Artifact 7

After reading this article I was very shocked.  I still can't really fathom all the ways professors are trying to crack down or eliminate the way for students to cheat.  The article talked about cheat-resistant computers, anti-plagiarism software, anti-cheating hardware, etc which are used today to prevent students from cheating.  These techniques must have helped considering the percentage of cheating has dropped 10 points since 2002.  The article does however talk about the ways the computer can allow a person to cheat. One clever example was that some students will scan the nutrition label of a bottle, replace it with notes from that class and paste the label back on to the bottle without the teacher having a clue what is going on.  I personally would never do something like that just because I would be too afraid, and simply because it would take too much effort and time.  I do agree that college classrooms allow students to cheat easier because of the fact of how big the class is and you can just pull your cell phone out right on your desk.  Every class that I am in, someone has their phone out and it is so easy to look something up on it and get the answer, while being sneaky.  Coming from high school, I'm so used to teachers just taking away students' phones and sending them to the office.  In college, that can't really happen, so it is much easier to use it as a way to cheat.  Some online classes even require students to purchase anti-cheating packages that can cost up to $150 so it can monitor the student for sights and sounds in the room and can lock down computers when taking a test.  I think this is a really good idea because it is much easier to cheat when you are not in a classroom and no one there to monitor you.  Barbara Christe, a program director at Indiana University, sets up fake webpages with out-of-date information just for her tests and homework so if a student decides to go to that site and steal that information, she will know right away.  However, rather than punishing that student, she will teach him or her how to correctly analyze a site.  This article was very interesting and shocking at the same time, knowing all of the different ways professors are trying to prevent cheating.  I hope one day, we will become a "cheat free" society and be able to depend solely on our own knowledge.