I am an online teacher at a private college. Being an online teacher I have not met any of my students face to face, but what I know is the number of students in my online classes and their names, but I cannot tell who is who. Being not near the students it’s hard to regulate their behavior as many engage in cheating when given exams to do. I am aware that many of the students cheat in their exams by looking for exam answers from their notebooks. Although I know that my students lie, I have no proof of their wrong doing that I can use against them. Therefore I cannot speak to the students about the consequences of their malpractice. Sometimes students threaten that they will call their lawyers to inform them that lecturers have saying they were cheating. Because of this I have no option other than to be quiet because of fear that I may lose the case. Despite all these challenges I think that the online education model is a good one because the students must submit their college papers online and failure to do so will mean they discontinue their education. I am concerned about the students’ future and their competence levels, because when students cheat they are left with little practical knowledge. First, the students’ future becomes questionable because when students engage in cheating they neglect study and revision because their minds are set on cheating. Two, when these students finish their courses and get jobs their tenure will not last as they are soon dismissed due to job incompetence, or they may never get any promotion due to the low level of their performance. Sometimes when I am setting papers for college exams I always think that some of the students will cheat. I tend to blame all this behavior on the college faculty because it’s the duty of the faculty to investigate whether the students are cheating or not. Encouraging this behavior will result in the college producing incompetent scholars who are useless to the community. I have encouraged the teachers in the colleges to look deeply into this matter and see how we can help solve the cheating problem. It is the duty of the teachers to ensure that students do their work by learning. Teachers know or measure what the students have learned through exams and when students cheat then it’s not easy to measure their understanding levels. Students should love what they do in their colleges and stop behaving like someone dragged them to college without their will. Those students who use writing services benefit by receiving professionally prepared papers, which they can use to revise the excellent content and to follow as examples when they write their own papers. All those who are termed as educators at all academic levels have the chance to address the issue. The blame should not be passed to someone else because this will not assist in fixing the problem, but it will continue ruining our students’ future.


