The beginning of fixing this issue is to be sure students really understand what constitutes cheating and how technology plays a role. What’s to stop a student from simply Googling the answers to every math or science homework question? And in some cases, these students may not see any issue with it. We need to change the conversation surrounding cheating to be sure that students understand what is unethical.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Matthew. The rapid pace of technology, from its evolutions to its adoption rates, has created a persistent challenge for both educators and students. I’m glad you chose to shine a light on this issue.

Your writing has sparked a few thoughts for me, and I’m looking forward to hearing more of your perspective:

Is it fair to title this “Unethical Indifference”? My feeling is the word indifference implies an awareness of, but lack of interest in, a particular issue. The works you’re referencing make it sound like students simply aren’t aware that what they’re doing is academically dishonest. That sounds like an awareness issue, not one of indifference. It’s the role of educators to establish those norms.

You say “In today’s K-12 classrooms, students who cheat are rarely caught.” Is this conjecture, or is there an academic study you’re citing?

At the end of the same paragraph you say, “Since cheating through technology is not listed specifically as being against the rules in many school policies, students do not view the actions an unethical.” Is that conjecture? This may not be your goal, but it reads as if they only reason students don’t view their actions as unethical is because there’s no school policy in place. Many schools have dress codes built into their policy. I’m not convinced children view spaghetti straps and holes in their jeans as unethical, or that more rules are a solution to this challenge.

I think the larger issue comes down to the world students live in to consume, curate, and create information and media. For each of your bullet points I can imagine a real-world counterpart where that behavior is rewarded. For example:

• Storing notes on a cell phone.
-I frequently refer to notes on my phone that are stored in the Notes app, Evernote, and OneNote. No one’s considered my behavior unethical when I have to search for or refer to my notes in a meeting.

• Purchasing prewritten papers online, or ordering them to be customized.
• Writing a paper that is basically the same as something else found online, but changed enough to look original.
-I completely agree. These are two textbook definitions of plagiarism. If we look at how they create and share media, however, which behavior is being reinforced? Creating something from scratch, or creating a meme based on someone else’s image? Or reposting a funny image to their Instagram account to gather likes from their friends? Their day-to-day lives reinforce a different story about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. This is conjecture, but I’m not convinced the majority of educators are aware of this behavior enough to help students draw a parallel, and then establish the differences.

• Students text messaging each other answers.
-My colleagues and I routinely message each other on Skype for Business, GroupMe, Slack, and text to ask questions we don’t have the answer to. I’m obviously not endorsing this behavior during an exam, but we’re doing to have to draw a difference for students for the context of when this is and isn’t appropriate. And there aren’t many situations as an adult where it’s not appropriate to ask someone else for help (besides texting me outside work hours!).

• Using a smartphone camera to take a picture of a test or exam.
-In some preliminary research at my school, over 95% of surveyed students indicated they’ve used their smartphones to take a picture of notes in class. If we’re talking about smartphones, we’re talking about a technology that is far more intimate than any in history. This isn’t scientific, but when I do sessions with adults and students, I’ll sometimes ask how many people can remember the last time they spent more than 15 minutes being more than 15 feet away from their phone. I barely get any hands. This device is almost always with us to the point that many users form an emotional connection to it. We’ve come to rely on it as a support tool for many things we do (or at least the things that are important to us). Our students live in the same world where this device is an intimate tool for recording things we feel are important.

• Using voice recorders or virtual assistance programs to record or ask for answers.
-I’m not aware of any instances of students using Siri or Google Now to cheat, but that certainly doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. To the point of recording: I’ll often audio record important meetings. This is still an acceptable behavior in my workplace. When you look at how students create personal media, it’s not even an afterthought to open Snapchat, record a quick video, and send it to their friends. The way they use technology to connect with others reinforces different behavior.

I think this is less an issue of unethical indifference or school policy, and more a challenge for educators to help students develop an awareness of two things:

1) How they use technology, and how those (now) habitual behaviors impact their decision-making and the way they think about seemingly-unrelated situations.

2) How to use technology CONTEXTUALLY. Just as students (hopefully) consider it to be ethically inappropriate to take pictures of other people in a locker room, there are also inappropriate ways of using technology in specific ACADEMIC contexts.

And I think that’s really my larger point. This seems like less of a problem of ethics, and more a problem of awareness of context. Surely there’s some confirmation bias at play for me here, but time and again I interact with instructors from all sorts of schools who blame this problem on the children, when it’s the children who are growing up in an environment that is wholly different than anything we adults have experienced. One go-to solution I frequently hear is to ban the technology. I think that does a disservice to the students, who won’t face a technology-free environment when they enter the workforce.

I’m not saying you’re wrong–my feeling is that your concern over academic dishonesty comes from a very honest place (no pun intended). Academic integrity is an ethical issue, and it deserves focus and attention in the world of education. I also genuinely believe most students are doing the best they can as they grow. It’s easy to forget they’re adults in training, who are constantly absorbing information and forming their understanding of the world based on what they receive. And while I don’t expect every educator to be a technology expert, I do think it’s realistic to ask that they teach their students that when their context changes, their behavior needs to change as well. That seems like a more effective way to engage students in conversations about how they’re using their technology to support their learning.

Maybe we, as teachers, should make a spin on our ideas about ‘cheating’; the point of education is to acquire learnings and developing skills; books, experts, chats and conversations are present when a person came on age and his professional life demands solutions or answers.