As much as technological innovation fosters positive advances in higher education, it also provides shrewd avenues for tech-savvy students to devalue education by cheating. We’ll discuss cheating methods we’ve witnessed, innovations built to detect and prevent these attempts, and data we analyze to keep ahead of trends in academic dishonesty.
There is no doubt that innovations in technology have provided numerous benefits and improvements in higher education. But technological advances have also allowed for new and creative ways for students to devalue that education by cheating. Ever since the advent of education, those who dedicate themselves to preventing or catching academic dishonesty have been playing a game of cat and mouse with cheaters. The industry of online proctoring emerged 12 years ago to protect the integrity of online programs. With each new innovation, tech-savvy students find new ways to use it to game the system. And with each new method of cheating discovered, online proctoring providers build additional ways to catch these attempts.
In this session, we’ll explore the multitude of methods students use to cheat on their assessments - from low-tech to highly technological schemes. We’ll also review the innovations in online proctoring that have been built to monitor, record and prevent breaches of academic integrity. Beyond that, we’ll present how innovations in technology have allowed us to obtain, analyze and use data collected during online proctoring sessions to help educators understand cheating trends and use those trends when designing their course assessment strategies.
To kick off the Q&A period of this session, we’ll provide scenarios of legitimate cheating behaviors and trends we’re seeing in the data we’ve collected. We’ll challenge the audience to consider and debate strategies to both manage and impede those situations. While some strategies may include advances in online proctoring, others may include changes in course design or adjustments in assessment methodologies.
As this cat-and-mouse cycle of innovation continues, it will be more and more important for educators to recognize and prevent trends of academic dishonesty occurring in their own institutions and courses in order to maintain the value and credibility of their degrees offered.