Many teachers are worried that students will end up copying other students' homeworks. After all, that cheating student would be getting a good homework grade without actually doing anything.
However there is a solution: take out the homework grade. Don't collect homework. Quiz on it. That way even if a student does copy the homework he/she will still have to learn the material in order to pass the quiz.
I only recommend this tactic for high school students. After all, you can't ask an elementary school student to do this as they first have to learn how to do homework. You could use it on middle school students.
My AP US history teacher would give homework everyday: A section we have to read and questions we needed to answer. However she would never collect it; she would never even check it. Her philosophy was "Whether you do homework or not is your choice. When you get to college many teachers will not check to see if you did what you're supposed to do".
However, most people still did the homework because she would also give daily quizzes. Everyday we would come to class, have 3-5 minutes to study the homework and the previous day's notes and then BAM- quiz time.
This method forced students to not only pay attention in class, but to feel a need to do the homework themselves. Copying someone's homework and then reading it does not automatically mean you will understand it.
What else is good about this method?
Self-recognition of abilities:
When you have a choice of whether or not to do the homework, you also have the choice of how much of the homework you will do. This means that a student can adjust his best learning method to the homework. After all, we all learn differently, why shouldn't we do homework differently?
- People who learn best from writing will probably make an outline
- People who learn best from reading then thinking will only read the material
- People who learn best from applying knowledge will read/skim and then answer the questions
- People who are best at figuring out what things mean with only minimal reading will read the chapter summaries
The fact that the homework isn't collected means a student is free to decide how to do the homework.
Social Skills and Time management:
One of the big complaints students have is that they often don't have time to do homework. Using quizzes instead of collecting will allow greater flexibility in a student's time management by sharing work with other students.
- People who have time can create outlines for their friends without as much time. While this does mean only one student is doing the work, all the students do end up learning. This is what I refer to as "good copying" because it isn't the answers to questions that are being copied, it is an outline/summary of the actual material. (Of course, that means the friend with free time can ask for more favors).
- People with little time can set up homework rings. (preferably with at least 4 people). One person does Monday's homework in full and then fully explains it to the other three people in the ring. The next day, person # 2 does the homework in full and fully explains it to the rest of the group,etc.. This is the concept of "the shared brain". Since these students have little time, instead of all the students having to stay up late doing school work, only one student loses his/her night's sleep and then makes sure the other people learn the work. (Once again, a good summary e-mailed to the other members of the group works fine)
- People with few social skills can still adapt their schedule to fit the homework freely. They'll probably read chapter summaries or simply find out what the chapter is about and then google an outline for the same topic.
This is why the quizzed homework method is better than collecting answers to question. In the "normal" homework type, if a person does homework ,chances are others will copy without understanding. The fact that there are quizzes but no answer to hand in means a student actually has to learn, and therefore what they will be copying are full blown notes, and not just random answers to random questions.
Students doing homework for others isn't bad as long as everyone ends up learning for it, and especially if the homework is shared on a turn-based system (like switching daily). After all we often share work with other people in real life, there is nothing wrong with doing that in school as long as no one goes by without getting any experience.
Other benefits of using daily quizzes on homework (and class notes)
- Students can see on a day to day basis which parts of the lesson and homework they failed to understand. This means they can correct themselves faster than if they were to wait for a practice test or a chapter test.
- Doing constant quizzes allows students to feel less stressed when real tests come because they've been tested every day
Summary:
Don't ask students to submit answers to questions in the homework. You can assign questions, but you shouldn't ask it to be submitted. You should instead do a quiz on the homework's content. This means that even if students copy, they will still have to learn the material in order to succeed and can lead to students figuring out for themselves what homework choices and time choices are best in order to learn the homework material.
How did this work out for my class?
Most of us were confident when the AP test came. Our regular tests usually ended up with students getting high 80's and low 90's (it was a hard class). On the AP test most of us got 3's, some had higher. On the US regents (Ny state), we all felt the test was too easy and all scored high 90's.
The fact that we would end up reviewing (by quizzing) what we learned right away helped make sure the information was glued into our brains.
