Cheating in school can be a difficult topic for young people. All students know they shouldn't cheat but many give into the temptation either by cheating on their own work or helping a friend to cheat. This video goes beyond "right versus wrong" to help students understand that all forms of cheating undermine learning.
Module 1 uses dramatized interviews and reenactments to address different types of cheating, pressure and consequences. In between the scenarios, the host (an older sister figure) relates how she decided not to cheat.
Amanda is under pressure from her parents to improve her math grades. Frustrated with her lack of success, she turns to her friend Nicole who has copies of all the tests and homeworks. Amanda thinks she's really learning the subject by studying off the old tests.
She's uncomfortable, however, when the rest of her class gets copies and then blatantly cheats during exams. When the teacher catches on and changes the test, Amanda realizes she hasn't really learned anything by studying the answers.
Chris thinks he's being a good friend by letting Mike copy his Spanish homework. But soon Mike is repeatedly asking Chris to help him cheat. Chris allows the cheating to happen because he doesn't want to anger a "friend". When Mike's blatant copying gets both boys in trouble, Chris realizes Mike was never interested in being a friend.
Module 2 - Cheating Yourself: Plagiarism uses the same format as the first program to focus on plagiarism from books, other papers and the Internet. Male and female students address forgetting citations, copying college essays, buying research papers and consequences of plagiarism. A graduate student in English literature explains how he works to avoid plagiarizing and how he would feel if his work was plagiarized. The host also presents a general explanation of how to credit other authors through citations, footnotes and bibliographies.
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