cheating in exam essay

• Cheating in College and Its Forms Words: 574
• Student Cheating in an Exam and Its Consequences Words: 758
• Academic Dishonesty and Its Detrimental Effects Words: 1122
• Class Size Effects on Student Achievement Words: 2702
• Negative Effects of Stress on a College Student Words: 873
• Excellent Academic Performance: Causes and Effects Words: 562
• Academic Honesty: Cheating & Plagiarism Words: 848
• Why Some Students Cheat Words: 361

Exam Cheating, Its Causes and Effects

Introduction, definition of cheating, works cited.

The ability of a nation to compete effectively on the international front hinges on the quality of its education. With this in mind, it is okay to conclude that cheating in exams undermines the standard of education in a country and consequently hinders its ability to compete at the world stage. Indeed, students who cheat in exams become poor decision makers in their careers. Their productivity and level of integrity is adversely dented by their belief of having everything the easy way. Academic dishonesty is not new but with the increase in competition for jobs, most students have resorted to cheating in order to qualify for these jobs (Anderman and Johnston 75). The purpose of this paper is to research in detail the causes and effects of cheating in exams.

In the education fraternity, cheating entails: copying from someone, Plagiarizing of academic work and paying someone to do your homework. There are numerous reasons why students cheat in exams however; this action elicits harsh repercussions if one is caught. This may include: suspension, dismissal and/or cancellation of marks (Davis, Grover, Becker and McGregor 16).

One of the major reasons that make students cheat in exams is the over-emphasis that has been placed on passing exams. Apparently, more effort has been directed towards passing of exams than learning due to the high competition in the job market. Similarly, most interviewers focus more on certificates rather than the knowledge of the candidate. It is no wonder most learning institutions these days focus on teaching how to pass an exam and completely disregard impacting knowledge to students.

In some cases, students cheat because they are not confident of their ability or skills in academics. Whenever this feeling is present, students resort to cheating as a way of avoiding ridicule in case of failure. In essence, some of these students are very bright but the fear of failure and the lack of adequate preparations compel them to cheat. The paradox is that when cheating, most students swear that they will never do it again but this only serves as the beginning of a vicious cycle of cheating (Anderman and Johnston 76).

Societal pressure is another major cause for cheating in schools. Parents, teachers and relatives always, with good intentions, mount too much pressure on students to get good grades in order to join good schools and eventually get high paying jobs. All this pressure creates innate feelings that it is okay to cheat in exams if only to satisfy their parents and teachers egos.

There are times when students justify cheating because others do it. In most cases, if the head of the class is cheating then most of the other students will feel they have enough reason to also cheat. The system of education is such that it does not sufficiently reprimand those who cheat and tends to hail those who pass exams regardless of how they have done—the end justifies the means.

With the advent of the internet, it has become very easy to access information from a website using a phone or a computer. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo have made it very easy for students to buy custom-made papers for their class work. It is very easy for students from all over the world to have the same answer for an assignment as they all use a similar website. Indeed, plagiarism is the order of the day, all on has to do is to have the knowledge to search for the different reports and essays on the net (Davis, Grover, Becker and McGregor 18).

Nowadays, most tutors spend most of their class time giving lectures. In fact, it is considered old fashioned to give assignments during class time. Consequently, these assignments are piled up and given during certain durations of the semester. This poses a big challenge to students who have to strike a balance between attending to their homework and having fun. As a result, the workload becomes too much such that it is easier to pay for it to be done than actually do it—homework then becomes as demanding as a full-time job (Jordan 234).

From a tender age, children are taught that cheating is wrong; yet most of them divert from this course as they grow up. In fact, most of them become so addicted to the habit that they feel the need to perfect it. Most often, if a student cheats and never gets caught, he is likely to cheat all his life. Research has shown that students who cheat in high school are twice likely to cheat in college. The bigger problem is that this character is likely to affect one’s career in future consequently tarnishing his/her image.

Cheating in exams poses a great problem in one’s career. To get a good grade as a result of cheating is a misrepresentation of facts. Furthermore, it is difficult for a tutor to isolate students who genuinely need specialized coaching. It becomes a huge embarrassment when a cheating student is expected to give a perfect presentation and fails to demonstrate his ability as indicated by his/her grades. In addition, students who cheat in examination do not get a chance to grasp important concepts in class and are likely to face difficulties in the future when the same principles are applied in higher levels of learning.

The worst-case scenario in cheating in an exam is being caught. Once a student is caught, his reputation is dealt a huge blow. It is likely that such a student will be dismissed or suspended from school. This hinders his/her ability to land a good job or join graduate school. It can also lead to a complete damage of one’s reputation making it hard for others to trust you including those who cheat (Jordan 235).

Cheating in exams and assignments can be attributed to many reasons. To begin with, teaching today concentrates so much on the exams and passing rather than impacting knowledge. Lack of confidence in one’s ability and societal pressure is another reason why cheating is so wide spread. Cheating cannot solely be blamed on the students; lecturers have also played their part in this. Apparently, most lectures concentrate on teaching than giving assignments during class time. This leaves the students with loads of work to cover during their free time.

Technology has also played its part in cheating—many students turn to the internet in a bid to complete their assignments. On the other hand, it is important to note than choices have consequences and the repercussions of cheating in an exams are dire. First, it completely ruins one’s reputation thereby hindering chances of joining college or getting a good job. It also leads to suspensions and/or expulsion from school. Furthermore, the habit is so addictive that it is likely to replicate in all aspects of life—be it relationships, work, business deals etc. It is important to shun this habit as nothing good can come out of it.

Anderman, Erick and Jerome Johnston. “TV News in the Classroom: What are Adolescents Learning?” Journal of Adolescent Research , 13 (1998): 73-100. Print.

Davis, Stephen, Cathy Grover, Angela, Becker, and Loretta McGregor. “Academic Dishonesty: Prevalence, Determinants, Techniques, and Punishments”. Teaching of Psychology , 19 (1) (1996): 16–20. Print.

Jordan, Augustus E. “College Student Cheating: The Role of Motivation, Perceived Norms, Attitudes, and Knowledge of Institutional Policy. Ethics and Behavior , 11, (2001): 233–247. Print.

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Consequences Of Cheating In Exams: Examples And Effects

Cheating in exams is a serious issue that has far-reaching consequences for both individuals and society as a whole. It undermines the integrity of the education system, diminishes the value of qualifications, and erodes trust between students, teachers, and institutions. 

Consequently, deserving students may miss out on opportunities such as scholarships or admission into competitive programs due to unfair competition from those who cheat.

Consequences of Cheating in College

Cheating in college exams can have serious consequences for students .

1. Cheating can lead to Class Failure

Academic dishonesty, such as cheating during exams, has the potential to result in students failing their classes. When students resort to cheating as a means to achieve better class performance, they not only compromise their academic integrity but also put their future at risk. The consequences of cheating can extend beyond immediate academic repercussions and have long-lasting effects on a student’s educational journey.

One of the primary academic consequences of cheating is the failure to grasp essential concepts and skills that are necessary for success in subsequent courses. Cheating stains a student’s reputation and raises questions about their character and reliability. A failed class due to cheating may leave a permanent mark on their academic transcript, potentially limiting opportunities for internships or postgraduate studies.

2. Legal consequences

The legal consequences of cheating in exams can have a long-lasting impact on one’s future. When employers or educational institutions discover that an individual has been involved in academic dishonesty, it raises questions about their character and ability to follow ethical practices. This can severely damage their reputation and hinder their chances of securing employment or admission into higher education programs. Moreover, having a criminal record for cheating can limit one’s opportunities for professional licensure or certification in certain fields where integrity is highly valued.

Cheating in exams not only undermines educational integrity but also carries significant legal consequences. Those who engage in such practices risk facing legal actions that can have far-reaching effects on their future prospects. It is important for individuals to understand the gravity of these consequences and make ethical choices when it comes to academic pursuits.

3. Cheating leads to Suspension and expulsion

Suspension and expulsion are disciplinary measures commonly imposed in response to dishonest practices that compromise the integrity of the educational system. When students engage in cheating during exams, they not only undermine their own learning but also violate the trust and fairness upon which academic institutions are built.

The consequences of suspension can be severe, as it involves a temporary removal from school for a specified period of time. During this period, students are barred from attending classes, participating in extracurricular activities , and accessing resources provided by the institution. This interruption in education can significantly impact a student’s academic progress and overall development.

Expulsion is an even more drastic repercussion of academic dishonesty. It entails a permanent dismissal from the educational institution, effectively ending any further enrollment or association with the school. Expulsion carries long-lasting consequences beyond just missing out on education opportunities. It tarnishes one’s academic record and reputation, making it difficult to gain admission into other institutions or pursue certain career paths that require a clean disciplinary history.

4. Academic reputation

A strong academic reputation is built upon a foundation of integrity and ethical conduct in educational institutions. Academic integrity refers to the honesty, trustworthiness, and ethical behavior expected from students and faculty members within an academic setting. It encompasses various aspects such as avoiding plagiarism, citing sources correctly, and conducting research with honesty and transparency.

Reputation management plays a crucial role in maintaining the academic reputation of an institution. Ethical behavior is essential for creating a conducive learning environment where knowledge is valued and respected. When students engage in cheating during exams, it undermines the principles of fairness and equal opportunities for all learners. To uphold academic integrity and manage their reputation effectively, educational institutions need to emphasize ethical behavior among their students through awareness campaigns, workshops on proper citation techniques, and clear guidelines on acceptable conduct during exams.

5. Cheating makes it hard to secure a Job

Cheating during exams not only undermines a student’s academic integrity but also raises serious concerns about their ethical values, which can have far-reaching consequences on their future career opportunities. Employers value honesty and integrity as fundamental qualities in potential employees, and discovering a candidate’s history of cheating can severely tarnish their chances of securing a job.

With competition for employment becoming increasingly fierce, employers are constantly seeking candidates who possess strong moral character and uphold the principles of fairness and trustworthiness. Consequently, those who succumb to the allure of cheating must grapple with the long-term impact on their personal growth, self-esteem, and ability to make ethically sound choices in future endeavors.

6. Cheating can cost you a scholarship

Scholarship opportunities can be lost as a result of engaging in dishonest practices during academic evaluations. Cheating not only undermines the integrity of the evaluation process but also has long-term consequences that can impact one’s future prospects. Many scholarships require applicants to demonstrate academic excellence and ethical conduct, making cheating a significant deterrent.

The impact on future prospects cannot be overstated. Scholarships provide financial support for students pursuing higher education and open doors to various opportunities such as internships, research projects, or study abroad programs. Cheating not only disqualifies individuals from immediate consideration but also diminishes their reputation and credibility over time. The impact extends beyond financial aid as it hinders access to valuable experiences and raises doubts about one’s abilities in competitive environments where integrity is paramount.

7. Creation of a false character

When students resort to creating a false character in order to cheat in exams, they not only undermine their own personal growth but also compromise the principles upon which academic institutions are built. The consequences of creating a false character extend beyond personal growth and affect the broader notion of academic integrity. It creates an unfair advantage for those who engage in such deceitful practices while disadvantaging honest students who have diligently worked towards achieving genuine success. 

8. Cheating in school erodes your independence

When students resort to cheating in school, they are essentially relinquishing their independence by relying on illicit means to achieve academic success. By not putting in the necessary effort and taking shortcuts, students miss out on valuable opportunities for personal growth and development. In essence, cheating prevents them from learning essential skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and perseverance that are crucial for their future endeavors.

The impact of cheating on personal growth extends beyond the educational setting and can have severe consequences in adulthood. Students who habitually cheat may struggle with decision-making and lack confidence in their abilities to tackle challenges independently. This eroded sense of independence can hinder their professional development as they enter the workforce or pursue higher education.

9. Cheating in school prevents progress

Academic dishonesty in educational settings hinders the forward momentum of personal and intellectual growth, creating a stagnant environment where genuine progress becomes elusive. When students resort to cheating in school , they bypass the essential process of learning and understanding the material. By taking shortcuts, they deprive themselves of valuable opportunities to develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, and a deep understanding of the subject matter.

To prevent cheating and promote integrity in schools, academic institutions have implemented various measures such as academic integrity programs. These programs aim to educate students about the importance of ethical behavior in academia and provide resources for developing good study habits. By instilling a sense of responsibility and emphasizing honesty, these initiatives encourage students to take ownership of their education and learn through legitimate means.

10. Cheating in universities causes stress

Cheating in universities contributes to heightened levels of stress among students. The pressure to perform well academically can lead some students to resort to cheating as a means of achieving success. However, the consequences of such actions often result in increased stress levels. Students who cheat may experience constant anxiety and fear of getting caught, which can negatively impact their mental well-being.

 One major factor contributing to the stress caused by cheating is the lack of effective stress management techniques. When students rely on cheating instead of developing their skills and knowledge, they miss out on opportunities for personal growth and self-improvement. This reliance on dishonest practices creates a cycle of stress and dependence, as students become increasingly anxious about maintaining their academic performance through unethical means.

11. Cheating in school brings Embarrassment

Embarrassment is a common emotion experienced by students who engage in dishonest practices within the educational system. Cheating in school not only undermines the integrity of the academic environment but also has significant psychological and social consequences for those involved.

When students resort to cheating, they often experience a profound sense of embarrassment, knowing that their actions go against established norms and values. The psychological impact of cheating-induced embarrassment can be profound. Students may feel guilty and ashamed for their dishonesty, leading to increased stress and anxiety levels. This emotional burden can affect their overall well-being and academic performance, as it becomes difficult to focus on learning when plagued by feelings of embarrassment.

12. Cheating is a form of disrespect.

One of the key aspects to consider when examining the act of cheating is the underlying disrespect it displays towards the educational system and its values. Cheating in exams is a form of disrespectful behavior that undermines the principles of academic integrity and moral values. This disrespectful behavior not only compromises their own personal growth but also diminishes the credibility and value of education as a whole.

Cheating reflects a lack of appreciation for the learning process and devalues the efforts put forth by both educators and students who adhere to ethical principles. It sends a message that shortcuts and deceitful practices are acceptable means to achieve success, undermining the foundational basis upon which education stands.

Effect of Cheating on the Learning Process

The impact of dishonesty during exams can have significant implications for the overall educational experience. Cheating not only undermines the integrity of the learning process but also has detrimental effects on motivation. When students resort to cheating, they are essentially bypassing the opportunity to engage with the material and develop a deep understanding of the subject matter. This lack of genuine effort and comprehension can lead to a decrease in intrinsic motivation, as students become more focused on achieving high grades rather than truly mastering the content

Examples of cheating in college

Cheating in college can take various forms, including copying from fellow students during exams or assignments. Another example of cheating is when someone pays another person to write essays or papers for them.

