Cheating in Online School

By Jacob Kim

Rowland High School

Online learning has been going on for a while all over the world. Everyone has been in quarantine since February and March of this year. As a result, students are on their laptops all day for school. They join Zoom for classes, and do homework. All these kids must be bored, not being able to do what they used to do before COVID. With this new learning environment, it’s become increasingly easy for students to cheat.

Students are using the opportunity to cheat on most assignments they have. Because there is less accountability and no one to watch them, it’s easy for students to cheat. The students have their phones and laptops to go on the Internet and even ask their friends about it. Here are some students’ responses to the question, “So, have you personally felt tempted to cheat on any tests or quizzes so far during school? How do you feel about students cheating during online school?”

Kyle Min, an 11th grader from Los Alamitos High School, says, “ Absolutely. It is difficult, because the teachers have no way of knowing if you cheat or not. This makes grading unreliable due to students inflating their own grades.”

Another response is from Victoria Choi, an 11th grader from Troy High School, says “ I haven't felt tempted to cheat on any tests or quizzes because most of them are open notes and allow you to use resources available (with harder tests as the compromise). It also takes away valuable time. I think it's important to learn more than anything, which a student wouldn't be able to do with cheating. I know for a fact a lot of students cheat during online school, but I feel like it just negatively affects them because they won't be able to fully understand the material.”

Based on what these students’ responses, they both stated that cheating overall has a negative outcome for the students education and learning. I would also agree that cheating is not the right thing to do, even if it’s become easier via online school. Online school should rather help students learn time management and organizational skills, instead of just easing their way by cheating. This is also unfair for the students who work hard to earn their grades. It’s important that those who have cheated understand the consequences and that they transcend their personal development.

Cheating overall in online school is not tolerated. With these students' responses and my own input about cheating, it shows that students shouldn’t even cheat at all. Some solutions could be that the parents can watch their kids when taking tests or quizzes, to avoid any cheating. Also, another solution could be that the students could only use the school’s chromebooks so teachers could see what tabs the students are on. In the near future, I hope that cheating in online school will be solved.