Associated Press have blogged on website Turkish Digest the following headline which caught my attention ...
"Turkey rocked by alleged cheating on College Exams!"
so the article continues with the facts and alleged facts of what sort of cheating the Turkish students are involved in, in an attempt to raise up the standard of their examination results so its a far cry from
the previous sytem of relying on students and the direct link between the need to examine what they do and to see that no cheating has been present in exams. A long time ago my co examiner commented that he had checked papers and would alsso checksimilaritites in answers given and threw down the sponge when so many students were word for word perfect in each paper and had an exact copy of their fellow students answers on individual papers. So when I asked him wat to do should I as a Examiner should I hit such a problem of cheating in exams in order to push up the grades for College Entry his answer was to go through each paper individually and cross compare and take a sort of blueprint image of each paper and the rest is up to the personal judgement of the Examiners. It worked for him so during my career as an Examiner I sat on Committee On Exam Boards and carefully each examiner cleverly checked online on the computer and manually the answer papers of our students so there was no cheating evident at all!
Self Assessment was a necessary part of Exam work - as Examiner in Residence I sat in the corridor outside the Test Exam Room and we double checked our results in written and oral papers and with each student being tested collectively and individually in Exams In Istanbul I feltl confident there was no sign of Cheating since two of us used a different practice approach to Exams and Marking and we found no errors in the system. But it takes a long look at papers and exams to see how we can prevent cheating at exams as the self assessment would be the only hole in the argument as One student personally may mark UP but his examiner can stop that so called cheating and Mark Him Down .. thanks Associated Press = Hard Work Pays UP!