1. Copying from fellow students

Copying from fellow students during exams undermines the integrity of the assessment process and compromises the fairness of grading. This act not only has serious consequences for the individuals involved but also poses ethical implications and challenges academic integrity. When students resort to copying, they disregard the importance of genuine learning and academic growth. Consequently, their education becomes superficial and lacks the necessary depth that would prepare them for future challenges.

Copying from fellow students during exams not only has immediate consequences for those involved but also raises important ethical concerns regarding academic integrity. The act itself undermines genuine learning opportunities and inhibits personal growth in critical areas such as problem-solving and independent thinking. Moreover, it disrupts fairness in grading processes and erodes trust within educational institutions.

2. When someone writes essays or papers for you.

Outsourcing the writing of essays or papers undermines the authenticity of academic work and hinders the development of critical thinking skills and independent research abilities. When someone else writes an essay or paper on behalf of a student, it not only compromises their academic integrity but also deprives them of valuable learning opportunities. 

Plagiarism detection tools have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, making it easier for educators to identify instances of outsourced writing. The prevalence of such unethical practices raises serious ethical implications within educational institutions.

Outsourcing the writing of essays or papers has severe consequences on both individual students’ academic growth as well as broader educational systems’ integrity. It undermines authenticity by compromising academic rigor while hindering critical thinking skills and independent research abilities. The use of plagiarism detection tools serves as a deterrent against such practices but cannot completely eradicate them entirely.

3. Using textbooks, notes, and formula lists on exams

Utilizing textbooks, notes, and formula lists during examinations can significantly impact the educational integrity of the assessment process while potentially hindering the development of critical thinking skills and a deep understanding of the subject matter. Academic dishonesty is a serious concern in educational institutions, as it goes against the principles of fairness and equality.

Allowing students to rely on external resources during exams undermines the purpose of assessing their knowledge and proficiency in a particular subject. When students have access to textbooks, notes, or formula lists during exams, they may rely solely on these materials instead of actively engaging with the course content. This reliance not only diminishes their ability to think critically but also prevents them from fully comprehending complex concepts. Exams are designed not just to test factual recall but also to assess students’ analytical skills and their ability to synthesize information. 

Allowing students to use textbooks, notes, and formula lists during examinations can compromise educational integrity by promoting academic dishonesty. It limits opportunities for critical thinking development and impedes a thorough grasp of course material. To ensure an effective assessment process that fosters genuine learning outcomes, it is crucial for educational institutions to discourage such exam preparation methods that undermine intellectual growth and hinder academic progress.

4. Collaborating in tests or exams without permission

Collaborating with others during tests or exams without proper authorization can compromise the integrity of the assessment process and undermine the principles of fairness and equality in education. Collaborative learning, when properly facilitated and authorized by instructors, can be a valuable educational tool that promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Collaborating in tests or exams without proper authorization is detrimental to both individuals involved and the integrity of education as a whole. It is important for students to understand that academic success should be based on one’s own efforts and abilities rather than relying on unauthorized collaboration. Upholding ethical behavior is crucial for maintaining fairness, equality, and credibility within educational institutions.

5. Copying from Online Tutors

Online tutoring has become increasingly popular due to its convenience and accessibility. Students can seek help from qualified tutors anytime, anywhere, and access a wide range of study materials. While online tutoring offers numerous benefits for students, it is important to recognize the potential risks associated with this practice. Copying answers directly from online tutors not only undermines the purpose of examinations but also violates academic integrity. Plagiarism prevention strategies play a crucial role in addressing this issue. 

Educational institutions should prioritize implementing strict policies against cheating and plagiarism, educating students about the importance of academic honesty, and providing resources for developing effective study skills. Implementing plagiarism prevention strategies and comprehensive academic integrity programs can help instill a sense of responsibility among students while promoting ethical conduct in their educational journey.

Solutions to cheating in school

In order to address the issue of cheating in school, it is crucial to educate students on the importance of honesty and integrity. This can be done through regular discussions and workshops that highlight the negative consequences of cheating and emphasize the value of ethical behavior.

1. Educating students on the importance of honesty

To instill principles of honesty in students, it is imperative to educate them about the significance of integrity during examinations. Emphasizing the importance of ethical behavior in academic settings helps foster a culture of integrity and promotes academic honesty. By educating students on the consequences of cheating and highlighting the value of honesty, educational institutions can create an environment where students understand the long-term benefits of maintaining their integrity.

Educating students about the importance of ethical behavior lays the foundation for fostering a culture of integrity within educational institutions. When students are aware that dishonesty can have serious repercussions not only on their academic journey but also on their personal growth and development, they are more likely to adhere to guidelines promoting honesty. Promoting academic honesty goes beyond just preventing cheating; it encourages critical thinking skills, self-discipline, and intellectual growth. 

2. Creating anti-cheating pledges

Creating anti-cheating pledges can be a powerful tool in addressing the issue of cheating in exams. These pledges serve as a visible reminder for students to uphold their integrity and make ethical choices when faced with academic challenges. By signing such a pledge, students publicly declare their commitment to honest practices, creating awareness not only among themselves but also among their peers. This collective effort towards maintaining academic honesty can have a profound impact on reducing incidents of cheating.

Creating anti-cheating pledges is an effective strategy for discouraging cheating in exams as it creates awareness about its consequences, promotes student accountability, and builds trust within educational institutions. By encouraging students to actively commit themselves to uphold academic honesty through these pledges, a culture of integrity and personal responsibility can be fostered. Implementing such measures not only deters cheating but also instills valuable life skills and values in students that extend beyond the academic realm.

3. Instructors changing the definition of success

An alternative approach employed by instructors involves redefining the criteria for achieving success within an academic context. Rather than solely focusing on exam performance, instructors are changing expectations and placing greater emphasis on alternative assessments to evaluate students’ understanding and knowledge. 

This shift in mindset aims to reduce the pressure that often leads to cheating and encourages students to engage more deeply with the material. By changing the definition of success, instructors aim to create a learning environment that focuses on growth and understanding rather than simply memorizing information for exams. This change has a significant impact on students as it encourages them to develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, and a deeper comprehension of the subject matter.

Cheating in exams has serious consequences in college. Students who are caught cheating may face disciplinary actions such as receiving a failing grade for the exam or even being expelled from the institution. To combat cheating, schools can implement various solutions. Firstly, they can promote a culture of academic honesty by educating students about the negative consequences of cheating and emphasizing the importance of ethical conduct.

Schools can implement strict monitoring measures during exams to deter and detect instances of cheating. This can include using proctors or invigilators during exams or employing technology tools such as anti-plagiarism software to identify plagiarized content. By promoting academic integrity and implementing effective preventive measures, we can ensure that exams serve their intended purpose – assessing students’ true abilities and preparing them for success in their future endeavors without resorting to dishonest practices.

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Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

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Cheating in Exams, Essay Example

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Cheating in exams can be defined as committing acts of dishonesty during an exam in order to score good grades. This is normally done by students when they fail to prepare for the exams or when they feel that the test is too hard for them and they want to score good grades.

Various acts are considered as cheating: first when a student gets access to exam papers be it part of them or all the exam papers before the exam is considered as cheating. Another way of cheating is by having materials that are not authorized in the exam room either electronic or non electronic in their reach from which the students copy or even copying answers from scripts of other candidates or allowing your script to be copied from by other candidates. Such materials include phones in which they store data; some phones have memory cards that store huge amounts of data and thus a student can even carry the whole syllabus in their phones from which they copy. Other electronic materials are calculators in which students store formulas especially for science and math exams. Science and math formulas may also be written on the desktop which they hide from their supervisors by covering with the answer sheet. Non electronic materials include small notes which the students make on something they suspect will be tested. Such writings are made on small pieces of paper, on the palm or on sole tapes which the students stick on their clothes. Another way of cheating is when a student impersonates another one and ends up doing the exam for them or even communicating with fellow candidates during an exam session. These forms don’t exhaust the many ways of cheating.

When students succeed in their first attempt of cheating they will always be tempted to repeat the act since it enables them to pass exams without struggling however this may bring serious consequences for the students. The problems may be short lived or long term. Short term consequences include being awarded a zero score by the lecturer because they believe that the candidate does not know anything. Getting a fail forces the student to repeat the unit .This means an addition on the other terms work a burden which may make the student fail other units hence causing a cycle of failing. Other lecturers punish these students by suspending them for a given period of time .Such students get it rough in explaining to their parents the reasons for being suspended. They may also become the laughing stock in the village when fellow students spread the rumours. Another short term consequence is when the lecturer forces the students to take remedial studies as others go for holiday hence denying them the opportunity to enjoy their holidays.

Long term consequences include being expelled from school. This means the student has to look for another school and hence the student delays from finishing college which consequently affects their chances in the job market because most job advertisements specify age limit. Cheating students also gain bad reputation from fellow students and lectrurers.Fellow students always see you as a liar and lecturers lose faith in you and it becomes difficulty to convince them that you didn’t cheat at times when you pass.

In the long term a student who passed her exams through cheating may have problems when it comes to delivering services in a job. This is because a student may cheat in exams, graduate from college but have difficulties when solving problems touching on their field of study in work environment since the certificates they present don’t really show their capability but what they pretend to be. When it comes to giving ideas during discussions in the office the cheaters will strain to contribute and also the manner in which they present themselves in such meetings will be affected since they fear that fellow workers will notice their dormancy. Without a question poor performance in the job will lead to job loss.

Cheating in an exam also denies a student important knowledge in their lives which they would have gained if they take their studies seriously A student may escape being caught cheating and get good grades which would sound okay   but the truth is they may lie to their teachers and parents but they cannot cheat themselves .the truth will remain that they waste their money and time in college but at the end of it they wont gain any knowledge since what they show to have gained is not theirs. In some colleges like the ones offering ACCA when a candidate is caught cheating they are discontinued from doing the other papers and this may kill the student’s dream of venturing in such a field.

The consequences of cheating in an exam are just too much to bear and so students should avoid such instances by ensuring they revise utilise their time well and revise thoroughly for their exams.

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Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation.

Identify possible reasons for the problem you have selected. To find the most effective strategies, select the reason that best describes your situation, keeping in mind there may be multiple relevant reasons.

Students cheat on assignments and exams..

Students might not understand or may have different models of what is considered appropriate help or collaboration or what comprises plagiarism.

Students might blame their cheating behavior on unfair tests and/or professors.

Some students might feel an obligation to help certain other students succeed on exams—for example, a fraternity brother, sorority sister, team- or club-mate, or a more senior student in some cultures.

Some students might cheat because they have poor study skills that prevent them from keeping up with the material.

Students are more likely to cheat or plagiarize if the assessment is very high-stakes or if they have low expectations of success due to perceived lack of ability or test anxiety.

Students might be in competition with other students for their grades.

Students might perceive a lack of consequences for cheating and plagiarizing.

Students might perceive the possibility to cheat without getting caught.

Many students are highly motivated by grades and might not see a relationship between learning and grades.

Students are more likely to cheat when they feel anonymous in class.

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Cheating in Examinations. Why Do Some Students Do It?

• What is cheating?
• Reasons why students cheat in exams
• Effects of cheating on students

Cheating can be defined as a dishonest act to gain an undue advantage. In educational parlance, cheating is usually associated with examinations.

It includes various forms of cheating like plagiarizing content, copying, or even impersonating another person to write an exam.

In The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong To Get Ahead , David Callahan, co-founder and research director of Manhattan-based public policy think-tank Demos, demonstrates cheating through different means.

Professional athletes’ use of performance-enhancing steroids, reporters’ disguise of fiction as journalism, physicians’ promotion of drugs of questionable efficacy in exchange for payments from pharmaceutical companies, students’ cheating on exams and submitting plagiarized work, and music fans’ piracy of CDs on the internet, as well as theft by employees and high-stakes corporate crime.

Why Do Students Cheat in Exams?

In schools and colleges, cheating is not unheard of. There have been numerous instances where students have been caught cheating in examinations. The important question to answer here is why do students cheat?

There are many reasons why students cheat in exams. We have enumerated a few of these reasons below.

1.Poor Time Management

One of the main reasons why students cheat in exams is because they are pressed for time. With lack of time, students resort to cheating because they are unable to finish studying portions.

To overcome this problem, students must get into the practice of making realistic timetables . A timetable can help you set time for each subject, giving more time to tougher subjects and a bit more relaxed time for easier subjects.

This stress is one of the main reasons for students to cheat in exams. Unable to bear the stress and tension, students may resort to unlawful means like cheating during examinations.

3. Fear of Failure

No one likes to fail. It is a known fact that failure is looked upon as a taboo in our society. Students who fail are ridiculed by society.

These students are often looked down upon with disdain. Therefore, to avoid being ostracized by the community, students often resort to cheating in exams.

4. Educational System Pressure

The educational system today does not exactly have a scientific approach. It is not cut out for individual minds.

The education system caters to the bulk of the student population, leaving out a section of students unable to cope with the system.

So, what happens to these students? Well, these students are pressured to keep pace with the syllabus even if they cannot do so.

What do these students do then? These students resort to cheating and other dishonest methods of keeping up with the syllabus.

5. Family Expectations

Another reason why students cheat in exams is because of the pressure put on them by parents and other members of the family. This is one of the main reasons why students cheat.

Let’s take a typical example of a parent, who has a very high educational qualification and runs a successful business or enterprise.

Such a parent will also expect their child to study well and secure higher degrees and educational qualifications.

However, what if the child is incapable of performing to the parent’s expectation? What if the child is an average student?

The child may also want to prove to his or her parents that they can be as successful as their parents. This can lead to cheating to perform to parents’ expectations.

6. Comparison with Friends

Another reason why students cheat in exams is that they want to perform as well as their classmates and friends.

Healthy competition is not a bad concept. However, if this competition turns more serious, then it can lead to cheating and unfair means to achieve higher scores.

7. Cut-Offs and Limited Seats in Prestigious Institutions

Many institutions have a minimum cut-off below which students will not get admission into the institute.

Therefore students resort to cheating in exams to achieve high scores and get into prestigious institutions or pass prestigious administrative examinations.

8. “Everybody Is Doing It” Attitude

Another reason why students cheat in exams is because of the “everybody is doing it” attitude. This attitude discourages diligent and truthful students from studying and working hard.

Such students may think if others are cheating and getting marks then why should they study hard and get the same marks. So, they give in, even though they can study and achieve great success.

Cheating in Exams Causes and Effects

These were just some of the answers to the question why do students cheat? To understand this better, we can try and decipher some of the causes and effects of cheating in exams and find possible solutions for the problem of students cheating in examinations.

As mentioned above, some of the reasons why students cheat in exams are also the causes of cheating.

In addition to the above reasons, we can also mention media as one of the main causes of cheating

amongst students. You may ask how the media can play a role in this? The answer is simple.

Over the years, the means of communication have increased tenfold. Students have access to more than one means of communication.

Today, apart from television and radio, students have social media, cellular mobile phones, and facetime to communicate. This communication , though a boon in many cases can also be a bane.

