” answers. That’s not to say I don’t use worksheets. I do! But. I use them as in-class station, competition, and practice activities, not homework.

So what are examples of more effective and meaningful types of homework to assign?

• Ask students to complete a reading assignment and respond in writing .
• Have students watch a video clip and answer an oral entrance question.
• Require that students contribute to an online discussion post.
• Assign them a reflection on the day’s lesson in the form of a short project, like a one-pager or a mind map.

As you can see, these options require unique, valuable responses, thereby reducing the opportunity for students to cheat on them. The more open-ended an assignment is, the more invested students need to be to complete it well.

DIFFERENTIATE

Part of giving meaningful work involves accounting for readiness levels. Whenever we can tier assignments or build in choice, the better. A huge cause of cheating is when work is either too easy (and students are bored) or too hard (and they are frustrated). Getting to know our students as learners can help us to provide meaningful differentiation options. Plus, we can ask them!

This is what you need to be able to demonstrate the ability to do. How would you like to show me you can do it?

REDUCE THE POINT VALUE

If you’re sincerely concerned about students cheating on assignments, consider reducing the point value. Reflect on your grading system.

Are homework grades carrying so much weight that students feel the need to cheat in order to maintain an A? In a standards-based system, will the assignment be a key determining factor in whether or not students are proficient with a skill?

Each teacher has to do what works for him or her. In my classroom, homework is worth the least amount out of any category. If I assign something for which I plan on giving completion credit, the point value is even less than it typically would be. Projects, essays, and formal assessments count for much more.

CREATE AN ETHICAL CULTURE

To some extent, this part is out of educators’ hands. Much of the ethical and moral training a student receives comes from home. Still, we can do our best to create a classroom culture in which we continually talk about integrity, responsibility, honor, and the benefits of working hard. What are some specific ways can we do this?

Building Community and Honestly

• Talk to students about what it means to cheat on homework. Explain to them that there are different kinds. Many students are unaware, for instance, that the “divide and conquer (you do the first half, I’ll do the second half, and then we will trade answers)” is cheating.
• As a class, develop expectations and consequences for students who decide to take short cuts.
• Decorate your room with motivational quotes that relate to honesty and doing the right thing.
• Discuss how making a poor decision doesn’t make you a bad person. It is an opportunity to grow.
• Share with students that you care about them and their futures. The assignments you give them are intended to prepare them for success.
• Offer them many different ways to seek help from you if and when they are confused.
• Provide revision opportunities for homework assignments.
• Explain that you partner with their parents and that guardians will be notified if cheating occurs.
• Explore hypothetical situations.  What if you have a late night? Let’s pretend you don’t get home until after orchestra and Lego practices. You have three hours of homework to do. You know you can call your friend, Bob, who always has his homework done. How do you handle this situation?

EDUCATE ABOUT PLAGIARISM

Many students don’t realize that plagiarism applies to more than just essays. At the beginning of the school year, teachers have an energized group of students, fresh off of summer break. I’ve always found it’s easiest to motivate my students at this time. I capitalize on this opportunity by beginning with a plagiarism mini unit .

While much of the information we discuss is about writing, I always make sure my students know that homework can be plagiarized. Speeches can be plagiarized. Videos can be plagiarized. Anything can be plagiarized, and the repercussions for stealing someone else’s ideas (even in the form of a simple worksheet) are never worth the time saved by doing so.

In an ideal world, no one would cheat. However, teaching and learning in the 21st century is much different than it was fifty years ago. Cheating? It’s increased. Maybe because of the digital age… the differences in morals and values of our culture…  people are busier. Maybe because students don’t see how the school work they are completing relates to their lives.

No matter what the root cause, teachers need to be proactive. We need to know why students feel compelled to cheat on homework and what we can do to help them make learning for beneficial. Personally, I don’t advocate for completely eliminating homework with older students. To me, it has the potential to teach students many lessons both related to school and life. Still, the “right” answer to this issue will be different for each teacher, depending on her community, students, and culture.

STRATEGIES FOR ADDRESSING CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS IN SECONDARY

You are so right about communicating the purpose of the assignment and giving students time in class to do homework. I also use an article of the week on plagiarism. I give students points for the learning – not the doing. It makes all the difference. I tell my students why they need to learn how to do “—” for high school or college or even in life experiences. Since, they get an A or F for the effort, my students are more motivated to give it a try. No effort and they sit in my class to work with me on the assignment. Showing me the effort to learn it — asking me questions about the assignment, getting help from a peer or me, helping a peer are all ways to get full credit for the homework- even if it’s not complete. I also choose one thing from each assignment for the test which is a motivator for learning the material – not just “doing it.” Also, no one is permitted to earn a D or F on a test. Any student earning an F or D on a test is then required to do a project over the weekend or at lunch or after school with me. All of this reinforces the idea – learning is what is the goal. Giving students options to show their learning is also important. Cheating is greatly reduced when the goal is to learn and not simply earn the grade.

Thanks for sharing your unique approaches, Sandra! Learning is definitely the goal, and getting students to own their learning is key.

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Will less homework stress make California students happier?

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A bill from a member of the Legislature’s happiness committee would require schools to come up with homework policies that consider the mental and physical strain on students.

Lea esta historia en Español

Update: The Assembly education committee on April 24 approved an amended version of the bill that softens some requirements and gives districts until the 2027-28 school year. Some bills before California’s Legislature don’t come from passionate policy advocates, or from powerful interest groups.  

Sometimes, the inspiration comes from a family car ride. 

While campaigning two years ago, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo ’s daughter, then nine, asked from the backseat what her mother could do if she won.

