{"id":3899,"date":"2018-10-18T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=3899"},"modified":"2018-10-16T13:52:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T18:52:32","slug":"prevent-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/prevent-cheating\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Stop Cheating: An Awkward Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

We would, of course, LOVE to prevent cheating.<\/p>\n

\"prevent<\/a>It does moral damage to the cheater. It undermines classroom trust. And: it makes it hard for us to know how much our students are actually learning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So: what techniques might help us do so?<\/p>\n

How To Prevent Cheating: “Moral Reminders”<\/h2>\n

For some time now, Dan Ariely has made this his field. (Check out his book:\u00a0\u00a0The (Honest) <\/em>Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Over the years, he developed a clever research paradigm to see how much people cheat. With that in place, he tested various strategies to prevent cheating.<\/p>\n

(He can also promote cheating, but that’s not exactly what we’re looking for.)<\/p>\n

One strategy that has gotten a lot of attention over the years:\u00a0moral reminders<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ariely asked some students to write down ten books they had read in high school. He asked the others to write down the 10 Commandments.<\/p>\n

That is: he made them think about foundational moral standards in our culture.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, once reminded about moral standards, students cheated less. (The Cohen’s d was 0.48, which is an impressive effect for such an easy intervention.)<\/p>\n

Then Again, Maybe Not<\/h2>\n

In a study published just a month ago, Bruno Verschuere (and many others) retested Ariely’s hypothesis. Whereas the original study included 209 students, this meta-analysis included almost 4700. That is … [checks math] … more than 20 times as many students.<\/p>\n

Studying much more data, they found that “moral reminders” made no difference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(In fact, they found that students who recalled the 10 commandments were just a smidge likelier to cheat; but, the difference was tiny — not even approaching statistical significance.)<\/p>\n

As we’ve seen in other cases of the “replication crisis<\/a>,” seemingly settled results are back in question.<\/p>\n

What’s a Teacher to Do?<\/h2>\n

Of course, Ariely had other suggestions as well. Signing\u00a0 pledges not to cheat<\/em> reduces cheating.\u00a0 And, of course, teachers who supervise students closely<\/em> reduce their opportunities to cheat.<\/p>\n

As far as I know, these strategies have not been retested (although the second one seems too obvious to need much retesting).<\/p>\n

For the time being, sadly, we should rely less on indirect moral reminders, and more on direct pledges — and direct supervision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite promising early research, current findings suggest that “moral reminders” don’t prevent cheating. Alas: the “replication crisis” continues…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,28],"class_list":["post-3899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-methodology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3899"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3907,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899\/revisions\/3907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}