Many times, media houses showcase successful people from prestigious institutes. Unknowingly, media houses indirectly advertise that the only way to reach success is through a particular channel of education and no other way.

Thus, this undue showcase of successful careers can influence students the wrong way. Students come to think that the only way to succeed is by getting into a particular university for a particular course. Thus, paving the way for students to think about getting it through hook or by crook.

The media portrays these successful personalities with a lot of wealth, fame, and respect in society . This blindly encourages students to try and achieve that success even if it means by unfair methods.

Therefore, we can safely conclude that one of the causes of cheating is the socio-economic disparity between classes and sections of people.

In an urge to become rich and successful overnight, students may employ shortcut methods like cheating.

An article published by the Carnegie Mellon University states several reasons why students cheat in exams:

• Unfair tests and unprofessional teachers
• Obligation to help other students fair better in examinations
• Poor study skills
• Competition
• Exam anxiety
• Lack of knowledge on the consequences of cheating
• The perception of escaping punishment

The causes and effects of cheating in exams are straightforward. There are numerous ill effects of cheating.

They can have a deep impact on the career and life of students. We have enumerated some of the effects of cheating on students.

1. Admonishments

Students caught cheating in examinations are severely punished. These punishments can range from getting debarred in exams, expelled from school, or even suspended for the rest of the academic year.

Consequently, these severe punishments can have grave repercussions on the student’s wellbeing.

2. Lifelong Record

When a student cheats on an exam, the incident is put on record and becomes a bad black spot on the student’s life ahead. It can affect a student’s career and life.

3. Meaningless Careers

Getting a job through unfair means can only take you through the first step. Sustaining yourself in the job will purely rest on the knowledge you have acquired. Through cheating, you can pass examinations but you will not acquire knowledge.

4. Loss of Reputation

Your reputation defines your character . It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation but a minute to lose it all.

Your single moment of cheating can ruin your reputation for the rest of your life. So, remember, the reputation for a thousand years can depend on your conduct in a single moment.

These are the causes and effects of cheating in exams, it can be rightly said that cheating can lead to worse situations that can affect your entire life and career ahead.

So, remember, it is up to you to decide if you want to make it the right way. Cheating is a choice, not a mistake.

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I was caught cheating on an exam, how can I minimize the damage?

I got caught cheating in a two-hour engineering exam consisting of 100 multiple choice questions which was done online through the moodle e-learning software. I feel like my life is almost over.

Having not studied well and having no time to study, I decided to cheat. I know there are no excuses for cheating. Before the exam I dug up research about moodle exams, and it turned out you can take the exam anywhere you want to as long as you have the quiz password. Taking advantage of this, I went up to my engineering library and asked a close friend who was taking the exam to send me the quiz password before he starts.

What I had prepared:

• Calculator (was not allowed during the quiz).
• Printed material (consisted of more than 200 pages).
• Google search engine (on a laptop ready to help).
• Whatsapp (to ask questions for a friend who took the quiz last year).

As I sat down, I did the first 50 questions, suddenly the quiz froze and moodle told me:

you are not allowed to take the exam from this location .

While I was leaving, one instructor responsible for the course (there are 5) came and found me. She accused me of cheating, took my mobile and made come with her to a huge office where two instructors searched all my mobile (took the name of my friend who gave me the password), and started talking to me, asking for all details of this crime. They confiscated my phone and looked at everything: Whatsapp conversations, all my emails, and images. The instructor took the mobile from my hand without asking me and kept it with her. It seems that the instructors are going to report me as well as my friend who sent me the password for the exam.

The university's Student Code Conduct says that cheating will result in one of the following: a Dean's Warning, Suspension, or Expulsion. If any of that happens, my future is over. A Dean's Warning will cancel my financial aid. A suspension would be for at least two years, and coming back would require a lot of work. An expulsion will be definite.

I've learned the lesson about cheating, now how can I fix this? How can I prevent the five instructors from reporting me? It's obvious that I should speak to them, but what should I say? What can I do? My future is almost over, but many of you are teachers and instructors here, what can I do to fix this?

EDIT: Wow, it has been almost 3 years. I would like to update on how I dealt with the situation.

Lesson: It was obvious to never ever cheat under any circumstances, independent of whether you'd get caught or not.

Consequences: I received a Dean's Warning but the financial aid wasn't revoked. However, I couldn't stay in the department as engineering was not for me, and I was even ashamed to stay in the university.

What happened next: I transferred to an ABET-accredited Computer Science institution and I graduated with distinction in 2.5 years. It was extremely stressful as I took 6 major courses (18 credits) in one semester, but I had to do it.

Future plans: I'm going for an MSc in Computer Science in St. Andrews next year.

• disciplinary-action

• 2 See also: User admits to bad behavior in a real-life situation, how do we best respond? –  bwDraco Commented Oct 25, 2014 at 20:08
• 3 All the previous comments have been moved to a chat room . Please carry the discussions on there. –  StrongBad Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 17:53
• 184 This certainly does not excuse the cheating in any way, but am I the only one who thinks that a warrantless search on a cell phone by an educational institution is an autocratic, and quite possibly illegal tactic? –  user8762 Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 2:27
• 44 I loooooooooove it when people come back and tell us what happened! I guess you could make an argument that it makes the question even more useful, but I'm upvoting for the human satisfaction from knowing how the story turned out. And congrats to OP for overcoming this (yes, self-inflicted) setback! –  msouth Commented Oct 15, 2019 at 15:30
• 17 The instructor took the mobile from my hand without asking me. Don't ever let anyone who is not police do that. I don't believe you give up personal property rights to such an extent just because you're on campus - maybe a lawyer could pitch in? What the instructor did could potentially get them into extremely hot water. If you were in a privileged position of having money for lawyers, that instructor might have been out of a job. You played them, and they played you - that was the lesson here. Now you know how it feels to be played. Know the game before you play - always the case. –  Kuba hasn't forgotten Monica Commented Mar 8, 2021 at 22:37

19 Answers 19

I've learned the lesson about cheating, now how can fix this? How can I prevent the 5 instructors from reporting me. It's obvious that I should speak to them, but what should I say? What can I do? My future is almost over, but many of you are teachers and instructors here, what can I do to fix this?

From the way you wrote this, it seems to me that in your current mindset, you have not yet learned the full lesson. I say this because the second sentence above seems to me still in the same mindset where you are trying to control and engineer a result to essentially beat the system and get something better than your own actions have generated. That is not full understanding of learning that that whole approach is not appropriate. You're treating the system like an adversary, acting in a victim mentality, and trying to manipulate your way out of it. You have some lessons to learn about humility, honesty, surrender, and building integrity from the ground up. I would suggest accepting those.

I would suggest it may help for you to consider you may also be wrong-minded when you think things like:

If any of those happen, my future is over. A dean's warning will cancel my financial aid. A suspension, will be at least for two years and coming back requires a lot of work. An expulsion, will be definite.

The "my future is over" fear is what led you to cheat in the first place. As your professor kindly observed, you didn't need to cheat in the first place, and it got you into far worse trouble than doing your best would have. Indeed, I think your future looks darker if you don't take full responsibility now. I would be more optimistic about your future if you lose your financial aid and have to leave that university, but actually learn your lesson and continue at some other institution.

Your future will depend on your mindset, your integrity, and how you do your chosen field of work (including how you feel about yourself and how you relate to your work). These things are built upon each other like the bedrock, foundation, and upper levels of a building. If your mindset is full of panic, it will undermine your integrity. If your integrity is unsound, it will undermine your work. Seriously. This is practical and not empty moralizing.

So, realize that if you really want to be an engineer, you can do this, even if you need to go to another university. Even if it takes another 2 or even 4 years. Then, restore your integrity by being completely honest about everything and taking full responsibility for everything you caused and continue to cause. Don't try to cover anything up, make anything sound good, look good, nor avoid looking bad. You will feel a lot better about it all when you let go of resisting and admit everything. Your instructors know all about it, and will notice any attempt to make this better for yourself, so even if you were going to cling to being a desperate manipulative person, it would be best to surrender and fully admit everything, and be as honest as possible in everything you do. If you can really learn these lessons, then it may actually make sense to give you some leniency. If you're still resisting, then it wouldn't be doing anyone any favors in the long run, to do anything less than suspend you.

The good news is, this lesson is FAR more important than the engineering content you were studying.

• 52 +1 This is a wonderful answer and hits on the bigger picture for the OP. The first paragraph is spot on. –  Jason C Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 5:10
• 5 I was wondering whether anyone would mention the fact that the instructor didn't think that he/she needed to cheat to pass (though it might not be an exact quote) –  chipbuster Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 16:27
• 9 I disagree with this answer. He should simply get a zero and warning (unless this is repeated). From an outcomes standpoint, a productivity standpoint, forcing a student to move to another university and spend 2-4 years redoing all courses, or spending tens of thousands of dollars redundantly is economic waste. Is, not seems to be. If he were employed, he probably wouldn't be fired. He would, in most cases, be warned. How many times he could do this would depend on how otherwise valuable an employee he is. If he is a poor researcher, fire him; otherwise warn him. Anything else is unreasonable. –  user15282 Commented Nov 1, 2014 at 16:08
• 14 The OP does not take responsibility for cheating. They just want to avoid the penalties of having been caught. I would hope that they are reported - I would not want to hire them. –  WestCoastProjects Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 7:42
• 30 @user15282 I disagree with you completely. He is seeking to be an engineer. Dishonest actions and then further trying to cover them up kills people in engineering. You would almost certainly be dismissed immediately from any serious engineering company for such actions in a job and, in some situations, you could also face criminal prosecution. –  reirab Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 19:39

First, in light your question title, let me offer some encouraging words. Your life is not over. Cheating is an academic transgression; unless your situation is very unusual, you have not committed a crime. Take a breath, realize that this is a problem that you need to address as an adult, and part of that means being sober and reasonable.

Of course this is serious, and will likely have severe consequences regarding your future as an engineering student--but it is not the end of the world. It is essential for your own sake that you learn from this experience. Understanding why this was a poor choice is probably more important than your engineering degree.

You should not try to fix this. The fact is, your instructors are there to help you, and they are still trying to help you. They are understandably frustrated and disappointed by this situation.

You should be honest to yourself about the choices you made. This could happen to anyone; it doesn't happen to people who think about and understand the consequences. More specifically, my advice to you is:

• apologize to your friend for coercing him into helping you cheat
• understand that your cheating was not justified in any way; do not offer any excuses
• admit everything and be as honest as you can with your instructor

Of course, that advice is predicated on you understanding that your cheating was a poor choice, and not merely unfortunate because you got caught . It's not clear from your question if you've made this distinction.

In the stereotypical view of cheating, you struggle because you aren't willing to put in the time and effort to learn, and you misrepresent your abilities through cheating on an exam, quiz, etc. It is easy to see this is dishonest; it's a form of lying.

Say that we take you at your word and that your description of the course as an "unreasonable amount of work" is completely true, accurate, and without embellishment. Let us further suppose that cheating is the only way that a qualified, hard-working student could earn a passing grade in this course. Cheating in this instance is not better, it is even more dishonest.

Here, by cheating and earning a passing grade, you misrepresent the abilities of the honest students in the class, and interfere with the instructor's ability to assess learning and make necessary changes to the course.

• 21 Well I don't really understand why this is getting upvoted. His life as he was seeing it is getting stripped from him for nothing, he's asking for a solution that has a reasonable chance of working and your answer is "Don't worry it's for your own good that you won't become an engineer my poor little kid *hug*"... wth ? –  Wicelo Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 14:20
• 29 @Wicelo I included the first paragraph because the original title included the phrase "my life is almost over." I think any remark like this should be taken seriously. I would summarize my response as: Don't do anything rash <fullstop> Be honest and don't make excuses, as anything else will make your situation worse. –  dionys Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 14:37
• 30 Personally, I believe the first paragraph is a key point, and I upvoted (at least partially) because of it. Yes, the OP made a mistake that will have serious consequences. But that does not mean that their life is almost over. It does mean that their life may not be what they had originally anticipated. @Wicelo –  Oswald Veblen Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 14:50
• 63 @Wicelo SRSLY? The kid deliberately worked out a scheme to cheat and you think he shouldn't get booted? Are you perhaps not aware there's a reason for exams in the first place: to separate the competent from the not-capable? If the course was that hard, he should have dropped it in the first place and taken some lower-level courses prior to retaking. Sheesh. –  Carl Witthoft Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 14:54
• 18 @Wicelo the point is that it is not 'for nothing'. If you cheat in real life the consequences are usually that you'll end up in jail. It doesn't really sound like he has learnt that cheating was bad but that getting caught was bad. –  JamesRyan Commented Oct 29, 2014 at 12:05

To the comments: The OP knows he cheated - he's asking what he can do to improve his situation. Clearly, there are good and bad ways to deal with it.

I haven't been on an AD board myself, but I have caught cheaters. From my experience, the best thing you can do is the following:

Admit everything.

Apologize. Make it clear that you understand how and why cheating is wrong.

Do not under any circumstances give excuses for your cheating or blame others for it - as you do in this question. You chose to cheat, no one put a gun to your head.

• 69 To add to this I would explain the financial aid situation so that the board can carefully apply penalties so that there are not any knock on effects. Writing someone a warning that gets financial aid withdrawn is effectively expelling them and probably not the intention. –  StrongBad Commented Oct 25, 2014 at 20:21
• 13 @StrongBad and just why shouldn't a cheater be expelled, or at least suspended for a year? I fail to see the upside of letting this slide. –  Carl Witthoft Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 14:56
• 20 @CarlWitthoft it seems unfair if the effective penalty depends on if you need financial aid or not. –  StrongBad Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 15:45
• 24 @StrongBad Whoever provides the financial assistance has determined specific criteria to decide who should receive it, with presumably many more applicants than they are able to provide assistance to. To not give a Dean's warning to the OP, when the protocol says that he should definitely get one, is to deceive the provider, and to deprive other applicants. –  jwg Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 8:55
• 5 @jwg I think the point is that the board would now have full knowledge of the penalties they're applying. If they had a discussion that went "we want to penalize him, but certainly not expel him!" they might want to know that (I have no idea if such a conversation is likely to take place). But if they do want to expel him, financial aid probably won't change that. EDIT: it also seems unlikely that the board being annoyed by a note about OP's financial situation will make things substantially worse for him than they already are. –  Prime Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 1:17

What you did was actually pretty severe as far as cheating goes. Sometimes cheating could be explained by a brief moment of weakness. For example, suppose you take an exam and discover that it is far more difficult than you expected, so you make an impulsive decision to take a look at your neighbor's answers. That's still wrong and deserving of punishment, but it could at least be viewed as a foolish choice brought on by panic, which could make it easier to forgive. On the other hand, you planned and carefully prepared in advance to cheat effectively, and you even recruited a friend (who is apparently not so honest himself but might not have done anything wrong if you hadn't brought him into your plan). It's pretty much the worst case scenario for cheating.

