<p>My D was home schooled until she entered college. Every single class she took was on-line. Depending on the class and on the on-line instruction provider, there are several ways:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Have a parent (or any adult) administer the test. The adult then signs an “honor code certification” stating that the student herself did the test in compliance with all the requirements from the school.</p></li>
<li><p>In addition to the written test, the teacher and the student have a one-on-one over the phone (an oral exam if you will), talking about questions similar to the ones on the written test.</p></li>
<li><p>Have the student take the test at a test proctoring center (a public library, a test center of community college, a local school). The proctoring center receives the test directly from, and afterward sends the papers directly back to the instructor. The charge is about $50 - $100 for a 3-hr test.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I remember sitting at my desk until someone else got up to turn in their test all through school.
I never wanted to be the first one.
But it never crossed my mind that to be speedy means you must be cheating to some teachers. </p>
<p>In college , I’ve had a few quizzes that were taken in the classroom, but we had access to our notes. I appreciated this, because I have learning difference that interfere with short term memory processing.
It is mystifying to me, how definitions and explanations that I had a hard time remembering shortly after I learned them, I now can rattle off 5 years later.</p>
<p>I haven’t taken any online classes ( other than through Coursera), but my oldest also had open book exams at her college, although they weren’t even tied to a classroom. They just had to turn it in by midnight of the designated day.</p>
<p>This sounds like just another mark against online courses. Surely if the teacher was more familiar with the students skills and insight, they would have a better idea of what they were capable of.</p>
<p>That’s really odd. I also took an online, duel-enrolled US History course. All of the tests I took in that class were open book as well. It’s puzzling to me how anyone could be accused of cheating on an open book test; if it’s open book, you can find all the answers you need anyway! Fourteen minutes does seem like a very short time to complete a fifty question test, but definitely not impossible! I do have a different perspective on the teacher’s reaction, based on my past experiences with online, duel enrollment.</p>
<p>At my school, students are allowed to take college classes for free and, with a few exceptions, there are no prerequisites to get into introductory level courses. Since many students at my school were, quite frankly, complete dumb*sses, duel enrolled students have a bad reputation at the college. Although no teacher directly told me, I always got the feeling they were suspicious of my very high grades on assignments. I’m not sure whether the college your son is taking his course from, but the teacher might have something against duel enrolled students specifically; the teacher is unable to believe a high school student could do so well without cheating.</p>
<p>My advice: Try and arrange a meeting with the Dean. If your son has any hand written notes, present them as evidence. If you can’t meet with him and the teacher is adamant about her decision, than offer to have any future tests proctored/taped. If your son continues doing very well in the class while proving that he isn’t cheating, it may convince the teacher that he didn’t cheat at all.</p>
<p>Maybe she thought he somehow had access to the questions before the test, so could just run through. Even a video wouldn’t help with that. If it’s DE, yes, work with the hs, as well as the college. Could he drop this class and pick it up later or in summer?</p>
<p>I am a little bit confused. You said he was 10 ft away from you. Did he take the exam at home? So if he is accused of cheating, then your honesty is also being questioned, right? Also, what form of cheating does the teacher think took place? Was a subject expert (you perhaps) standing over your son’s shoulder calling out the correct answers so he could speed through the test? (absurd?) Or did he somehow gain access to the questions ahead of time so he spent a long time figuring out the right answers and when the test actually started he simply transcribed the correct answers into the test.</p>
<p>I’d like to know where the teacher gets off giving him a zero and telling him she won’t discuss it. Every school in the world has a policy on academic honesty and your son has the right to due process.</p>
<p>The only way I could see that the prof is correct in that OP’s son did cheat would be that the prof is so lazy that she always gives the EXACT same test’s out everytime. Otherwise how in the world could he have cheated? I doubt the kid cheated but I think the prof must be giving out the same tests over and over and over again.</p>
<p>Many of us have stories about advanced students being accused of plagiarism or cheating by teachers who didn’t think that a kid of their age should have the vocabulary/writing skills/knowledge base/insight displayed in the work. It happened to me in HS. What astonishes me is how rarely anyone stands up for the student. Certainly, no one stood up for me, at least not that I knew of. One wonders how often these become those “teacher forced to withdraw charges/change grade by unscrupulous administration and helicopter parent” stories.</p>
<p>How on earth is your S supposed to have gotten the test in advance? Because that is the only possible way to cheat in these circumstances.</p>
<p>I think the teacher’s concern is that someone else took the test for the OP’s son.</p>
<p>I am not doubting the OP’s account that her son did not cheat (what incentive would she have to come here and post, if he did?). On the other hand, as a professor, I am a tiny bit sympathetic to the teacher’s frustration with cheating. Teachers work really hard to help students learn, and some days it seems that some students are working equally hard to find ways to get a good grade without learning anything at all.</p>
<p>Not to excuse what seems like the teacher’s refusal to discuss the situation (although this could be the channels she is supposed to follow). But cheating is a big problem, and one that teachers find especially painful because it is a rejection of our efforts to promote learning.</p>
<p>Consolidation wrote: “How on earth is your S supposed to have gotten the test in advance? Because that is the only possible way to cheat in these circumstances.”</p>
<p>Seems that either:
The test, or large portions of it, was reused from previous years.
Someone else took the test earlier in the day.
The student really knew the material.</p>
<p>This doesn’t seem to be at all related to being open notes/open previous quizzes since one would have to take some time to look up answers.</p>
<p>So unless the teacher has some proof of (1) or (2), they have to go with (3).</p>
<p>But even if (1) is the case, depending on the code of conduct, rules of the class, etc, that may not even be enough for the teacher to say the student did something wrong.</p>
<p>Oh, one other thing. How did the student do on the test?</p>
<p>There are many potential ways to cheat on an online, open book/open note exam. Off the top of my head I can think of:</p>
<ol>
<li> Use Google to find the quiz questions and answer key from an online data base once the test has started</li>
<li> Have an online conversation with a better student who is simultaneously taking the exam and providing the answers</li>
<li> Have a student who took the test earlier provide the questions and answers via email or other message</li>
<li> Just like in the old days, obtain a copy of the test and answer key from a student who took the test last year.</li>
</ol>
<p>All of these methods could be accomplished with a parent nearby unaware of the cheating - the answer key might simply look like another reference document.</p>
<p>It is also worth noting that all of these methods result from the laziness of the instructor. They can also easily be prevented by using monitoring software, or even just creating new questions for each test.</p>
<p>There is another forum I read, the “Chronicles of Higher Education” which has a discussion board for professors. In this case what they would tend to do is flag an issue, but usually give the person a chance to show that they really did the work themselves by, for example, taking another version of the test or being asked to explain what they wrote in the term paper. Yes, it would require more work on the part of the professor.</p>
<p>Can you explain this? How does laziness of the instructor explain one student providing the answers to another student? Or physically taking the test for the other student?</p>
<p>If a teacher uses the same questions year over year, then that could be construed as lazy. If a student gets a hold of those questions, they could pre-read them and look up the information or perhaps use another student’s answers.</p>
<p>^Especially if there were passages to read and analyze or a request to compare/contrast two statements. Things that ordinarily require a little processing time.</p>
<p>I agree with this. Using the same questions from previous years could be lazy. (There also are some <em>good</em> reasons why a teacher might want to re-use test questions, but in today’s climate of cheating, re-using questions is risky.)</p>
<p>Aside from re-using test questions, though, I cannot see how the instructor’s “laziness” can be blamed for students cheating on an on-line test.</p>
</p>