Stress of chemistry labs encourages cheating

Some students cheat to get ahead. But in some chemistry labs, students cheat to keep up.

Of 10 science students interviewed, all said they had copied at least part of one chemistry lab report. Most said that they and their peers cheated regularly while taking lower division chemistry lab classes. Some even challenged me to find a student who had never copied a lab report. This is an issue because all pre-med students and many South Campus majors require chemistry lab classes for graduation.

It’s clear that there are some systematic issues when a vast majority of students in certain lab classes is being pushed to copy lab reports regularly.

Students do it by inheriting old lab assignments from friends who have taken the class in the past. One second-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student said she has two sets of lab reports for the chemistry class she’s currently taking, and a friend of hers has another two sets. When doing assignments, the two students look at all four sets of previous labs to avoid repeating mistakes made by those in the past.

If you don’t have a friend who’s taken the lab class in the past, you have surely met someone in the class who has a previous set of assignments. It’s pretty easy to do and difficult for instructors to catch, but there are many reasons why students go through all of this trouble to partake in this cheating ring.

According to Steven Kim, lecturer of chemistry lab classes, changing the lab assignments each quarter would be great, but it’s just not feasible with budget constraints. He enjoys teaching, not policing potential cheating, but he says he feels obligated to at least try to prevent copying.

At a large public school, instructors just cannot effectively police huge classes with rampant cheating issues.

Students copy in the first place because it’s unreasonable to expect students to write original pre- and post-lab reports for complex lab assignments every week. Finding material for pre-lab reports, doing the actual lab, and writing several pages reporting on hypothesis, procedure and conclusions takes a lot of time. A fourth-year neuroscience student said it took him two to three hours to write up pre-lab reports and five to eight hours to write up post-lab reports. And that’s when he had access to previous labs. If he tried to do the lab on his own, it would take him double that amount of time.

It’s unrealistic to expect students to gain an understanding of 10 labs in a quarter when each takes so much time to do. Reducing the workload expected of students would help minimize the culture of overworked students feeling like they need to copy and would create the possibility of rotating labs between quarters, reducing the potential for copying.

Further, it’s unfair to tell students that they should spend 20 to 30 hours doing their own lab reports for a three-unit class when they have other classes, each counting for more units and requiring less time.

“Why the hell am I working so hard for three units?” asked a fourth-year physiological science student.

Students also said they thought they would be at a disadvantage if they didn’t cheat. While all students want high grades, students taking these lab classes often have an aspiration for professional school and believe it is necessary to maintain the highest marks.
Most students have other classes, student group commitments, jobs on campus and other time obligations to tend to. The high stress and multitude of commitments push students to accept copying as the norm.

Notably, while nearly all of the students in most chemistry lab classes are copying assignments, most made it a point to tell me they don’t just copy the answers or formulas. They do attempt to learn the material because it is tested on midterms and finals.

But copying answers reduces the process of learning. The system is encouraging students to consistently break its own rules. Why are we telling our future doctors it’s OK to disregard rules as long as everyone else is doing it?

Fixing the system isn’t easy. But there are small steps that can be taken. Reducing workload and increasing the unit count for these classes would help reduce the overstressed environment and culture of needing to copy.

Further, these classes need to spend more time teaching lab techniques and the principles behind them. Currently, the lecture portion of lab classes focuses on theories and not techniques, many students said. They are expected to learn the techniques on their own. Throwing children into a pool and asking them to paddle does not count as swim lessons.

Grades in these classes should not focus so much on the pre- and post-lab assignments. Many times, the lab write-ups count for a majority of students’ class grades, while exams are valued less, students said. They should focus on the exams that (ideally) test an understanding of techniques and why they’re used.

When it comes to testing, Kim said he’s shifting away from multiple-choice questions altogether. He’s employing other testing methods that help students internalize the material more.

This practice has made him unpopular among students because his exam questions are infamously difficult. But when the system’s broken, as it seems this one is, instructors must ensure students get the material.

Copying old labs is clearly a breach of the student code of conduct. Allowing nearly every student to do it regularly devalues the whole code. The university needs to either amend the conduct code to allow for copying old assignments or reform the system so it doesn’t blatantly encourage cheating.

Think chem labs need an ethical solution? Email Ramzanali at
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