The issue of academic misconduct is present at every educational institution and is often a tough nut to crack. This blog looks into the complexity of the problem.

A lifelong companion to examination is cheating and as exams to a greater extent become digital new forms of academic misconduct emerge. The issue of cheating and plagiarism is present at every educational institution and is often a tough nut to crack. This blog looks into the complexity of the problem by illuminating when an institution is most exposed to academic misconduct, preventative initiatives which institutions can employ to prevent it, and finally, how the use of third-party programs complicates the issue of academic misconduct in digital exams.

Ways of Cheating

A student can exercise academic misconduct with or without intent, but what is categorised as cheating? Christian Waldstrøm, PhD and associate professor at the Department of Management at Aarhus University, suggests 6 ways of academic misconduct during an exam:

• Assisting others in cheating

• Self-plagiarising

• Illegal collaboration

• Illegal use of accessories

• Plagiarising other students

• Plagiarising an external source

Karin Brennholm, former project leader for WISEflow at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, at WISEcon 2019 provided several specific examples which can be divided into two categories:

• Analogue ways of cheating

• Digital ways of cheating

Examples of analogue ways of cheating are hiding notes under keyboards, writing notes on the body, hiding books in the toilets, or communicating offline with other exam participants. Digital ways of cheating could, for instance, be bringing and using smart devices at onsite exams, working around the lock-down browser to access the internet, faking a technical problem that forces a restart of the device in which way the closed WISEflow environment is not reinstated again after the restart, or finally a more creative example of misconduct by formatting an entire document of text into symbols so the content is unreadable for the assessors and then claim the system must have corrupted the paper.

Why Do Students Cheat?

“Cheating is walking a fine line between getting inspired and doing plagiarism.” (Christian Waldstrøm, 2019)

Whether students intentionally or unintentionally exercise academic misconduct some common reasons as to when cheating occurs can be identified. These reasons can be explained as institutional conditions or challenges for students. So, what challenges do students face, that makes them act academically unethical? At WISEcon 2019 Christian Waldstrøm presented some of the reasons why academic misconduct might occur seen from the perspective of the students. One of the major obstacles is the lack of proper referencing skills. If a student is not proficient in the institutions correct referencing practice that becomes a pitfall for committing plagiarism. Further, the referencing rules and norms vary greatly across universities, regions, and countries making it more difficult for exchange students or part-time students to comply with these rules. Another prominent reason why students end up being accused of cheating is due to group work, group assignments, and sharing of notes. In these cases, it is opaque what notes belong to whom and also who wrote what, which heightens the risk of students handing in assignments that are extremely similar thus plagiarising each other. A final way of cheating is self-plagiarism: Students reuse their material from former exams without referencing it or simply using too many analytical points from older assignment thus not providing enough new knowledge relevant to the specific curriculum.

Why is Academic Misconduct Difficult to Detect?

Institutions find it extremely difficult to standardise preventative measures for cheating due to great variation between courses in the form of everchanging curriculums, exam types, and skills required. Along the same line, standardisation is also difficult across faculties as the abovementioned criteria differ even further, plus sometimes lecturers forget themselves to note the references on their presentations held in class. Another threat to proper examination practice is online essay mills where entire assignments are bought by students. Luckily, this problem is easier to counter at digital examination platforms where plagiarism checkers helps detect the essays that are - more often than not - reused. The third challenge for institutions is the uneven flow of plagiarism cases: At one course there might only be a few at other dozens creating lengthy processing times. All these factors might lead to academic misconduct as an institutional issue rather easily become underprioritized.

How to Prevent Academic Misconduct

So far, this blog has outlined the scope of why academic misconduct is an issue, but how can institutions prevent and counter it? Christian Waldstrøm believes that cheating can be viewed on a spectrum between legal and illegal activity entailing that there always exist grey areas where cheating is hard to detect. He suggests, as they have done on Aarhus University, that the information available about cheating and plagiarism should be continually updated and streamlined and stresses the importance of communicating these guidelines to the students at every course. In other words, establishing a code of conduct. Further, he, alongside with Karin Brennholm from UiT The Arctic University of Norway, suggests that exam formats generally should be altered to minimize the possibilities for cheating. Karin Brennholm further explained that they had a great effect of having invigilators walk amongst the students at onsite exams. Another – a bit more creative - initiative that works at UiT The Arctic University of Norway is not being specific about the level of surveillance available to monitor the students at exams, thereby creating a sentiment of fear of being caught red-handed. Finally, cheating needs to have consequences: A harsh punishment might not just stop the respective student from cheating again but help scare other students from trying the same, thus fostering a culture where it is frowned upon to cheat. Obviously, it is institution-specific which preventative measures are the most efficient, but the above mentioned initiatives provide a foundation for thinking about cheating at any given institution.

Third-party Programs in Digital Exams

Digital onsite exams, in general, can be divided into two categories:

• Closed book exams with high security conducted in a lockdown browser that only gives access to links allowed by the institution

• Open book exams conducted outside a lockdown browser with free access to various installed applications and programs, where the behaviour of the students is monitored.

Both types of exams have pros and cons. The first type is unquestionable to most safe and minimising the opportunities for cheating to take place, whereas it does not allow the use of external programs. Oppositely, open-book exams score lower on security but make it possible to test program-specific skills and abilities at exams. Agata Olaussen, an advisor in digital exams from the University of South-Eastern Norway, is engaged in manifesting technology as a facilitating component in digital exams without compromising the authenticity of the exams. At WISEcon 2019 she dealt with the issue of implementing third-party programs in digital exams, her main query being: How can technology be supporting and non-limiting in exams? At the University of South-Eastern Norway, they have experimented with various exam formats in hope that they could circumvent the disadvantages of both the above mentioned exam types. From these experiments they have found that conducting onsite exams on devices provided by the institution is extremely costly, requires extensive infrastructure and a lot of IT expertise. As an alternative, Agata Olaussen proposes half-open exams: Exams that are conducted without a lock-down browser and which are primarily regulated by the fact, that they are conducted onsite with invigilators overviewing the students. The most prominent advantage is that it allows students to have access to programs that the university allows, thus increasing the authenticity of the exam. Further, this method does not require any big investments and creates better support for students with disabilities. However, expanding what programs are accessible to students during exams create opportunities for those who want to cheat because the institutions are not able to fully regulate whether students access resources or programs besides what is allowed, and neither can it monitor plausible communication between students.

At UNIwise we are well aware of the complexity of dealing with academic misconduct in exams and we continually work to improve our digital platform WISEflow to make it more capable of detecting cheating and plagiarism plus more inclusive in integrating various third-party programs. If you wish to seek further knowledge of our philosophy on academic misconduct or any technical matters on how academic misconduct is prevented in WISEflow check out our website for more interesting blogs.