Cheat Sheets

Today's Shreveport Times has an article about YouTube cheating videos in which I'm quoted: "Videos teach students deception."

Elizabeth Losh, writing director of the human core course at University of California-Irvine, knows these videos well. As a teacher of digital rhetoric, she analyzes how media affects society. The YouTube videos are really a way for people to boast, she said.

"It's a whole kind of tradition on YouTube — how do you subvert something, how do you break-in to something," she said. "In some ways, I'm not surprised that the genre has evolved."

. . .

Chris Ciocchetti, adviser to the Centenary College Honor Court, has watched the videos.

"They are very deliberate about it," he said. "Will they use it? They might. I've seen similar things."

Ciocchetti is surprised with the boldness of some of the videos' techniques. Much like Kiki in her video, others make cheating look easy and almost acceptable. One such video uses a Coke bottle and photo altering software to sneak the answers past teachers.

"The boldness does worry me," he said. "Students that cheat think that everyone does it. But students that don't, don't think it's appropriate. The Internet reflects back to us, and that's the worrisome part."

But Losh wasn't surprised by their boldness.

"Another thing about the approaches are the techniques," she said. "They take so much time you might as well study. I can laugh about the inventiveness, but it's sad more than anything else."