Maria Vincentia Eka Mulatsih
mv_ika@usd.ac.id
Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia
DOI: 10.24071/seadr.2019.24

Abstract: This article proposes collaborative learning concept to reduce the act of cheating. Based on the result of interview, none of the students from two Critical Listening and Speaking II (CLS) classes claimed that they have not cheated before. The reasons might vary from the difficulty of materials, lack of confidence, the importance of getting good score, bad preparation, and the trend of millennials. The goal of CLS II course is to improve students’ critical thinking by watching some videos, answering some questions, and discussing some certain themes. Nevertheless, it would be possible to reach the aim when students tended to cheat. For solving that problem, this article proposes the change of learning concept from individual learning process into collaborative learning process when students do not need to cheat because after they finish doing the exercise, they can share the result and criticize their friend’s work. From analyzing the result of observation, document analysis and questionnaire, students could avoid the act of cheating. Furthermore, they could help their friends’ difficulty for their grammar, content, and the organization of the idea.

Keywords: collaborative learning concept, cheating, students

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Introduction

In this digital era, students can get a lot of information from googling the materials. When that activity is done based on students’ own interest to study certain subject, it can lead to students’ progress or improvement. However, when students try to find the answer of the questions given by teacher or lecturer in the class, it can be classified as the act of cheating. The act of cheating in the classroom has occurred for long period (Campbell, 2006; Anderman, et.al, 2009; Anderman, et.al, 1998; Ferriere, 2001). In the past, students tended to cheat by asking their friends answer, making their own note, having certain sign to tell the answer, throwing a piece of paper to other friends, and etc. Nowadays, cheating can be in form of texting to get the answers, browsing the internet, taking the photo of friends’ answer, or asking friends directly. Based on previous studies, many reasons caused the act of cheating such as low awareness, high expectation, personal experience, poor condition of the school, or supportive environment for cheating (Murdock, et.al, 2001; Newstead, 1996; Black, et.al, Whitley, 1998).

Knowing the importance of avoiding the act of cheating, this article underlines the concept of collaborative learning to reduce the act of cheating in two classes of Critical Listening and Speaking II (CLS II). CLS II is a main course in the fourth semester and is taken after the students finish Critical Listening and Speaking I. This course has four credits and it is divided into two meetings per week. One meeting is for speaking class and another meeting is for listening class. The goal of this course is that students will be able to give critical response and reflection based on the given topics. The theme of CLS II is different from CLS I. While CLS I deals with education in general and environment, CLS II deals with technology in English language teaching, classroom issues and criticism on education and technology. For listening class, the materials are mostly taken from English audio and video such as TED Talk videos, YouTube videos, podcasts. After listening the audio or watching the video, students do some activities such as note taking, summarizing, paraphrasing, and answering some comprehension questions.

Some students in this course found some videos difficult to be understood especially for TED Talk videos due to the speed of the speaker’s speech. It was found that some students simply searched and copied the video subtitle for answering the questions. There were also students who copied other student’s answer without changing a single word. The act of cheating in CLS II classes was done because some students did not have good ability for listening and understanding the content of the videos well. Due to that phenomenon, in a meeting of speaking class, the lecturer and the students had a discussion about cheating. Unsurprisingly, every student had an experience of cheating. There were some reasons why students did that. One of them was because the listening materials were difficult. As mentioned before, students thought that TED Talk videos were not so easy to be understood. Moreover, in two CLS II classes, students had different level of listening skill. The second reason was students’ lack of confidence. Some students told that when they could answer the questions, they were not sure that the answer was good enough. They needed to compare their answer with other friends.

Cheating could be also done because of lack of preparation. It happened when students did not master the material well or even did not have enough time to review the material. In fact, GPA was still important for most students. When they failed to get a good score, it would cause to their GPA. They thought that good score mattered a lot. Besides, the culture of the class played important role too. One student who did not want to help other friends might be avoided by the rest of the class. This supportive system could have both negative and positive sides. To overcome this problem, the lecturer then proposed a collaborative learning.