I don't think there's anything you can do to keep from being reported. There may not even be much you can do to affect the punishment. However, what I hope for from students in cases like this is genuine introspection.

By this I mean going beyond a superficial account of rules and motivations. There are a lot of standard things you can say: your fear of punishment will keep you from cheating again, you recognize that you were cheating yourself out of real learning, you understand how unfair your actions were to your honest classmates, etc. These should all be true, but they are fundamentally unsophisticated. Essentially, they are what society tells eight-year-olds who are having trouble behaving. It doesn't inspire a lot of confidence when someone announces "Oh, now I finally understand what my elementary school teacher always told me."

Instead, I hope a crisis like this will provoke some soul searching, not just repeating standard answers. What sort of person are you? Could your family or colleagues rely on you, or will you someday pull the rug out from under them when your long-term dishonesty is uncovered? Could a stranger rely on you? Are you the sort of person who acts with honor even when he could get away with cheating, or the sort who always puts himself first? Who are you, and who do you want to be?

The point is that many cheaters have elaborate rationalizations and excuses (I see some tendency in that direction in your question). They convince themselves that they aren't actually dishonest people, just trapped in difficult or unique situations. When caught, they try to repair their self-image with as few changes as possible: they learned what not to do in this situation , or they view it as a one-time mistake unconnected with the rest of their life. When I see someone doing this, I worry that they are on a dangerous path in which they will blindly follow the same old habits and patterns in other cases. I'm confident that you have the potential to be an honest and trustworthy person, but what you did in this class is not a good start in that direction.

I don't want to coach you on what to say or how to say it. It's a deeply personal matter, and in any case I don't want to help you pretend you've had a deeper learning experience than you actually have. However, I'd really recommend thinking about the big picture of your life, not just this one incident. It may help to discuss it with a relative, mentor, religious leader, etc. In the end, you need to convince the university that you've learned more than just a cost/benefit analysis of cheating, so that they have faith that you could benefit from a second chance. I don't think you will, or should, escape punishment, but it's in your own interests to try to learn and grow as much as you can from this experience, and it can't hurt your prospects if the administration sees that you are doing so.

• 22 "It's pretty much the worst case scenario for cheating." Only thing worse I can think of is stealing the questions and/or answers before the exam starts. This would make it a criminal offence. I fully agree with your answer. –  Mast Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 14:01

You were caught in flagrante delicto . You were accessing the exam with illicit material in an unapproved location and were caught while the exam was in progress.

Reading what you have provided, I believe there is essentially nothing you can do to prevent the instructors from reporting you. Given the extent of your infraction of the code—after all, this was an intentional violation, not an accident like forgetting a citation in a paper—it's hard to see how they can avoid reporting this. Think about it this way: if you do not get reported, who can be reported?

Letting you off the hook also sends the wrong message to you and to your fellow students about the importance and strictness of the honor code.

I'm afraid you will have to live with the consequences of your actions. (Was the benefit from cheating really worth the consequences of possibly being caught?)

• +1 Given the behavior of the OP, why even have exams. Having read the OP it may affect the way that I interview college students: looking for this flagrant cheating attitude will not be easy though.. –  WestCoastProjects Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 8:26
• 2 Exams are hardly realistic: When I worked in industry and told to solve a problem, they didn't say "Sit by yourself, talk to no one, do not make use of material of a related nature" –  jim Commented May 1, 2016 at 21:46
• 2 @jim: I wholeheartedly agree with your view of examinations' lack of realism. Unfortunately, we as educators need means of assessing individual learning. How do we honestly know who's done the work in a group without direct observation? And how do we do this realistically for a class of 50 or 100 students? –  aeismail Commented May 2, 2016 at 2:58
• @aeismail Yes, of course there is some need to assess individual learning, and suppose the issue is the best way to do this. –  jim Commented May 2, 2016 at 8:53

One normal engineering course at my university had an unreasonable amount of work: each week we would have like 5 quizzes (1 labview quiz, 2 class quizzes, 1 computer lab quiz, 1 graded report). The course merging with another 4 courses (Electric Circuits - Differential Equations - Statistics - Chemistry) caused a lot of pressure. The material of the engineering course, was overwhelming, incredibly lengthy in unreasonable amount of studying required.

Outside of the question of cheating---and you are clearly in the wrong there---this suggests that you may not have mastered the material from the previous courses to the level expected of you.

Engineering school is hard , but it is not impossible.

If you come out of this with the option to continue your studies (either at your current institution or elsewhere) you might want to consider either or both of ...

Going back and re-doing some of the preceding material until you are deeply conversant with it and able to handle the concepts and calculation needed fluidly and without much difficulty. Just being sufficiently prepared will reduce the load from the subsequent course.

Recognizing that engineering is not for everyone and it might not be for you.

In any case, I'd like to remind you that the job you are studying toward is one where a mistake or a cut corner can have life-threatening consequences. Your instructors are right to take this very seriously and you should too. Think carefully about this. Do you want that kind of risk hovering over your work?

• 30 +1 for the bigger picture of engineering itself, something the OP does not demonstrably grasp. –  user21984 Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 6:27
• 8 An issue which I see frequently among students. In math, physics and likely engineering, other sciences and even liberal arts courses, the material builds on itself. Ultimately if a student receives a C in a course, the student is probably not fully prepared for the next course. This makes the next course in the sequence harder than it is supposed to be. A large portion of my tutoring is in fact developing a stronger foundation before the student can understand the current topic. I'm getting off topic. See chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18175/… –  nickalh Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 21:40
• 6 If the course is really so difficult, every student is in the same situation. Usually, the instructor will recognize this and curve the grades at the end. If it's particularly difficult for you, there is often other recourse, such as reaching out to the instructor/TAs/other students and even dropping the class. It's best to realize this before an exam and when you realize is often the difference between succeeding and failing. –  La-comadreja Commented Oct 29, 2014 at 2:55
• 13 +1 For where a mistake or a cut corner can have life-threatening consequences . –  Nobody Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 4:05
• 19 +1 also for "life-threatening consequences". As a practicing engineer now, the idea of stamping a design I don't understand and having it fail is pretty terrifying. Go spend a little time on Google learning about engineering disasters - e.g. the Hyatt-Regency walkway collapse - and let it sink in what happens in the real world when an engineer "cheats". You're better off getting suspended now than going to jail later for "cheating" a.k.a. professional negligence. Harsh but true. –  brichins Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 17:01

There are two issues here that I see. The first is the punishments seem to be designed such that a Dean's Warning is relatively light. Without section 5 which outlines the punishments that can accompany a Dean's Warning, one cannot be sure. I guess is if outside factors, such as financial aid, would greatly magnify the penalty, the committee who oversees these things might be wiling to work with someone who has been caught cheating. The second issue is that the event you describe are so egregious that the committee wouldn't try and move directly to suspension or expulsion. If the committee is trying to figure out how to suspend you, then asking for a lenient application of a Dean's Warning will not go over very well.

As with any case of academic misconduct, you need to find someone who is on your side and understands the system. A lawyer arguing from a legal perspective is generally not the best first approach. You should check with the student services office for help.

• 6 +1 for the last paragraph. Most institutions offer some sort of "public defender" service for students facing disciplinary action. I would encourage anyone in such a situation, regardless of guilt or innocence, to seek this sort of expert assistance. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 2:43
• 1 In particular, many U.S. schools have a "student advocate" in the student affairs office, who can give impartial advice and is familiar with the university's procedures. –  Oswald Veblen Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 3:22
• 1 I missed this answer, but I commented on the OP in a comment thread above as follows: The school has a range of penalties that may be imposed for cheating; it is not necessarily the case that this instance merits the most draconian punishment. There may be dozens of cheating cases at the school. Cheating may be endemic in a particular professor's class but rare elsewhere. An attorney will make sure that all mitigating circumstances are heard. There is a greater chance that similar cases that merited lesser punishment will be considered. – –  user26732 Commented Oct 29, 2014 at 12:08

You can not prevent them from reporting you, and attempting to prevent the report would only reflect worse on you and your character. This is your opportunity to demonstrate humility and integrity.

Do not make excuses, do not lie. Own your mistake and be ready to say why it was wrong, and the impact to your instructors and to your classmates. Consider that engineers design, construct, certify and maintain critical infrastructure; they must be held to the highest standards, to protect human life, and why integrity matters. To illustrate, look back at Roger Boisjoly , the engineer who tried to prevent the Challenger disaster, and the engineering manager who was cowed into making a decision against his better judgement.

Expect disciplinary action. Whatever the disciplinary action, thank them for it, as it will be a valuable learning opportunity.

Be sincere, be gracious, and move forward. Begging,feeling sorry for yourself or attempting to shift blame will only make you look worse in the eyes of the school, in the eyes of your peers, and eventually in your own eyes.

You will get through this, even if it changes the trajectory of your career. And who knows? You might find your passion in something else other than engineering.

• 1 +1 for You might find your passion in something else other than engineering. I spent several years as a civil engineer who was gradually doing more and more software tools - I am now a full-time software developer, making a higher salary with less stress and fewer work hours. I've had a rough road (ha) getting there, but I enjoy where I'm at and my engineering training and experience continues to be valuable. –  brichins Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 19:36

A long-term plan is something you need to think through.

It probably looks like this: -- maybe not exactly as that would be arrogant -- I've left out what to do about where to live, whether to stay and work in the local community or create a clean break, etc -- though obviously your personal lifestyle is going to be affected by what happened and how you handle it. Your life is not over. It is merely more difficult. Step up to the challenge.

• Accept that you deserve to be suspended or expelled. If you are instead given a second chance, great! or not. Aren't you burned out by this point? Most people would be. This incident also doesn't sound minor, at all.
• If you are lucky, your friend(s) who helped you cheat will get the Dean's warning level of punishment. I say "if you are lucky", because a normal person would feel absolutely awful, for a long time, for damaging their friends' reputation and career. Don't try to lobby for your friends.
• If you haven't already done so, tell your parents, and apologize to them or anyone else personally bankrolling your education.
• Get a job and pay your own bills -- assuming your financial aid, loans, work-study, and/or family pays your current bills. Your family, rich or poor, will see this as a sign of maturity. Now obviously the best jobs want degree holders and are concerned about grades and honesty. Don't apply for jobs like that, you'll wind up beating yourself up over and over about what you did every time they reject or worse, be tempted to lie and cover it up. Now the workplace is hardly angelic, there are obviously bad jobs working for dishonest people. Try to avoid those as well. It looks like you could do some computer freelance work. Actually marketing yourself and finding customers is harder than the programming part. Consider trying that for a while.
• While working for a living, hit the books and the free online course sites. There are good free online courses from top engineering schools: i.e. Caltech, MIT, Stanford, etc. Cut yourself some slack by not officially signing up - trying watching all the lectures and doing the readings. Then start doing some of the assignments. Answer forum questions or Stack Exchange questions about the material.
• As you gain demonstrated proficiency in the coursework you were once struggling at, build a portfolio. Like the computer program portfolio I see attached to your profile page. Stuff you are interested in and good at.
• By this point you should be good at something that wouldn't be obvious from your former transcripts. Find academic allies who can help you develop. Write profs of online classes where you think you are doing well. You can sometimes get a certificate, or a promise of letter of recommendation this way.
• Use the portfolio when writing your new university applications a few years from now. To get back into a university you should diversify the applications across schools. A few years and all these steps will make an application more acceptable. Though you may still need to address the earlier incident, by this point you will not only have an idea of what to write or say but can demonstrate your new-found passion and ability. By this point you should also have made at least one ally who can write a decent recommendation letter.

Good luck with this journey.

• 4 +1 and I really love this answer for its practicality and realistic preparation for not the worst but perhaps just second best life outcome. –  Penguin_Knight Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 14:26
• 1 Good practical advice. To the final steps I would add: be prepared to honestly explain in new applications/interviews what happened when you were previously at college. I also think you should mention that this strategy has a low probability of success - most people who try to educate themselves to degree level while supporting themselves financially through full time work don't succeed. –  jwg Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 11:01
• @jwg It depends on the degree and institution. I used to teach a lot of night-school MBAs for Georgia State in Atlanta. The day school undergrad crowd had a diversity of ages. It was clear that many people were working and attending part time. When I taught in Asia it was entirely a different story, a conveyor belt of young minds with the occasional exchange student --- almost none of whom were employed, where aid and grants paid their way. The top tier in the USA has become so expensive that paying your own way through work is pretty laughable, but there are still plenty of state schools. –  Paul Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 11:12
• @Paul Particularly like the last part of point number 5. Paying back by helping other people will do alot to help him rebuild his confidence and sense of worth. It helps me every day. +1 –  bobbym Commented Nov 13, 2016 at 19:18

I've learned the lesson about cheating, now how can fix this? How can I prevent the 5 instructors from reporting me.

I want to discuss why the university has such strict policies against cheating, and why this situation must be reported.

The first problem with cheating is that it degrades everyone's degree. When you start working for a company on graduation, your degree represents certain skills that you are assumed to have learned in getting that degree. If the company finds out you don't have these skills, in the future they will assume that anyone who graduates from your program might not have those skills. If cheating is taken lightly, then your degree becomes meaningless, because no-one will know what skill-set it actually represents.

This leads into my second point: getting an engineering degree sets you up to become a professional engineer, a position of great responsibility. I'm not exaggerating when I say that people's lives will be in your hands. If you misrepresent your skill-set, you will be put in situations where you don't have the knowledge to do the job properly. If you haven't learned integrity in your undergrad, when put in such a situation you may complete the project anyway (this is like cheating in the real world). If you do this, whatever system you're designing may fail, and this could get people killed. That is why integrity is of the utmost importance in engineering programs.

If you have truly learned your lesson, and you understand these two points, then you will understand that cheating was wrong not because you got caught, but because that type of behaviour ultimately puts people's lives at risk. But as others have said, your life is not over, and it is not too late to change. If you learn your lesson now, and carry yourself with integrity from this day forward, you will make a great engineer.

It is especially important that you show this integrity over the next few days. This means not trying to cover anything up. The instructors have to report you; if they don't, they are also committing an offence. If you have truly learned your lesson, and can demonstrate this, then hopefully your punishment will be lenient.

If you want to be an engineer because it fits into some life plan (it gives you status, money, whatever), I think you've got things all wrong. Be an engineer because you want to help people. If you don't end up being an engineer, that's fine; there are lots of other ways to help people, and I'm sure you'll find one that you really enjoy.

Your life is not over. I want you to obtain professional psychological counselling but I fear that you will think this is only another kind of punishment to be "fixed".

Your comment "How can I prevent the 5 instructors from reporting me. It's obvious that I should speak to them, but what should I say?" is massively irrational.

It is the job of the 5 instructors to report you. You are thinking you can ask them not to do their job, apparently in the same way you thought you did not need to do your job of understanding the course material for the examination.

It is not at all obvious that you should speak to the 5 instructors. Unless they have asked you for a formal response I think it would be very unwise to speak to them.

