On Assessment Design and Cheating

Plus, the Course Hero Hall of Shame. Plus, one third of academic credentials in Kenya are fake.

Issue 44

THE: Seven Views on Assessment

While education publishers in the United States are taking money from cheating companies to promote their products and services (see Issue 40), Times Higher Ed in the UK has had more actual coverage on academic intergrity than all other education publishers combined.

Recently, the pub ran a long series of seven articles from academics on assessment, which is obviously wrapped up with cheating. A subscription or account may be required, but the series is worth a scan. Here are some of the cheating-related highlights.

Jill Hicks-Keeton, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma, on modifying assessments during the pandemic:

For me, this meant flexible deadlines, zero questions about absences and a couple of cancelled classes with the direction to exercise or sleep. I came to realise that I would rather extend compassion, with the risk that a cheater scores a point, than police my students to the brink of mutual exhaustion.

Salvatore Babones, associate professor in sociology at the University of Sydney, on shifting to the three Ps of assessment, “projects, presentations and papers”:

Without exams, few students learn anything other than how to recycle the same projects for multiple classes, bluff their way through group presentations, and cram selected research into narrowly focused papers. The three Ps also open multiple opportunities for cheating by hire

Katy Barnett, professor at Melbourne Law School on assessments online:

When assessment moved online, we simply give the students slightly longer to complete the exams, in typed form (much easier to read than handwriting). Of course, concerns arose about possible collusion, but even before Covid-19 we struggled to get the right balance between assessment that fairly judges skills and allows considered thought while ensuring that students can’t cheat.

Barnett says that “longer take-home exams can be open to [cheating] unless carefully designed” and:

For law students, the ramifications of being caught cheating go beyond university. Any official finding of wrongdoing must be reported to the authorities when seeking admission as a lawyer, as it goes to the question of good character.

Paul Cowell, lecturer in economics and deputy associate dean of learning and teaching at Stirling Management School, University of Stirling shared:

If conducting traditional exam-style assessments online, there is greater scope for (and reported incidence of) collusion, impersonation and contract cheating. Meanwhile, the use of proctoring software or remote invigilation is invasive and can be highly detrimental to student mental well-being. 

Jennifer Schnellmann, associate professor in the Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy and the associate director of undergraduate studies in pharmaceutical sciences in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Arizona wrote:

Many online learning platforms also have fairly robust software configurations that can be added to testing modalities to reduce – or seriously complicate – cheating. These include timed questions, scrambled questions and answer selections, and IP address-detection.

Honour codes are also useful. Having students digitally confirm before an exam opens that they will not receive or offer “help” – and confirm at the end that they stuck to this pledge – keeps my testing environments fairly honest.

Of course, I will never be able to police or prevent all cheating, so I also rely on maturity and decency from my students. Fortunately, my limited experience is that cheating students are eventually caught or that their behaviour does not reward them for long, so the situation self-corrects – sometimes in spectacularly memorable ways.

Karen E. Spierling, professor of history and director of the global commerce programme at Denison University opined:

During Covid, academic dishonesty has plagued schools across the globe. But rather than insisting on harsher rules or more invasive surveillance, we need to persuade students that they hurt themselves in concrete ways when they cheat.

Most students will not value a class simply because it’s required. If they don’t think they’ll use the material after leaving the classroom, what are they losing by having someone else do their work?

Finally, Oliver A. H. Jones, professor of analytical chemistry and associate dean for biosciences and food tech at RMIT University, Melbourne, says:

If online assessment is to go mainstream, for example, we will need to address the increasingly large problem of contract cheating. The explosion in essay mills and online “help” sites in recent years makes it impossible for academics to be sure the person submitting work online is the person who wrote it. Invigilated exams can be gamed too, but they do make this issue easier to manage.

Kudos again to THE for presenting diverse and divergent views on assessment and cheating.

Related as they are, new or “authentic” assessments won’t stop academic misconduct. In fact, as some of the commentators in this series point out, some of these new assessment tactics are even easier to cheat than traditional varieties.

Anyway, the THE set of essays is worth your time.

The Course Hero List of Shame

For posterity, here are the academic practitioners who loaned or sold their names, as well as the credibility of their schools, to cheating provider Course Hero during the company’s recent “academic summit.”

I do not know if these folks actually participated; I did not have the constitution to sit through even one second of the program. But, having deleted those who are not affiliated with schools, here are 20 people who were listed on the program, their photos and school names under the Course Hero banner.

Deans and those who toil in academic support and integrity centers may want to take note.

• Barbara Oakley, Prof. of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Oakland University

• Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Sociology & Medicine, Temple University

• J. Luke Wood, Vice President of Student Affairs & Campus Diversity and Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Education, San Diego State University

• Kelly Pope, Professor of Accounting, DePaul University

• Laura Hamilton, Professor and Chair of Sociology, University of California, Merced

• Michael Baston, President, Rockland Community College (NY)

• Benjamin Wiggins, Manager of Instruction of Biology, University of Washington

• Natalie Hobson, Sonoma State University

• Norma Hernandez, Faculty Associate, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University

• Danny Shields, Lecturer, City Colleges of Chicago

• Gaye Theresa Johnson, Assoc. Prof. of Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

• Stephanie Speicher, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, Weber State University

• Nicholas Panasik, Associate Professor of Biology & Chemistry, Claflin University

• Joel Amidon, Associate Professor, University of Mississippi

• Angelita Howard, Assistant Dean of Online Education and Expanded Programs, Morehouse School of Medicine

• Jonathan Chin, Adjunct Professor, Medgar Evers College, CUNY

• Marianna Burks, Biology Instructor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Lauren D'Innocenzo, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Drexel University

• Mark Schoenfield, Professor of English, Vanderbilt University

• Keisha Bentley, Educator, Morehouse School of Medicine

One Third of Kenyan Academic Documents are Fake

A story out of Kenya says that an investigation by the Kenya National Qualifications Authority found that one third of all academic documents in Kenya - certificates, degrees, even professional credentials - are fake.

The story quotes Auditor General, Nancy Gathungu saying,

We don't want people who are not qualified to be working as doctors, policemen and on areas of intelligence

Ah, no. No you don’t.

And while the problem in the United States is different - we don’t have a fake credential crisis - we absolutely have people working in important professions who did not earn the academic certifications to do so.

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - Some follow up and fall out from that CBS News story on contract cheating (see Issue 44). Maybe. Plus, I’m working on an interview story with a student who paid a contract cheater and was blackmailed into paying to keep them quiet. Maybe. Fingers crossed.

As always, please share and subscribe below. Tips and related news welcome.