COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Cheating is very prevalent in classrooms today, but there are steps that parents and teachers can take to make it much less likely that students will cheat, according to Eric Anderman, an expert on student cheating and professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University.

“People ask me often how much it occurs, and there’s no way to know, because cheating is one of the things that no matter how much you ask, people don’t want to tell you the truth about it. But there are many, many estimates out there that at least some estimates are that by the time students graduate from high school, at least 80 to 90% have engaged in some kind of cheating,” said Anderman.

Anderman explains kids cheat because they’re trying to earn a grade or they’re trying to avoid some kind of negative consequence. Research by Anderman and others shows that students are less likely to cheat when teachers emphasize mastery of content and not just grades and test scores.

“So when the students acknowledge in a classroom that the success here means getting a high grade at all costs, then you’re setting them up to cheat. In classrooms where teachers provide opportunities for students to really master the material that they’re learning, and when I say mastery, it means that if you didn’t learn something well enough, rather than just getting a bad grade and that being the end of it, you have an opportunity to remediate,” said Anderman.

The issue has become more urgent with the advent of ChatGPT, which some students use to write papers for their classes and find answers for their homework.

“Parents are going to have to learn to come to terms with ChatGPT also, as anybody who has internet access is going to have access to this. So how do you regulate that in your house? And again, I think this is going to take time, but I think that the narrative needs to be throughout really schools and in society that this is a tool. It’s a tool that is going to help us. And so parents are going to need a lot of guidance I think from schools and partnerships with schools on how do you monitor your kids doing their homework with ChatGPT there,” said Anderman.

While ChatGPT has increased opportunities to cheat, Anderman said it shouldn’t be seen only as something used for illicit purposes. It can help students learn if teachers and parents work together to develop policies on how chatbots can be used responsibly.