Is Looking Up Answers Online on Google Cheating?
If a student gives an exam and uses Google to write the exam and by doing so the student gets used to it. The student then doesn’t write the exam on his/her own even if they know the answer they do prefers googling the questions and writing the answer. But is it, not that cheating?
Quick Takeaways
1. For cheating purposes
- Yes of course when you will be looking for the answers on online cheating, it is considered to be cheating.
- Following are the reasons why the student may google the answers-
2. Laziness of the student
3. The greed of score
4. Getting pressured by teachers and parents
However, you must read till the end so that you do not miss any important facts related to Turnitin and if it keeps the papers submitted by the students.
Is looking up answers online cheating?
Nowadays students are using Google to write the answer easily or do their school or college homework. But this is not a good way of using Google as it should be used for the search if you have during the studies for clearing your doubts. Yes, looking up answers online is considered cheating during the examination or classwork according to the school’s rules.
If a student is searching to get the reference only and then paraphrases the sentence then it is not considered cheating like Sparknotes. While doing the homework the student can search on Google for getting the idea only, to understand the concept, and then write it in their language which is not considered cheating. Further, they can also look for homework websites like Chegg and copy the content.
The reason why the student googles the answers
The student does the cheating in the exams to get a high score. The main reasons for the students to google the answers are as below:
1. For cheating purposes:
During the exam or doing the assignment the student often uses Google to get the solutions to the questions easily and starts to copy as it is on the Google search. This is considered to be unfair and cheating. However, the student can google the question for doing the assignment to get an idea about the topic and write by paraphrasing the content in a way to get safe from tools like Turnitin.
2. Laziness of the student:
The days before the examination the student is used to not getting prepared for the exam due to laziness and when the exam date comes closer the student gets tense and does the cheating by searching on Google. It may also be done if the student has taken a course which is not suitable for them.
3. The greed of score:
The competition among the students is going at its peak and every student wants to score better than another student. Due to this, the student starts to google the answer and write during the examination or writing the assignment.
4. Getting pressured by teachers and parents:
The teachers are pressured by the high faculty for getting good results for the students and the teachers give pressure the students to score better. The parents also put pressure on the student to score well on paper. So due to pressure from the teachers and the parents, the student wants to do the best and due to the stress, the student does the cheating on the exam by googling the answers.
Tips for cheating in online exams by using Google
The students do cheating and are used to being caught by the instructor during the examination. Here are some tips that will make you answer the question by using Google and not get caught by anyone-
1. Search fast:
While searching for the solution in an online examination the student should make sure to do the search fast and get an idea of what to write. Complete the paper without wasting time. Also, the internet speed should be good so that you don’t waste time searching. Further, there are a lot of google meet hacks due to which the students think of cheating in the google meet exams.
2. Websites:
Searching for the solution doesn’t mean writing anything which has a meaning related to the topic. Always read the content, understand what is written, and write in your language. Give the preference to the website that is shown on the top 3 searches as the content on these websites will be more relevant. So the student should care about what to write and what not to write. Many teachers will also take the help of the LMS platform like Wileyplus, to keep the records of the students.
3. Mobile phone:
The student can take the mobile phone to the examination hall by hiding. And use it during the exam for writing the answer but if in the examination the phone is restricted to use don’t take it. You can use the phone during the online exam secretly without letting the instructor know about it.
4. Paraphrasing :
The answer to be written in the exam should be paraphrased properly so that the answer is plagiarism-free. The student generally copies the content from the website and pastes it. This will make the student’s answer detect plagiarism. Thus you can paraphrase the content so that you can make it hard for plagiarism detectors like Turnitin to detect plagiarism.
5. Highlight and Google search:
The students want to write the exam by googling the question. The simple way of searching is to select the question from the question paper and paste it on Google and click on search. Google will show the option to write from different websites. Choose the website from which you want to write the answer. You can look up different courses like data entry or business management from which you can get lot of information about the topic you are studying.
Conclusion:
The student googling answers is considered to be cheating as it makes it unfair to the students who are giving the exam fairly. The student who gets a high score takes this step. And this will allow the student to search and answer the questions even if they know the answer they will search for it from Google and write it. The student will not know about the topic he will just copy and paste the content from Google. So, the student should not google the answer and write in the exam but can take a reference or understand the topic and paraphrase the answer in its language.
