How Should I Deal with Cheating in My Class?

I really hate it when I see students cheating in my class. Not because I don’t want them to pass the course, but because I want them to LEARN. Cheating doesn’t help them because they will be dependent on their classmates for their answers. More importantly, it won’t help me help them because I would not know in which areas they are weak and I could not assess if they really understood the lessons or not. =(

Corruption starts in the classroom. Cheating, even in its mildest sense, should not be tolerated, especially in the classroom. But I am confused on how to deal with it appropriately. Should I confiscate and throw their papers? Send them out of the classroom? That would be totally humiliating and they might never recover and just drop out of the course (Toink!). Or I could just stare at them until they melt. But some students are just so immune and makapal na ang mukha. They won’t even budge. Sigh.

I’m tired of telling them to keep their eyes on their paper, not to discuss their answers with their classmates… Hmm…

I should not tolerate cheating… but how???