Discussion Question One

Discussion Question 1

Today, students are wired for cheating with smartphones, graphing calculators, pagers, tablet computers, notebook computers, iPods, and other electronic devices. During a test, you notice that a student is using a cell phone. As you approach the student, you realize that the student is looking at a smartphone with a picture on the screen. The student puts away the phone and apologizes, indicating that he had forgotten to turn off the phone when a call came in. After class, another student informs you that the student you caught with the phone was making calls to another student in the classroom, and they were taking pictures of the equations. This student was almost positive the two students were cheating by sending each other pictures of the answers over their smartphones. How should you handle this situation? Is there a way to gather proof? What next? Should all mobile devices be banned in classrooms? If so, how? What is your role? Explain.

Cheating is an ever changing art, and the role of a teacher is to adapt to these changes to facilitate an honest and fair learning environment for the students.  With smart phones being able to find virtually any answer at the click of a button, this type of cheating must be taken seriously.  Most classes and professors have a no tolerance policy with phone usage during class, but policing such policies can prove to be more difficult. In this situation, the student should be held accountable for his/her actions, but gathering proof against the accused students opens up a grey area between privacy and honesty.  One of the roles of a teacher is to ensure all students are abiding by the same rules and doing their work honestly.  In this situation, the student should be held accountable for the accusation and confronted appropriately.  The teacher could confiscate the phone, but there should be aware of privacy issues involved with gathering evidence from the students phone.  If the student was being honest then the teacher could be held liable for issues related to the student's privacy.  Since most smart phones keep a record of pictures sent there is always a possibility that the teacher could gather evidence against the student in question.  Sadly, cheating can easily happen with a smart phone, but just as easily the evidence can be erased.  The teacher crosses a fine line between enforcing honesty and involving himself in a losing battle.  In this particular situation it would be imperative to confront the students in question with as much honesty as is expected of them.  A request of the photo messaging records would not be out of line, but could possible implicate the teacher in issues if the student was falsely accused.  The only way to ensure that this type of technological dishonesty does not happen in the classroom is to truly enforce a no tolerance policy during class and testing.  Perhaps the teacher could request the students to "check your phone at the door" before testing or class.  This would keep the students honest and keep the teacher from having to handle a possible sticky situation.