Schiavo answered that she’d be able to make laws. Then, her daughter Sofia asked her if she could make a law banning homework.

“It was a kind of a joke,” the Santa Clarita Valley Democrat said in an interview, “though I’m sure she’d be happy if homework were banned.”

Still, the conversation got Schiavo thinking, she said. And while Assembly Bill 2999 — which faces its first big test on Wednesday — is far from a ban on homework, it would require school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to develop guidelines for K-12 students and would urge schools to be more intentional about “good,” or meaningful homework. 

Among other things, the guidelines should consider students’ physical health, how long assignments take and how effective they are. But the bill’s main concern is mental health and when homework adds stress to students’ daily lives.

Homework’s impact on happiness is partly why Schiavo brought up the proposal last month during the first meeting of the Legislature’s select committee on happiness , led by former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon .   

“This feeling of loneliness and disconnection — I know when my kid is not feeling connected,” Schiavo, a member of the happiness committee, told CalMatters. “It’s when she’s alone in her room (doing homework), not playing with her cousin, not having dinner with her family.” 

The bill analysis cites a survey of 15,000 California high schoolers from Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education. It found that 45% said homework was a major source of stress and that 52% considered most assignments to be busywork.  

The organization also reported in 2020 that students with higher workloads reported “symptoms of exhaustion and lower rates of sleep,” but that spending more time on homework did not necessarily lead to higher test scores.

Homework’s potential to also widen inequities is why Casey Cuny supports the measure. An English and mythology teacher at Valencia High School and 2024’s California Teacher of the Year , Cuny says language barriers, unreliable home internet, family responsibilities or other outside factors may contribute to a student falling behind on homework.

“I never want a kid’s grade to be low because they have divorced parents and their book was at their dad’s house when they were spending the weekend at mom’s house,” said Cuny, who plans to attend a press conference Wednesday to promote the bill.

In addition, as technology makes it easier for students to cheat — using artificial technology or chat threads to lift answers, for example — Schiavo says that the educators she has spoken to indicate they’re moving towards more in-class assignments. 

Cuny agrees that an emphasis on classwork does help to rein in cheating and allows him to give students immediate feedback. “I feel that I should teach them what I need to teach them when I’m with them in the room,” he said. 

The bill says the local homework policies should have input from teachers, parents, school counselors, social workers and students; be distributed at the beginning of every school year; and be reevaluated every five years.

The Assembly Committee on Education is expected to hear the bill Wednesday. Schiavo says she has received bipartisan support and so far, no official opposition or support is listed in the bill analysis. 

The measure’s provision for parental input may lead to disagreements given the recent culture war disputes between Democratic officials and parental rights groups backed by some Republican lawmakers. Because homework is such a big issue, “I’m sure there will be lively (school) board meetings,” Schiavo said.

Nevertheless, she says she hopes the proposal will overhaul the discussion around homework and mental health. The bill is especially pertinent now that the state is also poised to cut spending on mental health services for children with the passage of Proposition 1 .

Schiavo said the mother of a student with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder told her that the child’s struggle to finish homework has raised issues inside the house, as well as with the school’s principal and teachers.

“And I’m just like, it’s sixth grade!” Schaivo said. “What’s going on?”

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Lynn La is the WhatMatters newsletter writer. Prior to joining CalMatters, she developed thought leadership at an edtech company and was a senior editor at CNET. She also covered public health at The Sacramento... More by Lynn La

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89 Percent of College Students Admit to Using ChatGPT for Homework, Study Claims

Wait, what, taicher's pet.

Educators are battling a new reality: easily accessible AI that allows students to take immense shortcuts in their education — and as it turns out, many appear to already be cheating with abandon.

Online course provider Study.com asked 1,000 students over the age of 18 about the use of ChatGPT, OpenAI's blockbuster chatbot, in the classroom.

The responses were surprising. A full 89 percent said they'd used it on homework. Some 48 percent confessed they'd already made use of it to complete an at-home test or quiz. Over 50 percent said they used ChatGPT to write an essay, while 22 percent admitted to having asked ChatGPT for a paper outline.

Honestly, those numbers sound so staggeringly high that we wonder about Study.com's methodology. But if there's a throughline here, it's that AI isn't just getting pretty good — it's also already weaving itself into the fabric of society, and the results could be far-reaching.

Muscle AItrophy

At the same time, according to the study, almost three-quarters of students said they wanted ChatGPT to be banned, indicating students are equally worried about cheating becoming the norm.

Educators are also understandably worried about AI having a major impact on their students' education, and are resorting to AI-detecting apps that attempt to suss out whether a student used ChatGPT.

But as we've found out for ourselves, the current crop of tools out there, like GPTZero, are still actively being developed and are far from perfect .

Future Shock

Some are worried AI chatbots could have a disastrous effect on education.

"Just because there is a machine that will help me lift up a dumbbell doesn’t mean my muscles will develop," Western Washington University history professor Johann Neem told The Wall Street Journal . "In the same way just because there is a machine that can write an essay doesn’t mean my mind will develop."

But others argue teachers should leverage powerful technologies like ChatGPT to prepare students for a new reality.

" I hope to inspire and educate you enough that you will want to learn how to leverage these tools, not just to learn to cheat better," Weber State University professor Alex Lawrence told the WSJ, while University of Pennsylvania's Ethan Mollick, said that he expects his literature students to leverage the tech to "write more" and "better."

"This is a force multiplier for writing," Mollick added. "I expect them to use it."

READ MORE: Professors Turn to ChatGPT to Teach Students a Lesson [ The Wall Street Journal ]

More on ChatGPT: BuzzFeed Announces Plans to Use OpenAI to Churn Out Content

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