There is no ethical dilemma over whether people should do their jobs. Your dilemma is whether you have chosen a job (student of engineering) that is within your capacity. There are fundamental norms of human behaviour involved here that your family should have taught you to navigate. That they haven't is why I suggest counselling. A 2-year suspension sounds like an excellent option. If you become an engineer, people's lives will depend on your knowledge of the subject matter and your honesty to say "I do not know the answer to this question" when you do not know the answer to a question.

• 6 Speaking as somebody who has a bit of experience with the "psychological counselling" part: It is true that the OP made mistakes. It is also true that adopting a different perspective of the situation would be more constructive for him. But your tone is very counterproductive. Shaming and belittling him, and suggesting that he might be incapable of becoming an engineer because he showed bad judgement is not helping him develop better judgement, it's preventing it. If you want to help somebody to improve their behavior, the first thing to do is treat them with respect and understanding. –  rumtscho Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 18:17
• 1 @rumtscho It's important that people understand the consequences of their actions. Everything Scott said is true. I don't get the impression that he intended it to 'belittle' him, just that he wants him (or her as the case may be) to understand the very serious consequences of his actions and their motivations. It doesn't look like the OP has learned this lesson yet, judging from the diatribe on his profile that seems to be blaming the university rather than himself and from his profile picture, which consists of equations written on someone's hand. –  reirab Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 20:11
• 3 @rumtscho The fact of the matter is that the OP should feel shame and remorse for what he did and his question does not make it clear that he did, only that he was sorry he got caught and wanted to know how to make the consequences go away. –  reirab Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 20:14
• @reirab I agree with your first sentence: the OP should understand the consequences. The top voted answers here are well suited for that. But you (and anybody else) cannot tell the OP what to feel : a feeling is a biochemical reaction, it either happens or doesn't, no matter what feeling somebody deems appropriate for a situation. Also, remorse is a consequence of guilt, not shame. And causing shame in somebody by telling him a variation of "you're a loser who'll never amount to anything" is cruel, and never has any positive consequences for the person told off. –  rumtscho Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 7:09
• I don't think he was trying to say "you're a loser that will never amount to anything." Simply mentioning that someone should consider whether or not engineering is really for them is not saying they'll never amount to anything. Not everyone can be an engineer. There's nothing wrong with that. Also, he didn't say that that's definitely the case here, just that OP should consider the possibility. –  reirab Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 7:20

Actually I have a different take on this. There are also ethical rules that must be followed by the university just as there are ethical rules (aka laws) that must be followed by the police even if you commit a crime. I highly doubt that it is legal for them to detain you against your will, use intimidation tactics to steal your personal information from your phone, and confiscate your personal property without consent. I'm not condoning cheating but I also believe that both parties are required to use ethical conduct. The university faculty are people who are in positions of authority, and they should not be allowed to use their position to manipulate you into doing anything they want. Even if they suspect you of cheating. There are ethical ways of doing it. It's not just on the part of the student to maintain ethical conduct. In the future know your rights and know the laws. Police require warrants to take your personal property. Is it not the case that university faculty must also abide by the laws?

• Comments are not for extended discussion; all of the comments on this post have been moved to chat . If you would like to continue this discussion, please do so over there. –  ff524 Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 8:39
• 2 I agree with you in general on this answer, however it should be noted that the OP is in Lebanon, not in the West, so the laws are likely very different from what they would be in the U.S. or Europe. Certainly, confiscating a cell phone without permission would be a criminal offense in the U.S. I'm not sure whether that is the case in Lebanon or not, though. –  reirab Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 20:17

To elaborate on @Sverre's excellent response, take full responsibility for your actions. It seems you still have several things to learn. Although the consequences are potentially severe, you seem more concerned with the consequences than a genuine change of heart. The desire to not be reported is strong indication of this. Your friend is not innocent and chose to participate in collusion, in other contexts this is illegal. Also, a good professor will ask "Why did you cheat?" and not assume you have excuses with "What are your excuses?" Engineering courses are known to be quite difficult. Despite the temptation to cheat, follow through with a lifetime of being honest. Finally, many even most students I have worked with have poor study skills. Since 50% of learning is forgotten with 24 hours, review frequently. Get in the habit of summarizing methods, notes, etc. Combined with other study skills, the course load should become not easy but bearable thereby reducing the temptation to cheat.

Do not make excuses .

I believe this is the only important thing in this situation. Any student can muddle through phrases like "this course was too much work," "my life is over," etc., as you are right now.

Engineering programs usually receive large funding support from corporations that plan to hire their students. They accordingly act like such corporations, so perhaps it's good to think of how this would look in a corporation. Say you're a journalist who plagiarized, a software engineer who downloaded source code on a USB stick and lost it, a mechanic who mucked up the brake line in a car, etc... what happens? you get fired!

• "But my wife and kids."
• "But it was an accident I promise not to do it again."

Et cetera, will fall on deaf ears. Your "excuses" will also fall on deaf ears.

I earnestly do think that your punishment will be somewhere above "light" and below "career-ending." The best thing you can do here, in my opinion, is act professionally . That means understand the above points. Understand that you know you are in a bad situation and nothing you can do will change their view of that . That will be the platform from which they may feel they are doing business with a worthy professional instead of a whiny student who doesn't understand his life "being over" has little to do with "the company's bottom line". Be someone they can do business with.

Next, of course your life isn't over! There are way too few engineers for corporations not to hire people who have never made mistakes. Even real mistakes with consequences. This is what people sometimes derisively call an "adult" or "real world" lesson but the platitudes are true that character and perspective are important in getting through them. I'm not going to call this a rosy mistake; it is a real one with consequences. Some corporations - maybe including your dream one - may see this as egregious and unexcusable. Other companies will be happy to evaluate your character in an interview and see for themselves, and this is a story you can actually interview off of quite strongly (in fact how meticulously and honestly you were able to write about this makes me quite optimistic about that). There will be far worse things that will happen to you in life and your life will, sometimes begrudgingly, go on, I suggest taking this as such.

P.S. The lesson here? Goody-two-shoes version: Doing something wrong has completely unpredictable consequences. Realist version: Protocol and regulations are enforced far better than the perpetrator realizes. See: insider training.

It is not surprising to me that your engineering school had the caveman-level technical resources to dismantle your plan. This should not be surprising to you. Furthermore you can prove in an interview you really understand the consequences of, say, downloading company code illicitly better than anyone else (in particular that you will get caught!) So, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and the first time someone asks you about this, breathe a sigh of relief since you know they're ready to be won over.

This is probably a good time to transfer to another college. Your situation is likely being discussed by all of the faculty in your department as well as many of the students. You've burnt any positive references you might have at this university which depending on the job market may make it very difficult to find work even if you do complete your degree there.

You need to transfer the work that you've completed so far and start over building up the trust and respect of a new set of faculty and peers.

You sacrificed whatever good will you had and financial aid when you bet on not being caught. It's time to salvage what you can, learn your lesson, and move on. Lots of people transfer for all sorts of reasons and you don't need to disclose your reason to everyone you meet. The transcript might list something about your situation, but it won't convey all of the details and the severity. You may need to work extra hard to build the respect and trust of anyone who has access to your transcript however at the undergrad level that shouldn't be a big problem.

Next time discuss the difficulty level of the classes you want to take with other student before taking them, estimate your ability to complete those classes to the quality level you want. If you can't complete 5 rigorous classes in one semester, then don't take 5 rigorous classes in one semester. If you find yourself stuck like this again, consider that getting a failing grade in a class isn't the end of your academic career. Depending on the timing and the institution you may be able to either drop the course or retake it and average the grade.

• 4 finally one answer that doesn't say "it isn't the end of the world, but yeah, you're pretty much finished and have little chance of obtaining an ing. degree, however, do enjoy your lesson and your status as a statistic of people who failed to become engineers", but offers realistic advice to salvage your career and move on. Honestly, I didn't expect such brutal attitude from the community. Makes me wonder why we don't still cut off the hands of thieves. –  user3209815 Commented Oct 30, 2014 at 12:44
• 1 @user3209815 - I don't see anything "brutal" about the other answers from the community. The O.P. committed a flagrant act of cheating and got busted; the punishment should be heavy-handed and not a slap on the wrist. Folks here are simply being up front about the gravity of the situation, and yet there is still plenty of talk about second chances and damage control in other answers besides this one. I also wonder if this is the O.P.'s first time cheating, or first time getting caught. –  J.R. Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 0:16
• 2 @J.R. That right there is what I'm talking about, it is irrelevant whether OP cheated before. He turned to us with a specific question. While the majority of answers, as you say, still offers more or less genuine advice, the tone is judgmental and I dare say hostile. Cheating is a serious offense, so should be the punishment, however, this is a Q&A site and we, the members of the community, should try to keep our personal frustrations and disdain towards the poster or their situation out of an answer and attempt to provide an objective view to the poster's problem. –  user3209815 Commented Nov 3, 2014 at 8:46
• @user32 - I don't think it's "irrelevant;" the answer to that question might affect my counsel. If the O.P. came to my office for advice, I'd want to know. If the individual is a chronic cheater who just got caught for the first time, that's different than if the person had been an honest student until this one moment of weakness. I wouldn't treat both cases the same, and I don't think wondering aloud constitutes a "hostile" environment. I'm not sure that "How can I minimize the damage?" is the best (or only) question that should be asked; that's just being objective and helpful, not hostile. –  J.R. Commented Nov 3, 2014 at 11:21
• 1 @J.R. It is irrelevant because it is not based on facts. The OP was caught cheating now and if he cheated before is only speculation, as there can be no proof for either case, regardless what OP might tell you if he came to your office for advice. "How can I minimize the damage?" may also not be the most relevant question, nor the only one, nor the best one, but it is the one that was posted. Your concerns and the judgmental attitude of some of the other answers might be in place only if you knew OP or the case on first-hand basis. OP came here for the answer to his question not for judgement. –  user3209815 Commented Nov 3, 2014 at 12:46

If any of that happens, my future is over.

No it isn't. I personally know people who have done far worse and still manages to have good futures. For example, I know someone who stole thousands of dollars from a charity online funding campaign by hacking. He was jailed for 20 years, but when he came out he began a new life, atoned for what he did wrong, and become a professional programmer and now works for Amazon. You're mistake is much less worse. It is much easier to recover. You didn't actually commit a crime. Here is the worst that could happen in 3 punishments:

1.Dean warning. You lose your financial aid. Then, you need to work where you can't cheat. This will make college harder for sure, but I know people who do it. And I have a feeling that after a bit of this you may get financial aid back and they see that you do really care.

2.Suspension. This is worse than 1. You are out for 2 years. During those 2 years, though, you can get a job and as such real world experience. Maybe also go to therapy. While you'll be delayed by 2 years in school, on the upside, you will learn actually useful things.

3.Expulsion. This is a really big problem...but not life ending. Youre expelled and then, as I have said before, will have to get a job . After a few years of real-world job experience, during which time you might learn more than you would at school, you should be able to be accepted into a different college. Large setback, but overcomeable.

In conclusion, the worst that can happen to you is that you need to actually work for a bit/while and possibly are set back a few years schoolwise. Not the end of your future.

To answer your original question:The damage has been done, the genie is out. Don't say anything unless asked. You can't fully fix this immediatly. You won't get them not to report you. The best you can do is accept your punishment, learn, get a job and real-world experience, and eventually resume school. You're not 2 anymore, and "Sowwy. I prowise to newer do it again." doesn't work. Welcome to the real world, where things aren't fixed in 2 seconds.

(I originally planned to make this just a comment, but then I realized that I have too much to say for a comment. I'll still try not to repeat what was said before and keep on topic.)

Please, feel sorry for your friend. I know what I say, since I was more than often the one helping in cheating, but not the one trying to cheat himself. If there is a hearing with the course responsible, please try to explain this to them, because at least in my eyes, your friend is not guilty here, he's been just a friend.

Side note to the previous point: When they took your phone to find out who'd helped you, they might have done so illegally, depending on your country, and on other circumstances. I need not be right and it's not something you should use to get a profit from it. But it could be helpful if your friend got into troubles too. Update: I just learned that you gave them consent to the search, which probably changes a lot. Still, I think that this aspect may be considered, but don't want to give you false hope.

Do not give up. I know it's easy to say and difficult to do, but you should perform at school at the same level as you did before. All the people that will treat your case and make any decisions are humans, not robots, and you haven't lost your credit completely, you "just" cheated in one course. Facing the problem in as professional manner as possible is certainly helpful.

And to answer your original question: How can I convince the instructors not to report it? You shouldn't. (But that has been addressed by the other answers.)

• 13 Helping someone cheating is also academic dishonesty, and his friend is probably also in troubles. I suspect his friend will get a lean penalty... The people which helped him on WhatsUp might also be in trouble, depending on how much they know... And helping someone else cheat is WRONG. –  Nick S Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 20:02
• 1 "But you are not cheating, I am!" <--- This is exactly the reason why students MUST read the Student Code of Conduct or however else is called at your university. I am pretty sure that for almost all universities it is stated clearly there that helping someone else cheating is also cheating...At my school, we actually put a section on academic integrity in syllabus/outline.... –  Nick S Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 20:16
• 3 @NickS: Cheating is treated quite differently in different countries, both from the students' perspective and the professors' perspective. For example, here in Italy there is no general policy about cheating and cheating is directly managed by the professor who finds a student cheating (typically failing him, but with no report to a higher authority). Probably the situation is similar in other EU countries. –  Massimo Ortolano Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 20:28
• 3 @MassimoOrtolano It probably depends on Country, University or instructor, but I don't think that the students caught cheating first time get an extreme penalty, it is the second time when things get tough. And an official warning on their dossier stops them from cheating in any class, while your warning probably stops them from cheating in the classes you are teaching.... –  Nick S Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 21:24
• 3 The university is not the police, though, and so any legal restrictions on the types of searches the police may perform don't have any obvious reason to apply to a university faculty member. Remember the university is not charging anyone with a crime. There is also a significant difference between a random person on the street (who you don't know) and a professor who is teaching your class - and the issue that the student could have simply walked away, but didn't. Really, unless someone can cite an actual case, any legal speculation seems to be just speculation. @tohecz –  Oswald Veblen Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 12:27

In order to minimize the damage it is essential to have a different plan you will follow if you ever find yourself in a similar situation in the future. One option is to ask for help.

If your course workload is too much for you, talk to someone - an instructor, an adviser, even fellow students etc. If the workload really is unreasonable, the more students saying so, the more likely the department would be to change it. If most students are coping, you may get advice on how to cope. Or maybe you needed to take an extra year, or move to a different, less demanding program.

In any case, you need to have a definite plan for dealing with similar situations. Even in the short term, having that plan firmly in mind will come through in your interactions with others, and may help convince them this is the last time you will cheat.

