According to a new study, cheating among college students declines when professors assign seating charts for exam taking.
Our University famously has no tolerance for cheating, with an entire Honor Committee devoted to sentencing members of our student body who lie, cheat or steal. And while there is a significant emphasis on creating a culture where students won’t opt to cheat, that culture can be fostered in structural ways as well. Punitive measures like expulsion may serve as negative reinforcement for students not to cheat — but that doesn’t have to be the only measure in place to stop cheating. Promoting a community of trust shouldn’t preclude us from taking small, preventative steps.
In their study, Prof. Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and Prof. Ming-Jen Lin of National Taiwan University analyzed the matching multiple-choice answers of student pairs who sat next to each other during midterm exams. They found that students who were sitting next to each other had nearly twice as many incorrect answers in common as would be expected were the students seated at random, suggesting 10 percent of students had cheated.
Randomizing seating, then, could have significant positive effects — especially in large lecture courses that tend to have multiple-choice tests. In fact, some classes in the Commerce School already do assign seats for exams. And while honor codes in general have proven to be effective at reducing cheating at many college campuses, some studies suggest a preventative approach to cheating is more effective than a punitive one. The Honor Committee does take preventative steps; it proactively engages with the student body and educates incoming students on what constitutes cheating. But at the end of the day, it is largely a punitive body. And while the honor code focuses on personal integrity, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be practical.
That said, it may feel a little condescending for professors to assign seats during exams, especially at a collegiate level and in light of the plethora of information given to University students about cheating as an issue. But this is a small concern in light of an added emphasis on academic integrity. Assigning seats during tests is not a particularly cumbersome task, and if it can reduce instances of cheating at our school, in the long run it may create that same culture the Honor Committee seeks. Sometimes, structural changes inspire cultural ones.
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