What is Cheating in the Digital Age?

For the past few weeks, I've heard the laments of teachers worrying about cheating. For some, it's because they are actively aware it is happening in their classrooms. For others, it's because they have heard it is happening in someone else's classroom. As I hear what others are saying I am appalled by some of the blatantly sneaky cheating that is going on by students but I also am aware of a gray area that seems to blend the lines between right and wrong. So I ask, what is cheating in this digital age? The following blog post isn't about me saying that cheating is ok, it is about my view on why it is harder than ever before to keep a student that wants to cheat from cheating. Here is my opinion why it seems more acceptable to students to work the system:

• Hacking is acceptable and seen as a skill. Today we are training students how to code starting in preK because the future wants this skill in the workplace. According to the Techopedia website, hacking is the ability to break into a system (https://www.techopedia.com/definition/26361/hacking) but every single day as an instructional technologist I sit at my desk and wish for different educational platforms to be able to do certain things they cannot and I look for add-ons (or hacks) to make it happen. For instance, at our school, we use the LMS Canvas but it doesn't inherently lock a student into a quiz tab while taking a quiz so we have bought the "hack" known as Respondus Lockdown Browser as an add-on to do this. There is a little bit of irony that the hack is to prevent cheating but in this case, Respondus is what is known as a non-malicious hack that adds value to a product and the product readily accepts it. But do you see the irony? 
• We are teaching students to find tools to help them in their learning. Today's students have not ever lived without the Google search engine. This means that today's students are not dependent on their teacher to pour information into them. Part of teaching today is helping students discern tools that aid their learning. Maybe it's Khan Academy for a math concept or as I type on this blog, maybe it is Grammarly. Grammarly is a writing assistant that helps you correct grammar mistakes as you type. To me, even the free version is one step beyond the red squiggly underlines of word processing software. With one click, I can add Grammarly as an extension on my Chrome toolbar and I have a benefit the person sitting next to me does not. AND if I happen to have $12/month the benefit for the paid version can truly change the way I write by leaps and bounds. But what if a teacher is grading my grammar on an essay, is this cheating or is this using the tools available to me?
• Everyone else is doing it. Yesterday I had a conversation with a super vigilant parent that works hard to create safeguards for his children not to access parts of the internet that can lead to moral degradation. After realizing his boys were accessing gaming time more than he had set up to allow through their Disney Circle he dug a bit deeper. His boys had downloaded an app that allowed them to bypass the VPN blocks so that they could play Fortnite longer than their father deemed healthy. When asked how they knew what to do..." everyone at school does it." The father said to me "and I have good kids!" and he does. If this is so rampantly accepted by this generation how do we harness it? How do we protect ourselves from ourselves? Or more importantly, how do we protect our children as they are developing their frontal lobe from themselves?
• There doesn't seem to be ramifications. Kids aren't getting caught. This week I heard of two students laughing in the hallway about turning in a slideshow they had pulled off the web, changing one page and then turning it in and getting an A for it. I also heard about some students cheating on exams in a classroom on a regular basis since the beginning of the school year. If it seems like people are getting away with it then the effort to do right seems pointless. Of course, this opens the door for a lot of edge-pushing discourse. Perhaps the concept of grades need to go away? Or what feels like high stakes testing? And then there is the fact that our school's average ACT scores keep going up so if students are cheating but those type of scores continue to go up where is the disconnect? And is it that the students see the disconnect better than the educators do? I realize all those questions could be read as heresy but like I said, this blog post is to help me put all the cards on the table and honestly look at what is happening.
• The rules of plagiarism are harder to distinguish. Not just for the student but for the teacher as well. My college-aged student just finished a class in British Literature where she made a 50 on a project because the teacher said she plagiarized. That being said, she still doesn't believe she did because she had sources on every slide. Quite honestly, I'm not sure she did either. And there is the rub. The ease of access to an abundance of information makes it harder and harder for teachers to distinguish the work of their students from someone else. It also makes it harder for students to discern if that was an original thought they just wrote in their paper or if it was something they read in the last 2 hours when perusing one well-written article after another during their research phase. 
• Access to information makes some tests seem irrelevant at best. And this is the bullet point that will get educators ruffled more than any other. Are we still testing our students as if they didn't have access to technology? In my lifetime of learning, there was value in rote memorization questions but if I can google an answer in 2.7 seconds is our question relevant in today's world? Perhaps it is time for us to evaluate our evaluations. Can we assume students will always have access to information and test them in a way that shows they have turned that information into knowledge? Critical thinking questions based on information readily available. Or authentic learning opportunities, project-based learning, inquiry-driven learning etc...all seem like buzzwords but we are in a time in education where discerning if learning is actually taking place is getting harder and harder to do. How do we change our method of operation to meet the needs of today's student so that cheating doesn't seem like the most logical way to deal with a test at hand. How do we change our questioning to force students to think about their answers instead of googling their answers? 
• What happened to honor? How do we instill in students the virtue of being honorable in regards to testing integrity? What digital citizenship lessons need to be talked about in every classroom to show the level of importance we place on this? What expectations need to be placed on the student? What ramifications? And while we are at it, what expectations should be placed on the educator to do their part in creating an environment where integrity and honor are both expected and monitored for? 