Every error carries potential for something good. This is quite possibly an example of being manipulated into cheating without even knowing. The school's error, quite possibly, may be that they are expecting unrealistic amount of studying to be done by a student. It takes time to absorb new knowledge; they may think "well others have done it before..." but no one knows how much previous knowledge others had. Usually those who are getting top marks have more than average or required knowledge about the subject. I know, I have certainly been in that situation (when I was a student, while others were struggling with math, I did not; but I used to win math competitions, and my mother and my roommate at the time were both math teachers). However, this still does not give you a reason to cheat. The lessons is: no matter how badly someone else is behaving (and I have seen that in many institutions of higher learning), you should always do things that are ethical. Integrity is one thing that makes all the difference on this planet. Yes, I think that your school lacks in that department, but you have shown to be just the same at that moment you cheated. Once you understand that, that we are often manipulated into "cheating" (e.g. when doing 85 mph on a 65 mph road, where the conditions, car, and even road survey make that 85mph perfectly safe) you look at your error in better light.

Ultimately, this is not a perfect world, and one needs to be aware of other people's errors so that we are not misled into doing more of the same. In the end, if your school is one of the nation's leading institutions, they are unlikely to budge; but if it is a "for profit" institution with questionable record, they may be willing to back down. The point you made about too much work should be mentioned in your meeting. You can tell them honestly that in all that panic of not having enough time to prepare (they should know you need to sleep, eat, go to a doctor and whatnot), you could not think clearly and this seemed like the only way out. Perhaps you were under too much stress to think clearly and make a right decision. You obviously did not feel you could honestly approach them and let them know that expectations were too high. But, don't focus on their error. Your part of the error is what matters. Ask yourself - what it would take you to sell your integrity. Only when the answer is a firm "there is no way", is it a correct one.

• 17 The school did not manipulate him into cheating. The other students managed not to come up with an elaborate plan to break the rules. –  ceejayoz Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 15:28
• 8 In every class we are teaching there are few students which cannot keep with the course... This doesn't mean that the class has unreasonable expectations, or that we are manipulating them into cheating...... –  Nick S Commented Oct 26, 2014 at 17:33

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A systematic review of research on cheating in online exams from 2010 to 2021

• Published: 07 March 2022
• Volume 27 , pages 8413–8460, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Fakhroddin Noorbehbahani 1 ,
• Azadeh Mohammadi 1 &
• Mohammad Aminazadeh 1  

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80 Citations

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In recent years, online learning has received more attention than ever before. One of the most challenging aspects of online education is the students' assessment since academic integrity could be violated due to various cheating behaviors in online examinations. Although a considerable number of literature reviews exist about online learning, there is no such review study to provide comprehensive insight into cheating motivations, cheating types, cheating detection, and cheating prevention in the online setting. The current study is a review of 58 publications about online cheating, published from January 2010 to February 2021. We present the categorization of the research and show topic trends in the field of online exam cheating. The study can be a valuable reference for educators and researchers working in the field of online learning to obtain a comprehensive view of cheating mitigation, detection, and prevention.

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1 Introduction

Today, distance education has been transformed into online settings, and the COVID-19 pandemic has raised online learning significantly across the world. The COVID-19 enforced the closing of traditional learning all over the world, resulting in 1.5 billion students and 63 million educators shifting from face-to-face learning to online learning. This situation has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of the digital transformation of education (Valverde-Berrocoso et al., 2020 ).

In (Martin et al., 2020 ), it has been shown that the online learning publications are continuously being increased from 2009 to 2018, and one of the leading research themes is course assessment. Course assessment is very challenging in online learning due to the lack of direct control over students and educators.

For an educational institution, assessment integrity is essential because it affects institutional reputation. It is necessary to employ traditional cheating detection besides prevention methods and new digital monitoring and validation techniques to support assessment integrity in online exams (Fluck, 2019 ).

The study (Watson & Sottile, 2010 ) has reported that students are remarkably more likely to get answers from others during online exams or quizzes compared to live (face-to-face) ones. Therefore, preserving the integrity of online exams is more challenging. There are some strategies to mitigate online exam cheating, such as getting offline (face-to-face) proctored exam, developing cheat-resistant questions (e.g., using subjective measures instead of objective measures), and lessening the exam score percentage contributing to the overall course grade.

Traditional cheating methods include, hiding notes in a pencil case, behind ruler, or clothes, writing on arms/hands, leaving the room, etc. (Curran et al., 2011 ). Technological advances and online learning have enhanced education, however, they also have facilitated cheating in courses (Turner & Uludag, 2013 ). For instance, an examinee could use a mobile phone to text someone to get the answer. Although this would be difficult in the exam hall, some examinees could text without looking at the mobile phone. Applying scientific calculators, Mp3 players calculator, and wireless equipment such as an earphone and a microphone are other tools that facilitate cheating in offline exams (Curran et al., 2011 ).

Although cheating motivations in online and offline exams are not significantly different (Turner & Uludag, 2013 ), detecting and mitigating online cheating could be more intricate. This is because, in addition to traditional cheating methods that also could be exploited in online exam cheating, there exist various technologies and tools that could be applied for cheating in online exams more easily. For example, using remote desktop and share screen, searching for solutions on Internet, using social networks, etc.

Cheating in an online setting is more convenient than a traditional offline exam. Accordingly, detecting and preventing online cheating is critical for online assessment. Therefore, this issue is one of the biggest challenges that MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) summative assessment faces.

Recent researches imply that a critical issue in online education is academic dishonesty and cheating. Today, paid services exist that impersonate students in online courses to ensure their identity. In recent years, proctoring technologies such as identity authentication, keystroke recognition, and webcam proctoring will be extended to secure online exams (Xiong & Suen, 2018 ). Apart from direct proctoring, there are some techniques such as controlling the browser, limiting exam time, randomizing questions and choices, etc. However, it seems cheating in online courses is pretty common (Dendir & Maxwell, 2020 ).

Although one of the most critical challenges in online learning is to mitigate and handle cheating, there is no comprehensive literature review and classification in this field. Hence, in this paper, we present a systematic mapping review of researches in online examination cheating. The research questions are as follows:

RQ1: What are the publication trends in online cheating?

RQ2: What are the main reasons for online cheating?

RQ3: What are the cheating types in online exams?

RQ4: How can online cheating be detected?

RQ5: How can online exam cheating be prevented?

The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 , the research method is described, including study selection criteria, databases and search strategy, and study selection. Section 3 presents review results and provides the answers to research questions. Sections 4 and 5 discuss the results and conclude the paper, respectively.

The current study is a literature review about cheating in online exams. A literature review identifies, selects, and synthesizes primary research studies in order to provide a picture of the topic under investigation. According to (Page et al., 2021 ), a record is the title or abstract (or both) of a report indexed in a database or website, and a report is a document (in paper or electronic format) supplying information about a particular study. It could be a journal article, preprint, conference abstract, study register entry, clinical study report, dissertation, unpublished manuscript, government report, or any other document providing relevant information. The current literature search has been performed based on the well-established PRISMA principles (Page et al., 2021 ).

2.1 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The main criteria for the articles considered in the current review are as follows.

Inclusion criteria:

Researches should be written in English.

Records should be retrieved utilizing the designed search query.

Studies should be published between January 2010 and February 2021.

In cases where several papers reported the same study, only the most recent ones were included (i.e., theses and papers extracted from theses, extended version of papers published in journals).

Exclusion criteria:

Papers merely related to methods applicable to traditional cheating types, detection, and prevention are eliminated.

Studies not related to research questions are ignored.

Articles only related to cyber-attacks to online exam systems are excluded.

Low-quality researches are discarded (i.e., studies published by non-reputable publishers without peer review, too short review time, and so on, studies with poor theoretical background, experimental evaluation, or structure).

2.2 Databases and search strategy

We applied a wide range of databases as our primary source, including Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus. We also added the publications which had cited the extracted records. Records were searched using the following search terms for the title, keywords, and abstract sections.

(Cheat OR e-Cheating OR Fraud OR Dishonesty OR Anti-cheating OR Cheat-resistant OR Abnormal behavior OR Misconduct OR Integrity OR Plagiarism) AND

(Electronic OR Online OR Digital OR Virtual OR Cyber OR Academic) AND

(Exam OR e-Exam OR Course OR e-Course OR Assessment OR e-Assessment OR Test OR e-Test OR Environment OR e-Environment) AND

(Prevent OR Detect OR Mitigate OR Reduce OR Minimize OR Monitor OR Proctor OR Reason OR Motivation OR Type OR Deter OR Control).

2.3 Study selection

The search result included 289 records, 26 of which were duplicated, and so they were deleted. From 263 screened records, 54 records were excluded by examining either the title or the abstract. In the next step, 12 reports were eliminated because they were not retrieved because were not accessible. Furthermore, after full-text eligibility checking, 144 reports have been excluded according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria as mentioned earlier. ‌

This resulted in 53 reports that along with 5 other reports (obtained from citation searching and assessed for eligibility), were finally selected for literature review about online cheating. The flow of information through different phases of the review is presented in the PRISMA flow diagram depicted in Fig. 1 .

The PRISMA flow diagram

After selecting 58 studies, three domain experts were asked to assign a Credibility Score (CS) to each study. After evaluation of each study, experts agreed on a credibility score ranging from 0 to 5 based on the following criteria: publisher credibility, number of citations per year, theoretical and experimental quality, and organization and structure. CS statistics are as follows: mean = 3.81, SD =0.79, min = 2.5, max =5.

A summary of online cheating research papers and their study themes is presented in Table 1 . (Appendix 1 .)

Several findings emerged as a result of the research synthesis of the selected fifty-eight records on online cheating. The selected studies were categorized into four main topics, namely Cheating reasons, Cheating types, Cheating detection, and Cheating prevention, as shown in Fig. 2 . All subsequent classifications reported in this paper have been provided by the authors. The studies under every four main topics are investigated by three experts, and a list of items is extracted for each category. Notably, some studies were corresponded to multiple main topics. Next, several brainstorming sessions have been conducted to classify each main topic further. To extract the classifications, the XMind tool has been employed, which is a professional and popular mind mapping software.

Online cheating research classification

In the following sub-sections, the detailed analysis of the review results is described according to the five research questions we defined to drive the research.

3.1 Publication trends

In Fig. 3 , the number of publications per year is displayed (in this study, the final publication date is applied). In 2017, the greatest number of studies corresponding to the conducted review have been published. As shown in Fig. 4 , the dominant publication type is journal papers with 53% of the total publications. In terms of the average citations of the selected studies regarding their classes, the maximum average citations belong to the journal papers with an average citation of 19.65 (see Fig. 5 ).

Number of publications per year

Distribution of publication per types

Average citation per publication type

There are 747 works cite the selected studies related to the review. As displayed in Fig. 6 , the greatest and lowest shares of the total citations pertain to the journal articles and the theses, respectively. The number of publications per research theme is shown in Fig. 7 . The cheating prevention and detection themes are the most prevalent research themes in online cheating. In the following four subsections, the studies under each of the four research themes are described and classified thoroughly.

Distribution of publications according to citations

Number of publications per research theme

3.2 Cheating reasons

The primary reason for cheating is that examinees feel the rewards outweigh the risks (Lancaster & Clarke, 2017 ). There exists a wide variety of reasons why candidates decide to commit cheating, still, they could be categorized into four general reasons, namely Teacher-related, Institutional, Internal, and Environmental reasons. The complete classification of the cheating reasons is displayed in Fig. 8 , which is described in the following sections.

Cheating reasons

3.2.1 Teacher-related reasons

All the reasons related to the teacher or the course instructor are put into this category. Maeda ( 2019 ), has observed that the student’s relationship with the teacher has crucial influences on academic integrity. Teachers’ unethical behaviors, such as favoring those who have bribed over those who have not, or favoring the students who participated in private tutoring sessions, motivate the oppressed students to cheat. The author also found that teachers’ low interest in students’ depth of learning, which also results in a poor pedagogical style, could be an important reason that motivates students to participate in any kind of unethical behavior (Maeda, 2019 ).

Course difficulty could motivate the examinees to cheat. Some students blamed their teachers for complicated and complex course materials. In some specific cases, this reason could be a consequence of students’ lack of perseverance. They find cheating as a way to relieve these difficulties (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019 ).

As a result of distributed learning with online courses and examinations, Moten et al. ( 2013 ), have expressed that students feel isolated in an online environment. They often become frustrated when they do not get the help they immediately need, for instance, the night before an exam. This situation is closely dependent on the presence time of the teacher in online communication environments.

Some teachers restrain from punishing the cheaters appropriately due to ethical issues. This could be due to the sympathy of some teachers with cheaters. After listening to the cheater’s excuses and justifications, the teacher might give them a second chance. Sometimes, teachers are worried about the consequences of punishments and the corresponding pressures that cheaters experience, hence they don’t punish the cheater or the punishment is too mellow.

This increases the students’ courage to cheat during online exams due to decreased risk of being punished after being caught and implies that cheating penalties are insignificant over the long run (Topîrceanu, 2017 ).

Exam design is one of the most important contributing factors that motivates examinees to cheat in the exam. Weakly designed exams such as similar multiple-questions for every examinee or easy accessibility of solutions over the web, can make it easy to cheat. On the other hand, questions being too complex and irrelevant to course materials, forces students to commit cheating during online exams (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ).

3.2.2 Institutional reasons

In (Maeda, 2019 ), it is observed that the rules and policies of the institution are directly related to the number of unethical behaviors occurrences. It is found that institutions with stricter regulations and better commitment to strengthening academic integrity, face much less cheating behavior between their students. Institutional policies not only create an anti-cheating atmosphere, but also makes dishonest academic behaviors challenging to take place. Also, Backman ( 2019 ) emphasizes that if it becomes easy for students to cheat, they will cheat.

Impulsiveness is a crucial reason why students try to cheat during online examinations. They feel isolated and disconnected, so they may imagine they won’t get caught or the instructor does not care if they commit academic dishonesty. Unethical behaviors have a direct relationship with the student’s impulsiveness (Moten et al., 2013 ).

Moreover, in an isolated environment, due to the lack of face-to-face communications with teachers, students have much less respect for their teachers that leads to increasing misbehaviors. That is why teachers should personalize the online environment for students by calling their names or listening to their voices, so that online classes become more engaging and interactive for students (Moten et al., 2013 ).

Dobrovska ( 2017 ), expressed that the poor quality of the institution’s online learning system discourages students from learning the course materials, and makes it difficult for them to learn, hence, they are more motivated to cheat.

Academic aptitude is one of the most important and underrated reasons leading students to commit misbehaviors. It means educational institutions don’t discriminate between students and ignore their unique abilities, skills, and different levels of preparedness for a specific task. This makes unprepared students feel frustrated about that particular task or course, which leads them to seek help from more talented and prepared students in that specific context (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019 ).

3.2.3 Internal reasons

Another category of cheating reasons is internal motivators. The motivators over which the candidate has complete control, including intrinsic factors, personality and psychological characteristics, lie in this category. The internal reasons are divided into three subcategories as follows.

