Teaching Tip: Dealing with Cheating in Your OM Class

How do you deal with the sensitive issue of cheating in your operations management classes? Statistics show that nearly 3/4 of college students cheat during their undergraduate careers, a startling number attributed variously to the laziness of today’s students, their lack of a moral compass, or the demands of a hypercompetitive society. For James Lang, author of Cheating Lessons: Learning From Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press, 2013), cultural or sociological explanations like these are red herrings. The provocative research in his book indicates that students often cheat because their learning environments give them ample incentives to try–and that strategies which make cheating less worthwhile also improve student learning.

Drawing on an array of findings from cognitive theory, Lang analyzes the specific, often hidden features of course design and daily classroom practice that create opportunities for cheating. Courses that set the stakes of performance very high, that rely on single assessment mechanisms like multiple-choice tests, that have arbitrary grading criteria: these are the kinds of conditions that breed cheating. Promoting mastery and instilling the sense of self-efficacy that students need for deep learning is why Jay and I have worked so hard to develop MyOMLab. With this assessment software, your students can work on mastering the tools of OM, with instant feedback. You can assign homework, quizzes, exams with “algorithmic” problems, meaning that each student operates from a unique data set. Students can also be given multiple chances to improve homework scores. If you would like more information, visit http://www.myomlab.com/.

Although cheating is a persistent problem, the prognosis is not dire. The good news is that strategies which reduce cheating also improve student performance overall. Instructors who learn to curb academic dishonesty will have done more than solve a course management problem–they will have become better educators all around.