Cheating in the wake of COVID-19: How dangerous is ad-hoc online testing for academic integrity?

Abstract

Worldwide, higher education institutions made quick and often unprepared shifts from on-site to online examination in 2020 due to the COVID-19 health crisis. This development sparked an ongoing debate on whether this development made it easier for students to cheat. We investigated whether students indeed cheated more often in online than in on-site exams and whether the use of online exams was also associated with higher rates of other behaviors deemed as academic dishonesty. To answer our research questions, we questioned 1,608 German students from a wide variety of higher education institutions about their behavior during the summer semester of 2020. The participating students reported that they cheated more frequently in online than in on-site exams. Effects on other measures of academic dishonesty were more negligible. These results speak for the notion that the swift application of ad-hoc online testing during 2020 has led to negative consequences for academic integrity.

The fear of big brother: The potential negative side‐effects of proctored exams

“…Although it has been argued that cheating might be easier in an online exam compared to on-campus exams (King & Case, 2014), students neither felt more tempted to cheat nor thought others cheated more. In line with a similar study in Germany, the reported levels of cheating were low (Janke et al, 2021), but contrary to their findings, no differences were found in the perceived levels of cheating in online versus offline exams. In addition, we did not find an effect of proctoring on perceived levels of cheating.…”

“…It is expected that these numbers are even higher for online exams, as both students and faculty argue that it is easier to cheat in online exams (King & Case, 2014;Rogers, 2006). A large survey among 1608 German students showed that although the frequency of self-reported cheating was relatively low, students reported cheating more in online exams (M = 2.22, SD = 1.71, on a scale from 1 to 7), compared with oncampus exams (M = 1.50, SD = 0.99; Janke et al, 2021). These findings from students' self-reports are further supported by other types of measures.…”

“…We asked whether students felt tempted to cheat. In contrast, Janke et al (2021) examined two explicit items of cheating behaviour, related to students' self-reported use of additional materials without permission or the exchange of knowledge between peers. It could be argued that students might be equally tempted to cheat in exams with or without proctoring, but show less actual cheating behaviour in proctored exams.…”

“…It could be argued that students might be equally tempted to cheat in exams with or without proctoring, but show less actual cheating behaviour in proctored exams. In addition, specifically detailing the types of cheating behaviour (as in Janke et al, 2021) might also lead to different answers. Previous work showed that only a difference in the definition of cheating might already result in differences in self-reported amounts of cheating (Burrus et al, 2007).…”

Self-Regulation and Formative Assessment Format Interrelation in Mining Engineering ESP Course

“…The third question revealed the attitude to the correction of mistakes that had been made during the formative assessment. The feedback aspect proves to be a little more effective when the student and the teacher interact during the correction of mistakes process in the classroom rather than within the conditions of delayed-response communication in the Internet format (Janke et al, 2021).…”