Student’s academic performance

One significant internal factor is the student’s academic performance. There are several reasons that could result in poor academic performance as follows: lack of learning and skills to find resources, students unwillingness to follow recommended practices, inability to seek appropriate help, procrastination, poor time management (Dobrovska, 2017 ), and lack of confidence in their ability to learn course materials (Norris, 2019 ).

Low intrinsic interest in the course materials

Low intrinsic interest in the course is another reason mentioned in (Dobrovska, 2017 ), which could be caused by a lack of sufficient interest in course materials and subjects or the mindset that these materials and knowledge are unnecessary and unimportant for future life (Norris, 2019 ).

Personal characteristics

There is a strong relationship between students’ moral attitudes toward cheating and their level of participation in academic misbehaviors (Maeda, 2019 ). Therefore, conscientious belief is considered as an internal reason stopping students from unethical behaviors. However, it has been shown that religious beliefs do not necessarily lower cheating behaviors (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ).

Other reasons included in studies are student’s laziness for sufficient home preparation before the exam (Dobrovska, 2017 ), competition with others and the desire to get ahead (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019 ), desire to help other peers (Moten et al., 2013 ) and the student’s thrill of taking risk (Hylton et al., 2016 ).

3.2.4 Environmental reasons

The reasons mentioned in this section highly depend on the atmosphere and type of environment a student is in, either during the online exam or beforehand in social media or communication with people. We put these reasons in four major categories: Peers’ behavior, Parents’ attitudes, Personal issues and, Social factors.

Peers’ behavior

Peers could influence individuals in a manner that their cheating motivations are increased. In an academic environment, however, it is primarily because of the competing objectives, such as the desire to get ahead in scores. This depends on the amount of competition in the academic environment (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019 ).

Experimental research among Cambodian students, has figured out that being among a group of cheaters, psychologically drives the students to repeat their peers’ actions and commit cheating. In addition, there is high pressure on those who do not collaborate with peers, or reject participating in their group work. It is found that they are blamed for being odd and unkind (Maeda, 2019 ).

According to (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ), being in an environment where peers’ cheating remains undetected, gives this kind of feeling to non-cheaters that they are setting back in scores and are unfairly disadvantaged compared to those cheaters.

Parents’ attitude

Parents’ acceptance of cheating behaviors, massively affects the student’s mindset toward these behaviors. As expressed in (Maeda, 2019 ), parents’ behaviors toward their child’s cheating, vary from complete unacceptance to active involvement and support. Another reason related to parents’ attitudes is putting their children under pressure to achieve good or higher than average grades (Backman, 2019 ).

Personal issues

Personal issues could be mental and physical health problems (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019 ), problems within the family (e.g., parents arguing, separation and divorce, etc.), and fear of failure in exams and its further consequences like financial and time setbacks (Hylton et al., 2016 ).

Societal factors

Poor economic conditions and the development level of a country are examples of societal factors affecting students’ motivation to cheat and achieve academic success (Maeda, 2019 ).

Countries with various cultures, social expectancies, and people’s attitudes have different behaviors regarding academic performance. In some countries, academic performance and grades are known to be crucial for success in life, whereas, in other countries, academic performance is relatively low valued. This range of different expectations from students leads to various social beliefs and behaviors toward cheating (Maeda, 2019 ). In research presented in (Holden et al., 2020 ), it is shown that a primary reason could be the existence of a cheating culture. Some students may cheat because they desire to portray a better image of themselves to their society (Norris, 2019 ). Another societal factor influencing cheating behaviors is the technology evolution that strengthens cheating motivation (Maeda, 2019 ). This is because technology brings about increased access to cheating resources. The evolution of technology, specifically search engines and social media, makes it easier for students to cheat.

3.3 Cheating types and facilitators

To mitigate cheating behaviors effectively and efficiently, cheating methodologies, types, and facilitators should be known. Cheating is performed either individually or by the cooperation of others (called group cheating). Figure 9 displays the complete classification of cheating types.

• Cheating types

3.3.1 Individual cheating

Individual cheating is carried out without any assistance from any person. This type of cheating could be categorized as using forbidden materials and other types are described as follows.

Using forbidden materials

Individual cheating can occur by using forbidden materials during the exam, such as looking at a textbook or a cheat sheet (Fontaine et al., 2020 ), (Holden et al., 2020 ), searching the web, using offline electronic resources such as images, voices, etc. (Korman, 2010 ), (Holden et al., 2020 ), or even using objects in the exam room to hide notes.

Other types

Other types of individual cheating include accessing the questions and solutions before the exam, which Korman ( 2010 ) refers to as “unauthorized intelligence”. Another dishonest behavior is social engineering, which is grade negotiation with the teacher through fake facts and exploiting personal sympathy.

3.3.2 Group cheating

Cheating methods through cooperation with others could be categorized as Impersonation, and Collaboration types.

Impersonation

Impersonation means employing someone to take the exam for the examinee, either the whole exam or some parts of it (Korman, 2010 ), (Holden et al., 2020 ). It can occur in forms of voice conversion, face presentation attack and face impersonation, fake identity matching to a stored biometric, and attack on the keystroke dynamics (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ). These are attacks on the biometric system to bypass the authentication mechanisms. The other impersonation techniques include remote desktop control by a third party (Kasliwal, 2015 ), (Gruenigen et al., 2018 ), sharing the screen with a third party (Gruenigen et al., 2018 ), (Bawarith, 2017 ), and credential sharing, which is impersonation via shared username and password of an academic account or LMS (Learning Management System) (Dobrovska, 2017 ).

Collaboration

Collaboration is defined as getting any kind of help from others to answer the exam questions. It could be in the form of sign language communications that come in numerous forms, such as foot-tapping, pencil or any object dropping during the proctored exam, abnormal coughing, or suspicious actions (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ).

Listening to a third party’s whispers behind the camera (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ), any type of communication which is unauthorized such as sending or receiving messages, or voice and video calls (Korman, 2010 ), are also considered as collaborative cheating.

Other cheating methods in this category are remote desktop control (Kasliwal, 2015 ) and sharing the screen with others to collaborate with others about questions (Gruenigen et al., 2018 ), applying small hidden micro cameras to capture images and record videos for sharing with other peers (Bawarith, 2017 ), and finally, organizational cheating which is a result of institution’s personnel corruption (Korman, 2010 ).

The last one, as Korman ( 2010 ) showed, can take place when personnel help candidates to cheat. Changing the exam grade or exam answers after the exam (exam integrity corruption), giving the solutions to the candidate during the exam, or just bribing the proctor not to report the cheating or not to punish after being caught (Kigwana & Venter, 2016 ) are instances of organized cheating.

Contract work is a type of collaboration that means doing work with the help of someone else under the obligations of a contract. Contract workers may provide some or all of the exam answers. In this case, sometimes impersonating the student through the whole academic course is reported (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ).

3.3.3 Cheating facilitators

Methods discussed here act as cheating facilitators to support the process of cheating. In other words, these facilitators can be applied to perform any kind of cheating. A study presented in (Peytcheva-Forsyth et al., 2018 ), indicates that technology in general, is the leading facilitator of cheating practices. Cheating facilitators are classified as shown in Fig. 10 .

Cheating facilitators

Three different methodologies are used by students to facilitate cheating, either individually or in a group, described as follows.

Interrupting to get more time

Sometimes examinees try to buy more time to work more on the exam answers. For instance, the examinee may report an error about the exam system or exam proctoring software to convince the teacher to restart the exam session. This enables the candidate to get more time for cheating and finding the solutions during this interval when the session is closed (Motenet al., 2013 ). Another interruption method is to submit corrupted answer files by the candidate. In this case, the teacher reports that the files were corrupted and asks the candidate to resubmit the answer files. Most of the time, during the first submission and the second one, there exists at least one day, which implies the candidate gets at least one more day to answer the exam questions (Moten et al., 2013 ).

Other more classical methods to interrupt are toilet requests during the exam (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ), communication break and delay in answering oral exam right after a question is asked (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ), circumventing the exam process at a specific time with different excuses, and postponing taking the exam (Fontaine et al., 2020 ), (Korman, 2010 ). By deferring taking the exam, students can buy more time to become more prepared, either by studying more, or getting access to the exam questions and solutions.

Employing multiple devices

In proctored exams, either by a camera or software, students try to use multiple devices and answer the questions with the primary one while cheating via the secondary device. Several types of devices could be employed as the second device, such as computers and laptops (Moten et al., 2013 ), smartwatches (Wong et al., 2017 ), smart glasses such as Google glasses (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ), smartphones and tablets (Korman, 2010 ), programmable and graphical calculators to store notes and formulas (Kigwana & Venter, 2016 ), and tiny earpieces for remote voice support during the exam (Bawarith, 2017 ).

Other facilitators

Redirecting the webcam to hide something from its field of view (Sabbah, 2017 ), (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ), or disabling the webcam or microphone completely (Srikanth & Asmatulu, 2014 ) are other tricks used to facilitate cheating.

By using virtual machines on a computer, the user can run a virtual operating system on the primary one. This technique would hide the activities done on the second operating system from the software or the human proctoring the primary operating system. (Kasliwal, 2015 ).

Corrupting the exam system’s integrity to change the exam results after being held (e.g., changing the scores or answers after the examination) is another notable case (Korman, 2010 ). Lastly, in (Parks et al., 2018 ), the authors have investigated that social media and channels operating on them could act as cheating facilitation environments.

3.4 Cheating detection

Cheating detection methods can be categorized into during the exam and after the exam detection methods. Further classification of the cheating detection methods is presented in Fig. 11 .

• Cheating detection

3.4.1 Cheating detection during the exam

To ensure academic integrity in online examinations, it is essential to detect cheating during the exam. Cheating detection can be partitioned into two main categories, namely, continuous authentication and online proctoring. Continuous authentication methods verify the identity of test-takers, and online proctoring monitors the examinees to detect any misbehavior during the exam. In the following, we will mention different techniques in each category.

Continuous authentication

One of the main types of cheating is impersonating. Therefore, it is essential to authenticate students before exam registration and prevent unauthorized candidates from taking the examination. In addition, it is necessary to validate the identity of the test-taker during the exam continuously. The continuous authentication systems are mainly based on biometric or behaviometric modalities and can be categorized into unimodal and multimodal schemes.

Unimodal authentication is the automatic recognition and identification of candidates using a unique characteristic. This characteristic could be either static (physiological) such as the face, fingerprint, hand geometry, and iris, or could be dynamic (behavioral) such as voice, handwriting, keystroke, and mouse dynamics (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ).

As a unimodal authentication system, Arnautovski ( 2019 ) designed a face recognition system, which captures the image of the test-taker at random time intervals. The facial recognition module continuously verifies the examinee’s identity by comparing captured images to the image from the exam registration process. In (Aisyah et al., 2018 ), an Android-based online exam application is implemented that takes photos of the examinee with random intervals and a web-based application lets the admin or supervisor of examination validate pictures of participants. In addition, Idemudia et al. ( 2016 ) proposed a system that tracks and detects faces continuously to verify the candidates. If the authentication failure remains for more than a few seconds, the system will stop the examination.

In (Sabbah, 2017 ), a scheme called ISEEU is proposed, in which each examinee’s session is streamed using a webcam. A proctor monitors the video screens and can generate alerts when any suspicious action is detected. He et al. ( 2018 ) proposed an anti-ghostwriter system using face recognition methods. The ghostwriter merges the student’s photo and their photo to make a fake one, or they change their appearance to mislead the examiners. The experimental results in (He et al., 2018 ), indicate that the proposed framework can detect ghostwriters with an acceptable level of accuracy.

Since some candidates may refuse to use a camera due to privacy concerns, Bilen et al. (2020) suggested that instructors offer their students two options. An examinee can agree to use a camera during the exam. In this situation, the record will be used as evidence if they are accused of cheating. However, if the examinee doesn’t accept using a camera, the instructor can claim cheating without providing evidence to the student.

In (Bawarith, 2017 ), the system authenticates the examinees continuously through an eye tracker. The data obtained from the eye tracker are translated into a set of pixel coordinates so that the presence or absence of eyes in different screen areas can be investigated.

Multimodal biometric authentication systems utilize different biometric or behaviometric traits simultaneously, which makes impersonating more difficult. In this regard, Bawarith et al. ( 2017 ) proposed a system that utilizes fingerprint and eye-tracking for authentication. The eye tribe tracker is used to continuously ensure that test-takers are the ones they are claiming to be. Whenever the system detects the examinee is no longer present in front of the screen, the system is locked, and the test-taker must be authenticated again via fingerprint.

In (Sabbah, 2017 ), a multimodal scheme called SABBAH is proposed, which adds continuous fingerprint and keystroke dynamics to the ISEEU scheme (Sabbah, 2017 ). In contrast to ISEEU, SABBAH uses an automatic system to detect fingerprint, keystroke, or video violations. Traore et al. ( 2017 ) proposed a system that continuously authenticates examinees using three complementary biometric technologies, i.e., face, keystroke, and mouse dynamics. In this system, test-takers are continuously authenticated in the background during the exam, and alarms are created and sent to the instructor through the proctoring panel.

Online proctoring

Online proctoring is essential to promote academic integrity. Alessio et al. ( 2017 ) reported significant grade disparities in proctored versus un-proctored online exams. Online proctoring can be categorized into human and automated proctoring. In human proctoring, a human proctor monitors the students remotely to detect suspicious behavior. In contrast, in automated proctoring, the cheating behaviors are flagged or detected automatically by the proctoring system.

Recently, several technologies have been developed to facilitate proctoring online exams remotely. For example, Kryterion™ Live Video Monitoring and ProctorU allow users to be monitored by a human proctor via a webcam during examination (Hylton et al., 2016 ). In (Reisenwitz, 2020 ), substantial support for online proctoring is provided. The results show a significant difference between the scores of exams that were not proctored and those proctored using ProctorU software.

Some systems can capture screenshots of the candidates’ PCs at random times during the examination (Migut et al., 2018 ). Consequently, if examinees use any forbidden resource on their computer, it will be shown to the proctor. Alessio ( 2018 ) applied video proctoring via a webcam at Miami University. The results demonstrate that students are less likely to cheat when monitored with a webcam during online testing.

In another study, kiosk-based remote online proctored examinations are compared with tests administered under a traditional proctoring environment. In kiosk-based proctoring, the test is taken on special computer kiosks located at accessible places such as libraries. The kiosks are equipped with enhanced webcams and are supervised online by a live remote proctor. The results indicated that examinees’ scores obtained under online kiosk-based proctoring are comparable to examinations taken in test centers with onsite proctors (Weiner & Hurtz, 2017 ).

A different approach for cheating detection is a class mole that means the instructor enrolls in students’ groups under another name as a mole to detect and combat collusion. In this way, they can discover dishonest students when they discuss cheating amongst themselves (Moten et al., 2013 ).

