We use honor pledges not to reduce cheating directly - but rather, to create incontrovertible evidence that the student was aware of the course policies. This supports those rare cases where a student chooses to fight a plagiarism case and claims ignorance of the policy, especially in cases where it may not be University-wide policy - e.g. a policy against AI usage. Students can argue they didn’t read the syllabus, missed the first day of class, etc. but have a harder time arguing they signed a pledge without reading it.
We regularly catch cheaters in our classes; I do so every term and report all the cases I see up to the dean. In my experience these have not resulted in catastrophic declines in teaching evaluations; the few unhappy with getting caught cheating are drowned out by the 80-90% who don’t cheat.
It is actually critically important that institutions take cheating seriously. Rampant, well-known cheating can tank the reputation of a program or institution, or at the very least serve to cheapen the value of the degree.
We regularly catch cheaters in our classes; I do so every term and report all the cases I see up to the dean. In my experience these have not resulted in catastrophic declines in teaching evaluations; the few unhappy with getting caught cheating are drowned out by the 80-90% who don’t cheat.
It is actually critically important that institutions take cheating seriously. Rampant, well-known cheating can tank the reputation of a program or institution, or at the very least serve to cheapen the value of the degree.