Collaborative learning has been discussed as a solution for learning in digital era. The concept of collaborative learning itself comes from two experts, namely: Piaget and Vygotsky. Based on Law, et al. (2019), Vygotsky underlines the interaction between students to construct their knowledge. It does not merely mean a group work. Collaborative learning occurs when students can understand the material. Moreover, students can have different perspective toward classroom material as Smith and MacGregor (1992) say that students come from different background and social condition. It can enrich their interaction too. Law, et al. (2019) also demonstrate the benefit of collaborative learning to foster students’ engagement in the class. The success of Law’s collaborative learning lays on students’ participation as an evidence of engagement. Tracking down the concept of collaborative learning in 20th century, Gokhale (1995) defines collaborative learning as follow.

The term “collaborative learning” refers to an instruction method in which students at various performance levels work together in small groups toward a common goal. The students are responsible for one another’s learning as well as their own. Thus, the success of one student helps other students to be successful (p. 22).

An interesting point from Gokhale’s research is that this collaborative learning can increase students’ critical thinking by having the activity of discussion and sharing. The finding is presented quantitatively. It shows that the students who do collaborative learning perform better on critical thinking test due to the presence of different interpretations and group diversity. There was also an article discussed the absence of teacher assistance in electrical engineering when collaborative and autonomous learning was done by having augmented reality (Martín-Gutiérrez, et al., 2015). It was proven that students could understand the practical thing by having the tools in a collaborative way. In the field of education especially for pre-service teachers, collaborative learning also gives many benefits. Brown, et al. (2019) suggested the presence of peer leader, instructors, and effective relationships was needed. In this case, instructor could arrange some roles and strategies so that collaborative learning could run well.

The concept of collaborative learning in this article is an adaptation from previous concept that has been explained in the paragraph above. This collaborative learning concept prioritizes students’ ability to work together with friends after they finish their own work. It means that they know to do their own duty first before helping others. The steps to apply this collaborative learning are described below.

1. Lecturer strengthens the concept of positive learner that they may answer the question by themselves because they are not cheaters.
2. Lecturer also informs that they do not need to ask their friend’s answer because when they finish their work, their work will be swapped.
3. There is also a statement that the most important thing in learning process is the individual progress not the result. When students are not able to answer the questions, they may leave it blank.
4. The video is played once for getting the main idea.
5. The video is played the second time for answering the questions.
6. Lecturer may ask students whether they need the lecturer to play the video again.
7. When students finish answering the questions, they may swap their work.
8. They read their friend’s answer, help their friend’s structure of sentences and can learn from friend’s answer.
9. Lecturer may discuss the answers of the questions. Lecturer reads the question and allows student to raise his or her hand when they find that his or her friend’s answer is good or interesting.
10. Students give written feedback in their friend’s work. Then, they submit the work to the lecturer.

The first three steps are called the initiation process where students understand the concept of collaborative learning. Step four, five and six are done so that students can get the main idea and find the answer for each question. In this phase, students’ understanding of the material is needed. The most important thing relates to the learning process. The 7th and 8th steps are beneficial for students to broaden their knowledge after reading their friend’s answer and to help another friend. Step 9 relates to student’s learning process to appreciate their friend’s work. When they raise their hand and read their friend’s work, it can build the sense of togetherness too. The last step that contains the written feedback can be used as a practice for them to be a preservice teacher. As we know that teacher should be able to give written feedback too.

Research Method

There were three sources for gathering the data. The first was observation. Then, it was supported with document analysis from students work and the questionnaire. Observation was conducted for three times during the implementation. The content of questionnaire dealt with the act of cheating during the implementation, the efficiency of applying collaborative concept, and the achievement of learning goal. Document analysis was done to get detail information about students’ work. In participants’ working sheet, the researcher could find the answer of the questions as the indication of cheating or not.

Participants were taken from two classes of CLS II which were A class and B class. A class consisted of 27 students. There were 20 female students and 7 male students. B class contained 20 female students and 7 male students. On the day of questionnaire data taken, there were only 25 students coming for each class.

Result and Discussion

This part is divided into three parts. The first deals with the result of collaborative implementation in A class of CLS II. The second part discusses the result of collaborative implementation in B class of CLS II. The last is about the comparison between A and B classes. For the first and second parts, the discussion leads to the number of cheaters after the implementation, the effectiveness of the implementation, and the number of students who agree that this collaborative implementation helps them in the learning process. Below are the tables of the result from two classes.

