The Risks and Rewards of Providing Students a Structured Cheating Opportunity

Abstract

This is a short paper briefly describing an alteration in the way students are traditionally tested in the classroom. In this particular class, the instructor gave the traditional in-class, timed tests consisting of multiple choice and short essay questions. However, the students were provided a structured cheating opportunity—time to consult their textbooks and notes for a very short amount of time at the end of the test. The paper provides the instructor’s reasoning for trying this alteration and the outcomes from the instructor’s and the students’ perspective.