What is cheating in the digital age? It might seem black and white to you but to our students, it is becoming more and more of a gray area. We can't ignore this. Important conversations need to be happening so that important outcomes can be produced. 

Why an LMS? Why Canvas?

During the last school year our school announced that our upper school teachers would be required to use the learning management system (LMS) named Canvas in 3 significant ways forward:

1. All objective assessments would be delivered through the Canvas LMS
2. All students have the option to turn in papers digitally
3. All grades would be done through the Canvas grade book

With any change comes push back and fear. For us, all stakeholders have had to learn a new system- teachers, administrators, students and parents. Below are the benefits each group of our stakeholders can experience from using Canvas:

Benefits to Administrators: 

• Analytics- By creating expectations for students to take assessments using Canvas, we also have the ability to start to see patterns of each student's learning and possible gaps in mastery of concepts. While we are not a full fledged competency-based school in the way we teach, we now have a place where administrators can quickly have access to class averages on assignments and even dig deeper to see individual student results. 
• Compliance- In some ways using Canvas diminishes the silo effect that education can sometimes cause. When administrators can only get into a classroom for a few observations a year, Canvas allows admin to take a quick glance at assignments and quizzes to make sure all teachers are compliant to the goals and expectations put upon them for their curriculum.
• Scalability- We are in a school system where we have multiple educators teaching the same course to grade levels. By having those educators work together to create their Canvas-based curriculum it takes workload levels off everyone and allows systems to be in place regardless of the size of classes. Blended learning works well with Canvas. In our middle school math program we have been able to effectively increase class size by using this platform for students to navigate their daily needs. 
• Accountability- The realtime aspect of Canvas allows administrators to immediately see if lesson plans are both accurate and up to date for students with just a click of the mouse. 

Benefits to Teachers:

• Mobility and Accessibility- Students now have the ability to access their assignments easily as long as they have access to the internet. Being a 1:1 school with 100% at home connectivity (one of the upsides to living in Chattanooga, TN- home of the fastest internet in the country), this means our students now can access things without the excuses of "the dog ate my homework, I lost it, or I didn't know I had homework." 
• Deliver Content Instantly- Teachers now have the ability to deliver information to students instantly. Perhaps a classroom discussion spurs a teacher to remember an article they want to share. Utilizing an LMS allows the teacher to quickly upload it to the course for immediate and future reference. 
• Personalization- Canvas allows educators to assign things to individual students, give individual students multiple attempts to take a quiz, share different resources with different student groups, all without other students knowing that differentiation is taking place. This allows some students with IEPs to feel less self aware of their learning issues because others aren't aware that any accommodations are taking place. Have a student that can breeze through the curriculum? With mastery paths being utilized within Canvas, teachers can meet those needs by creating deeper learning or allowing those students to go further with their learning.   
• Multimedia Learning- The use of Canvas allows teachers to share videos, audio recordings, as well as continue robust face to face engagement with students that might be graded outside of a computer-based assessment. Sometimes students may not grasp a concept during a lecture but a teacher can upload a video of themselves or someone else teaching the concept and students can stop and start the video to make sure they have the concepts before moving on. 