Based on the table above, it was clearly seen that there was not any cheater from A class after implementing this collaborative learning concept. From the observation, the supporting system from the students in the class took important role. Students in A class had their own commitment to keep their integrity. From students’ work, there was no indication of cheating such as same words and same idea for all answers. They tended to have their own critical thinking and to express their idea differently. They also wrote the answers of the questions quietly before they swapped their work to other friend and had discussion.

There were 22 students who thought that this collaborative implementation was effective. Their reasons varied. Five students thought that it was effective because they could help each other. Meanwhile, three students dealt with the reasons of the chance for expressing their idea, avoiding boredom, enriching their perspective by reading their friend’s answer. Other three students also argued that by implementing this collaborative concept, they could know their mistake and learn from that mistake. It was efficient due to the fact that they could get the feedback from their friend. This reason was stated by five students.

Furthermore, this collaborative implementation provided the chance to discuss the problem together in relation with both intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects. Two students shared their opinions that they improved their confidence. During the discussion, they could also share their knowledge. By implementing collaborative concept, students could improve their speaking and writing skills during the time they checked their friend’s answer. One student also underlined the relax atmosphere that was created by the lecturer. In relation with learning, a student wrote his response “It is yes because with collaborative learning we can complete or discuss the answer with our friend. So, it is useful and helpful for me because sometimes I did not get the answer. The feedback motivated me.” But not all students agreed that this collaborative learning was efficient because they thought that some friends did not seriously check their answers. There were 23 students who agreed that this collaborative implementation was helpful for their learning process.

The result of collaborative implementation in B class of CLS II was different from A class. This collaborative implementation could reduce the number of students who cheated but could not 100% eliminate the cheaters. The result of the observation, students in B class also had supporting community, but they did not have good competence comparing to A class. Besides, this collaborative implementation could not be done fully in three weeks because of holiday. The factor of repetition did not completely exist.

In B class, there were 10 students who did not completely cheat during the implementation. This collaborative concept was found efficient for 22 students. They delivered their opinion that the method was efficient because of lecturer’s factor. They could gain new vocabularies and it was practical. Moreover, by implementing this collaborative concept, two students were more confident when they could read their friend’s answer. They also developed creativity by knowing other perspective. One student thought that this method was the best as far as he knew because he has not found other method. Not only develop student’s creativity, this developed their competence of understanding the given video, improving listening skill and critical thinking. Other students felt less worried and less ashamed. It was challenging because students could know their mistake and strength. They could also get the information from friends. There were only two students who thought that it was not efficient because one of them should open google translate and another student said that his friend did not completely check his work. Unsurprisingly, all students agreed that this collaborative concept helped them in their learning process.

The similar result from both between A & B class was about the efficiency of implementing this collaborative concept for widening their perspective to understand the materials. Students learned a lot from their friend when they had this collaborative concept. The difference dealt with the number of cheaters. In A class, the implementation of this collaborative concept could reduce cheaters 100%. Meanwhile in B class, it could reduce 40% cheaters. This difference was a result of the nature of the class and students’ integrity (McCabe, et al., 2001).

Conclusion

Some ways have been done to reduce the act of cheating. Two of them were done by conducting a tutorial program (Mulatsih, 2018) and improving students’ critical thinking with analyzing a literary work (Mulatsih, 2015). In this article, it was proven that collaborative learning concept was able to reduce the number of cheaters in the classroom. This collaborative learning concept was mainly about the integrity of the students who realized that they were not cheaters and who were honest to themselves. Besides, the activities of sharing between at least two students and giving feedback enriched them to have different perspective and to help other friend. Based on the result, this collaborative learning concept was good to decrease the number of cheaters, to help them to learn and was efficient for most students. One factor that influenced this implementation of collaborative learning concept was the nature of the class. Thus, one class had different result from another one. In CLS II A class, this collaborative learning concept could 100% eliminate the number of cheaters. Meanwhile, in CLS II B class, this concept could reduce 40% number of cheaters. To overcome this problem, students’ integrity could be done sustainability and continuously after this implementation of collaborative learning concept.

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