In the digital world we live in, apps can make our lives easier. However, as a math teacher, it has made my job harder – especially post-pandemic. How you might ask? Cheating. Cheating in a math classroom has become absolutely rampant, and it needs to stop now in order to have academic integrity again.
So, to help other teachers with this same dilemma, I went on a hunt to see what are some of the best strategies for preventing cheating and this is what I found.
PhotoMath Hack
PhotoMath is a great tool to use as a resource to check an answer; however, I think it has become the enemy to every math teacher out there. Students can use their camera, PhotoMath will scan it, solve it, and then return the answer/work to them. Teachers, I’m here to tell you there’s a way around it. Yay!!! 🎉
Solution: Use emoji’s or symbols in place of the variables.
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Writing in the Curriculum
It is evident that writing in the curriculum is very important, especially in math. Students need to be able to write about mathematics to explain their reasoning and how they got to their answer.
So, I think this is a great way to beat the cheating game – have the students give justifications for their answers or have them explain how they calculated each step.
Students Create Problems
Sometimes, I like to challenge the students and have them create a 5 question multiple choice quiz from scratch. There are several things that I have the students do, which include:
- having at least 4 answer choices with some of the incorrect answers containing some minor mistakes they think the other students might potentially make.
- writing the work for the correct AND incorrect answers for all of the questions & stating where the mistake is in the incorrect problems.
- no two quiz questions can be the same.
I think this allows for creative thinking, problem solving, and a way for them to master the material.
I’ve always heard that if you can teach someone, then you truly understand the material. And I think this makes the students really think and with the expectations set, it is difficult for them to cheat.
Video Creation
Video creation is a cool way to make sure the students are understanding the material you are giving them. What I mean by that is to have the students video/record themselves explaining the steps as they solve.
You know that it would be legit because of the timestamp and the voice + handwriting in the video.
They would need to understand the steps in order to explain how they got their answers. Even if they got the steps from PhotoMath, then the explanation would still be a give away to whether they cheated or not.
Word Problems
Apps like PhotoMath have issues with word problems. So, go for it! Use those word problems – the world is moving more toward curriculum with more word problems than we are used to. This is a great skill for them to have anyways! Two birds with one stone!
Word of warning: do your best to change the names, values, variables, etc. in the word problem. They can look up the words in the sentences just as easy as using PhotoMath.
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Multiple Versions of Assessments
At the beginning of the year, I have my students and parents/guardians sign an honor code, where I explain that there will be multiple versions of assessments. This brings awareness to the students day-one that I am already prepared to catch cheaters.
You can choose different ways to do this – from changing the order of the questions to changing the numbers but still assessing the same standard to giving it on different colors of paper to creating make-up tests different than the original.
What’s your favorite way of preventing cheating?
Please comment below to share ideas with other math teachers. I am sure we would all like to have some other strategies in our back pockets to use down the road to prevent cheating in a math classroom.
