Online cheating must stop – DepEd

The Department of Education (DepEd) strongly urged parents, teachers and students to denounce “any form of academic dishonesty” and help stop it.

DepEd said in a statement, “Even before the pandemic, cheating has always presented a challenge to the education system.”

The appeal came after DepEd “recently monitored” that answers to self-learning modules (SLMs) are being uploaded on Facebook pages called “Online Kopyahan.

DepEd said the page “seemingly lure learners as manifested by its massive following.”

DepEd explained that its SLMs are designed to help learners keep track of their progress. “Their responses provide information about how well they understood a lesson before proceeding to the next,” it added.

While these activities are not graded, DepEd said learners are “encouraged to demonstrate what they can and cannot do without feeling obligated to always get it right.”

DepEd added that “mistakes are understandable in the learning process and the learner’s capacity to learn from them while striving for excellence is vital to their holistic development.”

DepEd stressed it does not tolerate the perpetuation of cheating, regardless of the learning delivery modality.

DepEd said it is “now exhausting all possible means to put a stop to these activities.”

DepEd has “sought the assistance of social media companies to ban these groups and prevent similar attempts of academic dishonesty that promote laziness, irresponsibility, and instant gratification.”

Consequently, DepEd appealed to parents, teachers and students to help the agency stop this form of cheating.

“Help us eradicate online cheating which undermines the development of values and morality among the youth,” DepEd said.

DepEd said that academic dishonesty such as online cheating demean the quality of education that the department has been striving to improve.

DepEd enjoined all stakeholders remain “steadfast in protecting our shared goal of nurturing holistically developed learners by making the home and school as enabling environments for character development.”