Bruff Quoted in Chronicle article: Cheating is Only a Click Away
A recent article in the the Chronicle of Higher Education included quotes from the CFT’s Acting Director Derek Bruff. The article, With Cheating Only a Click Away, Professors Reduce the Incentive, explores how common clickers – and the cheating associated with them – have become in university classrooms. Cheating with clickers, the article discusses, can occur when students ‘phantom click’ for absent students as well as when students share answers for in-class polling.
By specifically outlining for students how clicker cheating violates academic honor codes, universities can clarify the situation for students and bolster professors’ positions. “The instructor can point to the honor code—the university has decided that this counts as cheating, so it’s not just me being a tough guy. It’s that this is commonly accepted as inappropriate,” Bruff says.
The author of the article consulted Derek on how educators can take steps to limit cheating and reap the benefits of the technology. His suggestions included keeping the clicker stakes low and accountability for cheating high. How do you do that? It’s simple: “Low stakes, Bruff says, means that professors use clicker answers for 5 percent of the grade and no more.”
Derek goes on to explain his strategy for incentivizing clicker use in his own courses as well as his policy to specifically outline for his students how clicker cheating violates academic honor codes. Read the entire article, including Derek’s insights on avoiding clicker-related cheating, online at the Chronicle website.
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