WSJ: To Dampen Cheating, Professors Return to Oral Exams
Plus, an update to cheating firefighters in Indiana. Plus, International Quick Bites.
Issue 213
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Wall St. Journal: As Cheating and AI-Cheating Continue to Threaten Academia, Professors Return to Oral Exams
When a big national outlet such as The Wall St. Journal writes a story on cheating, I usually get excited.
This one (subscription required), is about professors increasingly shifting to oral exams to dampen the surge in cheating with technologies such as AI, Chegg and essay mills.
We’ve jumped into this before - see Issue 191 or Issue 77. I also wrote about a quasi-study in which a professor used group projects and online presentations to try to thwart cheating, though I cannot find that right now.
Either way, oral exams are great tools for limiting some kinds of misconduct. Still, as assessment tools, they have limitations and dangers. And for most classrooms in most schools, they’re patently implausible. Still, limited only to cheating prevention and dissuasion, they are effective.
To The Journal, it reports on a favorable new study of oral assessments, specifically deployed in response to cheating saying:
The upbeat assessment comes at a perilous moment for the nation’s universities. Nearly two-thirds of college students admitted to cheating before the pandemic, according to the International Center for Academic Integrity, which researches cheating.
When the pandemic hit, plagiarism increased, according to Turnitin, a company which sells a plagiarism-detection system. ChatGPT, which became accessible to the public last year, added another variable. This spring, Turnitin found about 4% of papers turned into professors were generated almost entirely by artificial intelligence.
The trajectory threatens the business model of higher education. In May, the ratings company Moody’s said concerns around cheating and plagiarism tied to artificial intelligence are a credit risk to the sector.
I did not know about the Moody’s thing. I’ll look into that.
Still, a round of applause please for the WSJ for putting the current era of misconduct in proper relief. Yes, nearly two-thirds. Yes, 4% - which is millions of academic papers.
The piece continues:
If a degree no longer designates legitimate academic achievement it will cease to hold value, said Tricia Bertram Gallant, a director of the academic integrity office at UCSD and a member of the International Center for Academic Integrity.
“We’re at the real risk of becoming diploma mills,” she said.
Yes. Degrees will cease to hold value. Real risk. That’s what we’re talking about.
Get those two paragraphs as a tattoo.
And sharing several of the topics we’ve covered previously, The Journal piece continues:
Schools are scrambling to address the fast-moving threat. Baylor University asked professors to require students to write assignments in class by hand if possible. Next fall, Stanford University will proctor some exams. Student newspaper editors at Middlebury College have called for a reconsideration of the school’s honor code after a survey found two-thirds of students admitted to breaking it—nearly twice as many as before the pandemic.
Again, yup.
If you have access to the article, the parts on the study of oral exams are well worth reviewing as well. Here’s a snippet:
Nearly two-thirds of students report they are more highly motivated to learn the subject when they have an oral exam, according to the research of [study author] Qi and her team. Grades increase by about 10%. The lowest-performing students have shown the greatest improvement.
The biggest drawback is the time the exams take, which is one reason most are held online, Qi said.
The exams haven’t completely eliminated cheating. Instructors have suspected some students have had classmates standing just out of view of the camera as they answer questions online. She described the efforts as clumsy and pretty easy to detect but difficult to prove.
Yup. Even oral exams can be cheated, especially if they’re online. Still, a good foil for some types of cheating.
Quick Update on “Extensive Cheating” in Indiana Fire Department
In Issue 205, I shared the story of an inquiry into a large, systemic cheating ring among firefighters and emergency medical staff in Muncie, Indiana.
According to recent news updates, a Captain, whom regulators said coordinated the cheating on certification and promotions exams, has been permanently stripped of all his certifications. From the report:
the 12-member Indiana Board of Firefighting Personnel Standards and Education voted to permanently revoke all state firefighter certifications held by Troy Dulaney, a 19-year member of the Muncie Fire Department.
Also of note is that:
state investigators revealed the scheme had taken place for much longer than originally thought.
It started in 2018.
The news also reports that:
eight Muncie EMT recruits were [also] punished by IDHS for responding to the captain’s request for testing information and/or failing to report the cheating. The recruits have been placed on probationary status for two years, and they must re-take their EMT exam and pay a $100 fine.
The update also includes that the now former fire Captain was a test proctor in 2018 and used that position to take cell phone images of test questions, which he kept, updated, and shared with students.
I am glad some accountability has been enacted and this is a good reminder that no matter the exam, it’s imperative to change the questions regularly. It’s pretty inexcusable that any exam is using any of the questions it used five years ago.
International Quick Bites
Authorities in Iraq reportedly shut off the Internet for several hours recently in order to prevent exam cheating. The blackout coincided with the first day of exams at the country’s universities. That’s one way to do it.
In England, a 27-year-old man has been sentenced to 24 weeks in jail for impersonating people taking their written driving exams. Driving tests.
In a major case in India, investigators have determined that a cheating leader used ChatGPT to answer questions on a state exam - sending GPT’s answers to test-takers in a secure exam hall. Authorities are calling it a “wake up call.”
Also in India, after a major government effort to eliminate exam cheating with a “copy free” campaign, papers report it “has utterly failed in checking malpractices.” No surprise.