Benefits to Parents:

• Transparent view- Parents have the ability to see exactly what their students are seeing by pairing with them. They can view the courses, the calendar due dates, and grades all from one location. In a world of constant connectivity, parents have the ability to know 100% what the expectations are for their child's classes because it is all listed in their Canvas courses. Nothing can be placed in a grade book without first being added as an assignment in Canvas.
• Click thru to assignments- Parents have the ability to see a grade or a "missing" label and then click directly through to the assignment to see the details. They can see everything their student can see, they just can't complete the assignment with their parent account. 
• Parent portal for accountability- Parents can set up to receive notifications regarding their child's account. If they choose to use the Canvas Parent App, they can have the app push them information straight to their phone about course grade levels, missing assignments, when a grade is above or below a threshold they deem important to know, and any announcements about a course. If they use the web browser access, they can set themselves up to receive emails for the same types of information in order to hold their children accountable in their learning process.

Benefits to Students:

• Single sign-on- One of the things we wanted to streamline for our students is giving the ability to go to one place and have fewer log-ins and passwords to remember for their educational process. Canvas allows our students to use their Google accounts for single sign-on capabilities. There are no longer multiple platforms and passwords to remember because all information and access goes through Canvas for our students. 
• Consistency- Students now know they can go to Canvas and click on "calendar" to see all the things due on any upcoming date that has already been assigned for any class they are taking. Students know that their "Upcoming" section represents a week glance. Students know that their "to do" list means things that they need to get done. Students now have one platform to go to see information shared by their teachers. While each class may look differently, based on how the teacher set their own courses up, the student experience remains significantly the same for access and turning in assignments. Now students aren't sharing a document  via Google Drive in one class but uploading to an LMS in another. Their experience and the expectations feel more the same from class to class. 
• Collaboration- Canvas allows for discussion boards and it connects with the school Google suites account for all students. This allows students to work together on a Google doc or slideshow, for instance by adding information or comments. Students also have the ability to participate in "peer grading" through the Canvas LMS platform. 
• Communication- Knowing that a teacher is communicating through one platform helps students to realize the importance of checking for communication more often. Canvas allows the students to expect all communication in one localized place- the place where they also see their assignments, turn in their assignments, and take assignments. 
• Immediate Content-  Canvas allows students to place their virtual hands on content quickly and efficiently based on teacher sharing. Students no longer have to go back to their locker to get a handout or call a friend because they lost the details of the homework assignment. Students can immediately access the content of their courses as long as they have access to the internet. 

With any digital plan, there are sometimes bandwidth issues, accessibility of device issues, quirks, and a learning curve for all users. It's not all benefits but as we are now a month into the school year, the benefits of this endeavor seem to quickly outweigh the detriments for our students. 

How Will Net Neutrality Impact Gig City Students?

I don't begin to understand all the political aspects of the repealing of net neutrality but I am concerned about how it will impact my students.  I'll be honest, students in Chattanooga are blessed to live in GIG CITY. Our high speed internet access makes me become a snob when I visit other cities! We have it going on when it comes to speed, and I have a need...a need for SPEED! But this isn't about me, it's about the students in the Chattanooga area. I'm here to discuss my concerns about the potential impact of repealing net neutrality and how it will impact education.

I work in a technology blessed school. We have rolling carts of iPads, Chromebooks and robots throughout our lower school and grades 5-12 are now in a 1:1 environment. Our school sees the benefit of both equipping students with digital skills and integrating technology for aspects of the next generation of education: personalization, participation, programmable, and predictive.

Here is what I have learned over the last 2 years, budgeting for educational technology isn't easy. Every year software is developed that creates an "aha" moment of "YES, this is what we need to support or learning initiatives!" Every year new devices with more bells, whistles, and capabilities hit the market. So we budget, rebudget, guess and reguess how to plan for the next year...but there is one thing we haven't had to budget on...

The cost of good streaming from individual websites. Is this going to cause a case of the haves and have nots? Will my choice to use free websites become less of an option because they cannot pay the regulators the funds needed for good streaming? OR perhaps I cannot pay for good streaming because of now needing to prioritize what we truly need access to versus what is just a want?  How will this impact my students? How will this impact the bottom line of our school's budget (which directly impacts my students)? How will this impact things student do at home? Will we have to change our expectations regarding homework?

As I said before, I do not begin to understand the pros and cons on each side of this discussion but as an education I worry about how the repeal will impact the use of technology in education. What are you thoughts on this?