Changes to regulations and standards for accreditation will begin going into effect in 2020. The proposed standards around academic integrity and student verification are simplified to focus on effectiveness, yet institutions, accrediting bodies and organizations are in discussions to determine that definition. We’d like to bring this conversation to OLC.
Upholding academic integrity is vital to meeting and maintaining accreditation standards. Historically, accreditors have focused primarily on the creation of an academic integrity policy and the authentication of student identities by either a login and password, a proctored exam, or other technologies that are effective in verifying student identity. As a direct result of the consensus reached during the Department of Education 2019 Negotiated Rulemaking on Accreditation and Innovation, changes to regulations and standards for accreditation will begin going into effect in 2020.
The proposed changes to rhetoric around academic integrity and student verification remove the specific suggestions for authentication. Regardless, the changes have sparked debate across the industry, especially among academic integrity policymakers. How will accreditors interpret the new language? What will be their definition of effective processes for student verification? How should this impact an institution’s programs and assessments?
We’d like to bring this conversation to OLC and take it one step further by asking: even if an institution can effectively verify a student’s identity, what kind of policies should be put in place to detect or prevent cheating or exam content theft? In a review of more than 1.5 million proctored exams over the last year alone, 9% of all exam sessions required an active intervention to stop cheating behavior. That behavior was occurring among students whose identities were verified. A lack of guidelines for proctoring online exams puts the academic integrity of online programs and higher education institutions at risk. How can an institution validate a student’s degree and their outcomes if they can’t verify that the student who took the assessment didn’t cheat?