If someone asked you today if you think that your credit card is more protected when you buy a product on Amazon, or when you hand it to a teller in a department store, how would you answer? Odds are, today you would say that Amazon offers more security and protection. Rewind twenty years, and we bet your answer would be the opposite.
So what’s changed?
The answer is that twenty years ago you probably had very little experience shopping on the internet, but you had definitely heard horror stories about the dangers of using your credit card online. That lack of personal experience created doubt in your mind, and allowed reports of online fraud to affect your perception of the safety of online shopping.
What exactly does this have to do with the widespread perception that academic integrity cannot be maintained in an online environment? As turns out, everything — as pointed out by Victoria Beck, Ph.D., from the University of Wisconsin and the author of "Testing a model to predict online cheating—Much ado about nothing”.
In her paper, most recently cited in an article by Online Education, Beck explains that "The results from student surveys show a similar trend as was found in faculty surveys — those less familiar with online learning were more likely to ‘perceive’ cheating to be easier in online courses.” Additionally, beliefs as to increased rates of cheating online "have not been strongly supported by the scant number of empirical studies on this topic, most of which have focused primarily on measuring perceptions of online cheating… surveys of perceptions may only provide a summary of anecdotal information, influenced by the individual’s experience (or lack of experience) with online courses”. (Italics ours.)
Two additional academic papers back up Beck’s findings that experience affects perception.
In both “Communities of Integrity in Online Courses: Faculty Member Beliefs and Strategies” (McNabb and Olmstead, 2009) and “The Impact of Online Assessment on Grades in Community College Distance Education Mathematics Courses” (Yates and Beaudrie, 2009), researchers found that instructors without online teaching experience are more likely than experienced online instructors to state a belief that more cheating occurs online.
Using predictive models and direct comparative analyses rather than perception surveys, Beck found that, in fact, online students were no more likely to cheat on exams than those in traditional learning environments.
When it comes down to it, perception is everything. And much like the prevailing attitude ten years ago that making online purchases was riskier than going to a store, the reality doesn’t necessarily line up with the truth.
This doesn’t mean that cheating doesn’t exist online, but rather that it exists no matter the mode of delivery. The myth of rampant or excessive amounts of online cheating is instead due to unfamiliarity or fear of technology. This perception — sometimes fueled by proctoring service providers that have a financial interest in promoting a misleading narrative — has propelled the myth that students are more likely to cheat in online assessments.
Dr. Beck’s study and others have identified various techniques that instructors can leverage to reduce academic dishonesty in online courses, including:
The simple answer ‘No’ and that does not matter if the examination is being done in person or online. The availability of technology has made this even more possible today (see a separate post about tech being sold to students for use when doing in-person exams).
Not all the proctoring services will tell you this, but there is no way to prevent all forms of academic dishonesty through use of a proctoring solution. There are simple ways to act unethical using a smartphone, more complex ways using multiple monitors and even more complex ways using virtual machines, but in the end … it is always possible.
When a student considers whether to cheat on an examination, they consider multiple factors such as how much of an advantage it would provide them and what is the potential consequence if they were to get caught. Proctoring services do not have control over either of these factors as they are dictated by the architecture of the examination and by the disciplinary actions that are communicated and enforced by the institution.
Proctoring solutions can simply make unethical behaviour more difficult by continually adding more capabilities as the technology can support. The challenge for proctoring organizations like Integrity Advocate is to ensure that we do not end up imposing something inappropriate on 100% of the students because of the possible actions of a few.
We mentioned that proctoring service providers are often the first to spread the myth of rampant online cheating. So why would Integrity Advocate, a company providing online proctoring services, bring this information to your attention?
Simply put, we’re tired of battling misinformation. Empirical, fact-based studies show that learners are no more likely to cheat online than they are in person. Despite this, proctoring services and institutions have used the specter of widespread online cheating in examinations as a reason to support aggressive surveillance tactics rather than applying the same level of vigilance to online examinations as they do for in-person exams. After all, support for invasive technologies and an assault on learner privacy can only be considered reasonable if online cheating far exceeds that of in-class testing.
Twenty years ago, you may have balked at the thought of using your credit card online, but today you trust that organizations employ all the safeguards necessary to protect your financial information. Today, we can say with confidence that you can maintain a high level of online academic integrity by following a few key best practices (see above!), and by leveraging a trusted, privacy-first online proctoring solution.
Contact us today and we’ll show you how identity verification, participation monitoring, and online proctoring can be completed in a manner that both protects academic integrity and learner privacy.
The only identity verification, participation monitoring, and exam proctoring solution built on Privacy by Design principles, Integrity Advocate protects learner privacy and ensures assessment integrity for online learning events. Leveraging human review aided by artificial intelligence, services are available 24/7 on all devices, no plugins or software installation required.
The only identity verification, participation monitoring, and exam proctoring solution built on Privacy by Design principles, Integrity Advocate protects learner privacy and ensures assessment integrity for online learning events. Leveraging human review aided by artificial intelligence, services are available 24/7 on all devices, no plugins or software installation required.
