Due to technological advancements in the recent past, the education sector has experienced tremendous changes. These changes involve shifting traditional teaching and learning methods to new ones.
Today, teachers and their students can interact virtually through the help of technological education platforms such as Kahoot.
However, besides their multiple benefits, some stakeholders consider them cheating hotspots. Therefore, this article explores this issue by answering essential questions: IsKahoot cheating?
Is Kahoot Cheating?
Using Kahoot for learning and understanding courses better is not cheating. This platform assists instructors in formatively assessing the understanding of their students in the multiple courses they undertake.
On the other hand, when students undertake the fun quizzes offered by the platform, their learning becomes more engaging and impactful. Therefore, they grasp their courses’ content better.
Kahoot is a digital learning platform built on games known as kahoots. It is a real-time classroom that enables players (students) to answer multiple questions on the course they are undertaking, displayed on a share screen.
Learners can use their smartphones, tablets, or computer to access and answer the questions, which provides a pleasant, engaging, and game-like learning experience.
The platform allows educators to create multiple-choice quizzes, polls, and surveys. They collect real-time data on the students’ performance in these learning games to aid instructional decision-making. In addition, students get an opportunity to engage in a whole-class debate and understand their courses better.
The benefits that both instructors and learners acquire from this digital learning platform hail it as an effective learning and assessment tool. Therefore, using it for learning purposes is not cheating.
Ways that Kahoot Does not Constitute Cheating
Kahoot shuns away cheating rather than promoting the vice as a game-like digital learning and assessment platform. Explained below are ways that Kahoot does not constitute cheating;
Kahoot extends a shared platform where everyone participating in the assessment simultaneously responds to the multiple-choice questions. Consequently, this strategy denies the students an opportunity to consult each other before they answer the questions. Therefore, the students cannot cheat on the assessment questions, proving that Kahoot does not constitute cheating.
The formative assessments instructors give to their students through the platform are assessments. They then use the reviews and analytics from the games’ reports to judge their students’ level of understanding and progress. This undertaking proves Kahoot to be a helpful assessment tool rather than a cheating tool.
Kahoot allows educators to create quizzes by using their unique questions. Since the learners will not have come across the questions previously, it reduces their chances of searching for the answers online and hence cheating. Therefore, the platform attempts to curb cheating.
Are Kahoot Answers Correct?
The answers that Kahoot conveys are always the correct answers. Remember, all the collections of quizzes and answers found in Kahoot are prepared by verified course instructors and Kahoot’s premium partners.
Students and instructors can trust the answers conveyed by Kahoot to be the correct answers. Before providing the answers, the various subject experts extensively research their accuracy. Even when instructors create quizzes with new questions, the platform analyzes their answers to ascertain their correctness.
Therefore, students who participate in the Kahoot quizzes should be confident enough that the answers that they are compared to are the correct ones.
Can Kahoot Detect Cheating?
Kahoot is not compelling enough when it comes to detecting cheating. This is especially true when students undertake the quizzes remotely. The platform does not integrate anti-cheating mechanisms such as online proctoring systems or the use of webcams and microphones in its assessments. Therefore, it becomes impossible to detect cheating when it happens.
The platform uses a player identifier to track the participants’ performance across the many games. Students must enter their player identifiers to create their participatory nicknames. Therefore, instructors can identify each participant by their nicknames, check out their answers and performance, and track the students’ progress.
However, the player identifier does not trace when a student is cheating in the assessments. Therefore, students may take advantage of this allowance, look up solutions from other online platforms and use them in the quizzes. Such cheating will take place without Kahoot’s detection.
Can You Be Caught Using Kahoot?
It is nearly impossible to get caught using Kahoot when using the platform wisely. Various notorious students have crafted methods to cheat the platform and get away with the vice. These tricks are so clever for the course instructors to detect, let alone apprehend.
The students hack into the platform’s system using websites, extensions, and scripts bought from hackers. They then use the Kahoot hacks to auto-answer questions, bypass usernames, spam the quizzes with traffic, or create ghost players. The purpose of hacking Kahoot is for the cheating students to find out the answers and improve their scores.
When players use such techniques to cheat the assessments, neither Kahoot nor the instructors can catch them.
How Professors Detect Kahoot Cheating
It is pretty challenging for professors to detect students who cheat the Kahoot assessments. This is because the platform does not have anti-cheating mechanisms. The only information they can access during games from the platform include the number of players with their particular nicknames, their answers, and their overall score.
However, the professors still employ several techniques to help them detect cheating students. These methods include;
- Physical invigilation.
Professors can detect Kahoot cheating, especially when they offer their students the Kahoot assessments from a common room. The professor shares their screen by projecting the questions on a whiteboard or using a large screen.
After the students log into the platform and commence answering the questions, the professor can walk around the room to catch students who intend to cheat.
- Answers comparison
This method is effective when it comes to open-ended questions. For example, if a professor suspects a student to have cheated in the Kahoot assessment, that professor can access the individual performance of that report and download it.
Since they can see the student’s answers, the professor can compare their answers to those of previous assessments to ascertain if the student cheated.
Does Kahoot Snitch or Notify Your School?
Kahoot does not snitch or notify your learning institution. The platform’s privacy policy requires it to commit to safeguarding its users’ security and privacy. Therefore, Kahoot cannot snitch or disclose students’ private details to any learning institution.
Students can produce and upload different learning material, play, host Kahoot games, and invite other players to participate in a game discretely.
It is crucial to note that Kahoot collects data from its users whenever they use the platform. Such data include account log-in credentials, the originating IP addresses of the devices used, time and date of access, participation in the games, performance results, files and pages visited, and other browsing activity.
However, it is also vital to note that Kahoot only collects this data to improve its services. Therefore, it uses the information collected to better its content and allow for further research concerning its operations and overall importance.
Conclusion
So, is Kahoot cheating? After reading this article, you could agree that Kahoot is not a cheating tool. However, the digital learning and assessment platform is a crucial learning tool that allows for accessible, impactful, inclusive, and engaging learning experiences for its users.
Different surveys indicate that the highest percentage of its users, both educators, and learners, find the platform effective. This calls for education institutions from kindergartens, middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities to try the platform and integrate it into their learning activities.