Study: Anti-Cheating Tools Work

Issue 105

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Study: Students Use Cheating Sites but Anti-Cheating Technologies Work

A few months ago, David J. Emerson and Kenneth J. Smith of Salisbury University published the results of an innovative study of student cheating behavior and an anti-cheating tool.

Their research shows that students are using cheating sites such as Chegg and Course Hero to find answers to quiz and test questions and that cheating prevention tools - in this case, a lock-down browser - can reduce the misconduct.

You may remember Emerson and Smith as doing other important work on student cheating and motivation (see Issue 62 or Issue 64).

In this study, Emerson and Smith used a 20-question quiz. The first ten questions were word-for-word from a publisher’s test bank. The second ten were computationally identical but de-identified - changing “Amy’s flower shop” to “Universal Studios,” for example.

Then, the research used the same quiz - 10 publisher questions, the same 10 questions with less searchable terms - but with a lock-down browser that limited student access to outside websites on their testing device. It did not monitor, for example, if students used a different device such as a cell phone to search for answers during the quiz.

The results should not surprise anyone. Given the chance, students cheated. Even the most basic prevention tools limited their misconduct.

From the study, on how easy it was to cheat:

Finding answers to homework, quiz, or test questions using these websites is easy. For example, a question taken from the text bank of a major publisher was plugged into Chegg’s search function, and the answer (which even contained the test bank’s unique identification number) was promptly displayed.

And:

[Using Course Hero] the answer to a random test bank question was available on demand, and while the same question that was de-identified was not available on demand, the expert provided the answer in less than thirty minutes.

The study found that when easily searchable test bank questions were used, the average score was 8.01 of 10. On the next 10 questions- the same work, just de-identified - the average score was just 5.63. When the lock-down browser was used, scores on the first set of 10 questions dropped from 8.01 to 6.65 while the scores on the second set of 10 questions were unchanged.

From the study:

we found compelling evidence via administration of an online quiz, that students performed better on questions whose answers are readily searchable than those which were de-identified.

And:

The sole intention of our analyses was to determine whether students had the opportunity and capability to use these websites in order to obtain an unfair advantage over their peers who play by the rules. Sadly, it appears that they do.

They do indeed.

But what’s most compelling to me from this study is that one of the most basic forms of cheating prevention, a simple lock-down browser, appears to have reduced the cheating effect significantly. Just one barrier, a single effort to mitigate misconduct, worked. From the study again:

Our results provide evidence of the potential of assessment integrity tools to defend against the unauthorized use of internet resources. Specifically, our inter-study analyses comparing the results of Study 1 vs. Study 2 indicate that there was a treatment effect, and we suggest that this effect is likely attributable to the prohibition of access to online homework assistance websites through the technology afforded by an assessment integrity tool.

The researchers call their findings:

a siren call to our colleagues to be alert to the vulnerability of their online assessments and suggests various means of mitigating this alarming problem … The results of these efforts may very well point to the need to implement additional strategies to dissuade students from using online assistance resources to circumvent the learning process.

It’s a creative study with alarming and confirming results - given an easy chance, students will cheat and anything instructors do to limit that ease of access, reduces cheating. When teachers show they care about cheating, it matters.

I also note that the quiz in this study was extra-credit and of incredibly low value - around .2% of the overall course grade. And yet, students cheated - 43% had a significantly higher score on the first part of the quiz than the second part. It was literally a no-stakes quiz and 43% of students probably cheated.

Proctorio, Student Settle Dueling Lawsuits

Remote proctoring provider Proctorio and a university student have settled their legal differences.

The student had criticized Proctorio and shared some of their computer code publicly. Proctorio sued. The student sued back. It’s a similar dynamic, but a completely separate case, to the Linkletter case in Canada.

In a statement, the student said he,

understands that some of his comments about Proctorio were imprecise and presented without context.

Imprecise. My goodness.

See Issue 103 for the latest on the Linkletter/Proctorio case.

Jim is Cheating His Way Through College. He’s Planning to be a Doctor.

The Epoch Times has a new and really, really strong article on cheating. If you can access it - yesterday I could, today it’s behind a pay wall - you should read it.

The headline is:

America’s Cheating Epidemic: Did Your Doctor Actually Pass College?

It starts with a guy named “Jim” who is cheating his way through college and plans on using his good grades to move on to medical school. The article says he uses fake or dummy e-mail addresses on cheating websites and pays people to write his essays. Jim says,

At the end of the day, I just feel like if I get good grades, I get good grades, and that’s going to get me to my goal.

Jim says that if his cheating means he’s unprepared to actually do the job, he’ll just pick a less intensive specialty - something like family medicine instead of gastrointestinal medicine.

The story addresses “cheating as a business” - the billion-dollar companies that sell cheating. It rightly says cheating is easier and more frequent than ever.

It also takes a good look at cheating in high school, where academic habits form. It quotes “Luke,” a high school chemistry teacher who says he caught 40 of his 100 students cheating this year. Luke says that cheating in STEM subjects is “dangerous” but that school rules make it difficult to punish misconduct.

It’s a good read, a solid story and an important reminder that today’s cheaters are tomorrow’s doctors.

ICAI Conference Sessions Available Online

The ICAI, the International Center for Academic Integrity, hosted its annual conference earlier this month and has announced that the presentations and sessions from that conclave are now available online.

If you did not already register, the cost is $50. You can access them here.

ICAI also announced its “Integrity Award Winners.” You can see those here.