🗑 My messy thoughts on cheating

🎙️ Join me at FETC’s AI Educator Summit

I’m co-presenting the new AI Educator Summit at the big FETC Conference in Orlando, Florida, in January!

I’m teaming up with Ken Shelton and Holly Clark, my fellow faculty members of the AI Fluency Lab, for this very practical and informative summit!

We’ll tackle topics like:

• What educators need to know about AI to survive and thrive

• How to think about assignments and assessments in an AI age

• What about cheating and academic integrity

• How AI can serve as a co-creator for students

Get more details and register for the FETC Conference below!

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💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

⚖️ The complicated balancing act of academic integrity

The other day during class, it was time to take a quiz.

A quick bit of context about where I am in my teacher journey:

• I taught high school Spanish for 11 years — 2004 to 2015.

• I did Ditch That Textbook full-time (writing/speaking) until 2024.

• I came back for a semester full-time in spring of 2024.

• Right now, I’m teaching an in-person class for the full 2025-26 school year. (And doing Ditch That Textbook full-time the rest of the day.)

Reason for the context: I was fully immersed in teaching 10 years ago, and in some ways teaching doesn’t change …

… but for the things that have changed, I’m still finding my sea legs, so to speak.

OK, back to the story … taking a quiz …

Before taking the quiz, I asked my students to spread their desks out and put their smart phones (and smart watches) on my desk.

I hand out the quiz and sit at my desk at the back of the room.

And all of these thoughts start flowing through my head as I ponder the state of academic integrity in today’s schools.

Here’s the messy stream of thoughts (because, in real time, it was messy, too).

Is all of this really necessary?

I just made them spread all of their desks out … and put their phones on my desk … and their WATCHES, too??? It’s ridiculous that I’m doing this, right?

How many of them would actually use their phones to look stuff up during a test? Am I doing this for the sake of the minority?

Cell phones weren’t that big a part of our students’ lives when I taught through 2015, so I’m still getting reacquainted. All of these phones and watches on my desk? I’m just doing what I see other teachers do today.

Don’t you want your grades to mean something?

But you have to do this, right? I mean … what if they did look everything up? What if they were no good at Spanish and they got good grades — all because they knew they could exploit your system and just look stuff up on their phones during the test?

This is the core of academic integrity … of knowing that if a student gets a grade and a credit for your class, it means that they know and are able to do something, right?

What happens if it’s overkill?

I know why teachers take these precautions to deter cheating. It’s to make sure that students show what they know, what they can do, what they remember, how they’ve formed their understanding during a unit or chapter.

But I also know … for some of these students? There’s no way they’re going to cheat. They studied. They’ll do the best that they can.

What message does it send when we treat everyone like a bunch of lawless criminals? I want to build trust with my students. I’m trying to establish a good relationship with them in this first half of the school year.

I refuse to become one of those “law and order” teachers.

It would be easy to say “take every precaution so you’re sure they’re not cheating.”

I know some teachers — good teachers, and good human beings — who go overboard on this. It’s almost like their entire existence as a teacher is to lock down the classroom environment with 100 percent fidelity.

Sorry, that’s not me.

First of all, we’ve NEVER gotten 100 percent academic integrity in classrooms.

And what do those ruthless lock-down circumstances really create? In other relationships in my life, I want them built on trust. And it hurts a relationship when you’re constantly doubting and accusing the other person.

There has to be a balance, right?

Are tests like these really worthwhile anymore?

The more that I learn about artificial intelligence and the future of the workforce, it makes me question the validity of these “closed book, closed note” tests in the first place. In the real world, we have access to all of the world’s information (the internet) AND AI models that will explain it to us. That changes the nature of how we do our work. Shouldn’t school reflect that somehow?

But school isn’t the workplace.

I heard a saying recently and I LOVE it. School is all about helping students “connect the dots” with what they’re supposed to learn. The dots are the things that they’ve learned, of course.

But to connect the dots, you have to have dots. (I love that. SO true.)

What if they don’t have the core understanding necessary to raise the complexity of thought to the next level?

There has to be a balance, though. Because (to further stretch an already stretched-thin analogy) our world is full of dots. We don’t need our students to hoard dots. We need the right amount of connection, understanding, depth of thought, reasoning CONNECTED WITH the core foundational information.

If we want to do right by our students, we can’t worship at the temple of knowledge and facts anymore.

And here my students are, answering matching vocabulary questions on paper tests, just like my students did back in 2005. Haven’t you evolved your practice at all, Matt?!?

Yeah, and what about all of that paper? Isn’t this 2025?

As soon as this thought creeps into my head, I remember: I wrote about this recently. My job isn’t “technology integrator.” Nowhere in my standards does it say I must teach “with a level of technology sophistication.”

My job is to teach my students Spanish. If technology helps me to do that — helps them to learn it — I’ll use it. But if it doesn’t, I don’t have to use it.

Tech should serve the learning. Learning shouldn’t serve the tech.

I’ve kind of quit entertaining this preposterous thought anymore …

Conclusion: Academic integrity is a messy balancing act.

There are so many variables in this academic integrity argument.

• Testing fidelity.

• Trust.

• The type of learning the test assesses.

• What the grade / score really communicates.

Whether we consciously choose or not, we all balance it a little differently — and our balance reflects what we believe in education.

I asked ChatGPT to create this silly image that came into my head that describes how it all feels to me …

The bowling ball and jar of mayonnaise are constantly rolling around. You have to keep them balanced just right — even though they both roll around in different ways.

But if your board goes out of balance too much to accommodate for one of them, you might spill the glass of water — or burn yourself with hot wax from the candle. (Or, I suppose, burn the school down with the fire from the candle!)

There’s no perfect or right way to do it. Every teacher figures out how they’re going to balance all of the items on the board.

And sometimes it all comes crashing down. You pick up the pieces, put them back on the board, and you come up with a new strategy for balancing everything again.

Right now? When it comes to testing and academic integrity, my proverbial jar of mayonnaise feels like it’s about to fall off the board. I’ll adjust — and see how it impacts the rest of the items.

But this is the incredible thing about us as educators …

Eventually, everyone finds their own balance.

(Let’s just keep an eye out to see if others have different strategies — and keep an open mind to adjust ours if there’s a better way!)

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!