Human proctoring is costly and labor-intensive. Therefore, different automated proctoring systems are proposed to monitor the students during the examination and detect unauthorized behavior. In the following, we discuss several automated methods.

Chuang et al. proposed a semi-automatic proctoring system that employs two factors, namely, time delay in answering the questions and head-pose variation, to detect suspicious behavior. Afterward, a human proctor could use more evidence to decide whether a student has cheated (Chuang et al., 2017 ).

Garg et al. ( 2020 ) proposed a system to detect the candidate’s face using Haar Cascade Classifier and deep learning. If the examinee’s face moves out of the examination frame or multiple faces are detected in the frame, the test will automatically be terminated, and the administrator will receive a notification. In (Fayyoumi & Zarrad, 2014 ), a two-second candidate video is taken during the examination period. The images in the video are analyzed to verify whether the examinee is looking somewhere other than their screen. If the test-taker doesn’t focus on their screen, it may indicate cheating behaviors such as looking at an adjacent PC or reading from an external source.

In (Hu et al., 2018 ), the proposed system uses a webcam to monitor candidates' head posture and mouth state to detect abnormal behavior. Through the rule-based reasoning method, the system can detect suspicious behavior such as turning heads and speaking during the online examination.

Prathish et al. ( 2016 ), developed a multimodal system for online proctoring. The system captures audios and videos of the candidates as well as their active windows. If yaw angle variations, audio presence, or window changes are detected in any time frame, it can be considered an indicator of cheating. Consequently, the captured video, audio, and system usage are fed into a rule-based inference system to detect the possibilities of misbehaviors. ProctorTrack is another automated online exam proctoring product that employs facial and audio recognition, body movements, and computer activity monitoring to detect any suspicious action during examination (Norris, 2019 ).

Atoum et al., ( 2017 ) developed a system that can detect a wide variety of cheating behaviors during an online exam using a webcam, wearcam, and microphone. Using wearcam makes it possible to monitor what the student observes. It helps to detect any phone or text in the testing room that is prohibited. In addition, by using the wearcam, the system can detect another form of cheating that is reading from books, notes, etc. Furthermore, the system can estimate the head gaze of the test-taker by combining the information from the webcam and wearcam. Another form of cheating is getting verbal assistance from another person in the same room, or remotely via a phone call. The system can detect this kind of cheating using the microphone and speech detection. Considering the mentioned aspects, the proposed multimedia system can perform automatic online exam proctoring.

Saba et al. ( 2021 ), developed an automatic exam activity recognition system, which monitors the body movements of the students through surveillance cameras and classifies activities into six categories using a deep learning approach. The action categories are normal performing, looking back, watching towards the front, passing gestures to other fellows, watching towards left or right, and other suspicious actions. Movement recognition based on video images is highly dependent on the quality of images. Therefore, Fan et al. ( 2016 ), employed a Microsoft Kinect device to capture the examinee’s gesture. The duration and frequency of the detected action events are then used to distinguish the misbehavior from the normal behavior.

The system presented in (Mengash, 2019 ) includes a thermal detector attached with a surveillance camera and an eye movement tracker. When examinees intend to cheat, their body will emit a specific range of heat, and the emitted heat will trigger the camera to focus and detect the candidate’s face. Then the eye tracker detects eye movements, and the system detects the cheating intentions of the test-taker. There are other biometric-based methods for cheating detection. For example, keystroke and linguistic dynamics can detect stress, which indicates suspicious behavior (Korman, 2010 ).

Diedenhofen and Musch ( 2017 ), developed a JavaScript application called PageFocus, which can be added to the test page and run in the background. Whenever the examinee switches to a page other than the test page, a defocusing event is registered. The script captures when and how frequently defocusing and refocusing events occur on the test page. Another method is to permit students to get to just a couple of sites that are whitelist. If the examinee tries to open a site that is not allowed (one from blacklist), the instructor will be informed through an Android application or Internet (Kasliwal, 2015 ).

Tiong and Lee ( 2021 ), proposed an e-cheating intelligent agent composed of two modules, namely the internet protocol (IP) detector and the behavior detector. The first module could monitor the examinees’ IP addresses and enable the system to alert if a student changes their device or location. The second module detects abnormal behavior based on the speed of answering questions. Another method for cheating detection is comparing the IP addresses of the examinees to check whether two participants are in the same place (Bawarith, 2017 ).

3.4.2 Cheating detection after the exam

Even though different methods are employed to prevent students from cheating, some will still cheat during the examination. Consequently, a bunch of techniques is proposed to detect cheating students after the exam. This way, the reliability of online assessments will be improved. In the following, we will discuss different methods of cheating detection after the exam.

Video monitoring

The University of Amsterdam has developed a system that records the student’s video screen and the environment during the exam. Later a human proctor views the recording and flags and reports any suspicious behavior (Norris, 2019 ). Proctoring software proposed in (Alessio et al., 2017 ), records everything students do during the examination. After the exam, the recordings can be reviewed by the professor, teaching assistants, or employees of the proctoring vendor to identify cheating behaviors.

Human proctoring is a tedious and time-consuming process. To reduce the time and cost of proctoring, an automatic system can be employed to detect and flag suspicious events using machine learning methods. In this regard, Cote et al. ( 2016 ) proposed a system for the automatic creation of video summaries of online exams. The proposed method employs head pose estimations to model a normal and abnormal examinee’s behavior. Afterward, a video summary is created from sequences of detected abnormal behavior. The video summaries can assist remote proctors in detecting cheating after the exam.

Jalali and Noorbehbahani ( 2017 ), implemented an automatic method for cheating detection using a webcam. During the exam, images are recorded every 30 seconds by a webcam for each candidate. After the exam, the recorded images are compared with reference images of that student. If the difference exceeds a threshold, the image will be labeled as a cheating state.

Li et al. ( 2015 ), proposed a Massive Open Online Proctoring framework that consists of three components. First, the Automatic Cheating Detector (ACD) module uses webcam video to monitor students, and automatically flag suspected cheating behavior. Then, ambiguous cases are sent to the Peer Cheating Detector (PCD) module, which asks students to review videos of their peers. Finally, the list of suspicious cheating behaviors is forwarded to the Final Review Committee (FRC) to make the final decision.

Other methods

There are various ways of cheating, and therefore, different methods are used to detect cheating after the exam. For example, one of the cheating behaviors is to collude and work on tests together. However, most learning management systems allow the instructor to view IP addresses. Therefore, if different students submit their assessments by the same IP address in a short time frame, it could be detected and considered as a sign of collusion (Moten et al., 2013 ).

In addition, statistical methods can be used to analyze student responses to assessments and detect common errors and the similarities of answers (Korman, 2010 ). Mott ( 2010 ) stated that the distribution of identical incorrect responses between examinee pairs is a Polya distribution. The degree of cheating for each examination will follow the skewness or third central moment of the distribution.

Predictive analytics systems implicitly collect data while the students interact with the virtual learning environment. The collected data, which include student’s location, access patterns, learning progress, device characteristics, and performance, is used to predict trends and patterns of student behavior. Consequently, any unusual pattern may indicate suspicious behavior (Norris, 2019 ). Answering an examination takes a reasonable amount of time. Therefore, another indicator of dishonest behavior is an extremely short interval between the access time and the completion of the assessments, which can be detected by log time analysis (Moten et al., 2013 ).

In (Bawarith et al., 2017 ), an E-exam management system is proposed that classifies participants as cheating or non-cheating based on two parameters, namely the total time and the number of times the examinee is out of the screen. The focus of the test-taker is recorded using an eye tracker during the exam.

Kasliwal (Kasliwal, 2015 ), designed an online examination tool that captures the network traffic during the exam using a kismet server. The captured package can then be analyzed to determine the frequency of URLs accessed by students. If one of the URLs is getting accessed more frequently or very rarely, it could be considered suspicious.

To detect plagiarism in papers or essay-type questions, platforms such as DupliChecker.com Footnote 1 or Turnitin.com Footnote 2 can be used. These websites compute a similarity index and show all potential plagiarisms. Based on the similarity index, the instructor decides about further actions (Moten et al., 2013 ).

A weakness of similarity detection software is that it computes the resemblance of a submitted assessment with others' works and cannot detect an original text written by others for the student in question. Stylometry discovers this issue by checking the consistency of the delivered contents with other texts written by the same student. If the style of a text does not match with the previous works of that student, it may indicate complicity (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ). Opgen-Rhein et al. ( 2018 ) presented an application that employs machine learning methods to learn the programming styles of students. This work is based on the assumption that the programming style of each student is unique, and therefore, the model can be used to verify the author of assignments.

Another way of cheating detection is using a cheating trap, which means creating websites that could be found when the students search for answers. The solutions in trap websites are incorrect, and consequently, dishonest students could be detected (Korman, 2010 ). However, this method contradicts professional ethics.

In addition, the teacher can search the internet by hand periodically and try to find all possible web pages that provide solutions matching the exam questions. This approach could be applied to create a pool of potential solutions from the internet that will be used for plagiarism detection purposes after the exam (Norris, 2019 ).

3.5 Cheating prevention

After discussing and analyzing the examinees’ motivations for cheating and the reasons which directly or indirectly drive them to commit unethical actions during online examinations, a great deal of concern is gathered around how to decrease cheating in online exams and lower the probability of these actions taking place.

We categorized cheating prevention into two major types, namely, before-exam prevention and during-exam prevention. Figure 12 displays the classification of the cheating prevention methods.

• Cheating prevention

3.5.1 Before-exam prevention

To prevent examinees from cheating, there exist several methods that should be implemented before the exam is held. Each will be discussed in detail as follows.

Exam design

In any situation that prevention is concerned, a proven and low-cost approach is a “cheat-resistant” design -A design that inherently prevents some specific cheating types from happening. This is why exam design is so critical. A cheat-resistant exam design, by its nature, prevents a range of possible forms of cheatings from occurring.

One way of achieving a good design is developing personalized exams for each candidate separately. There are several ways to do so, such as parameterization (Manoharan, 2019 ), which is a set of fixed questions with variable assumption values, using data banks with a large pool of questions to select questions randomly (Manoharan, 2019 ), (Norris, 2019 ) or implementing an AI-based method to produce unique exams (Chua & Lumapas, 2019 ).

Li et al. ( 2020 ) has put effort into designing a method for randomizing the question orders for each candidate. Their general idea is to show the questions one by one, and besides that, each student gets a different question at a time. This research mathematically proves that examinees cannot get much cheating gain.

In (Manoharan, 2019 ), the author has investigated an approach to personalizing multiple-choice examinations using the macro. Macro is a computer program fragment that stores data. It has a set of particular inputs for generating random exams based on a question bank. This method could bring freedom and flexibility to the exam design, but it needs basic programming skills.

Another aspect of exam design concentrates specifically on question design. Some of the most valuable methods are listed below.

Using novel questions: This type of question design is so unique in design and phrasing that it becomes very challenging to be plagiarized even with searching the web (Nguyen et al., 2020 ).

Using knowledge-based questions instead of information-based questions: These questions challenge the level of knowledge. The answers are not on the web or in reference books, and they need critical thinking and reasoning (Nguyen et al., 2020 ).

Using essay questions rather than multiple-choice questions: During an online exam, multiple-choice questions are highly susceptible to cheating. Hence, long essay questions are preferred (Varble, 2014 ).

Using questions with specific assumptions and facts: Although giving extra and not useful facts may mislead any candidate, even those taking the exam honestly, it will reduce the possibility of web-based plagiarism considerably by making it less straightforward to search online (Nguyen et al., 2020 ).

Having an open-book exam: Open-book exam questions should test students’ understanding, critical reasoning, and analytical skills. Since the answers to these questions are not found in any sources directly, open-book exams may reduce the cheating opportunity (Varble, 2014 ), (Backman, 2019 ).

Finally, other methods not placed into the above categories are mentioned below.

Showing questions one by one without the option of going backward is effective in cheating prevention. If it is employed besides strict time limitations and random question series, collaborative cheating will become quite challenging (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ), (Backman, 2019 ). By setting strict time limitations, the students do not have enough time to handle cheating, therefore, exam cheating efforts are reduced (Backman, 2019 ).

Cluskey et al. ( 2011 ), emphasize low-cost approaches for addressing online exam cheating. They introduce online exam control procedures (OECP) to achieve this target. Taking the exam only at a defined time and avoiding postponing it for any reason, or changing at least one-third of the questions in the next exam, are some instances of these procedures.

Authentication

Authentication is mainly for impersonation prevention before examinations. It could be done classically by checking the school ID badges or government-issued ID by the webcam (Moten et al., 2013 ) or by a more modern approach like biometrics through fingerprint, palm vein scan (Korman, 2010 ), eye vein scan (Kigwana & Venter, 2016 ), voice, and keystroke biometrics (Norris, 2019 ).

An interesting method to prevent cheating has been presented in (Moten et al., 2013 ). Students should call the instructor at a predetermined time to get the password. After the students’ voices are recognized by the instructor, they are authenticated and receive a random password for exam entrance. The password is valid until the end of the exam time limit, thus this method makes cheating more difficult (Moten et al., 2013 ).

The last method of authentication is the one discussed in (Norris, 2019 ) which uses challenge questions. These are the questions only the student will know, for instance, student ID or personal information. In (Ullah, 2016 ), an approach is proposed that creates and consolidates a student’s profile during the learning process. This information is collected in the form of questions and answers. The questions are pre-defined or extracted from a student’s learning activities. A subset of questions is used for authentication, and the students should answer these questions correctly to get access to the online examination. This approach ensures that the person taking the exam is the same one who has completed the course.

Clustering means partitioning students into several groups based on a predefined similarity measure. In (Topîrceanu, 2017 ), random and strategic clustering methods are proposed to break friendships during the exam, as cheating prevention techniques. The advantages of random clustering are time and cost efficiencies; however, it is imprecise, and some clusters may include unbroken friendships.

Breaking friendships through clustering relies on two hypotheses (Topîrceanu, 2017 ):

Students tend to communicate and cheat with the people they know and feel close to.

An individuals’ relationship with others on social networks is closely related to their real-life relationships with people.

Regarding the second hypothesis, social network analysis could find students’ close friends and people they know. After clustering students, a unique set of exam questions are prepared for each cluster. Consequently, the collaboration of friends to cheat during the online exam becomes challenging.

Lowering cheating motivation

Approaches expressed in this section are based on mental and psychological aspects driving students toward academic misbehaviors, and the work being done to reduce these behaviors through controlling mental drivers.

There are several tactics to develop students’ moral beliefs encouraging them to avoid unethical behaviors. For instance, implementing honor systems helps build a healthy and ethical environment (Korman, 2010 ). Another tactic is clarifying academic integrity and morality ideals through establishing educational integrity programs (Korman, 2010 ).

As Korman ( 2010 ) further investigated, changing the students' perception about the goal of studying, could decrease cheating. This could be done by reminding them why learning matters and how it affects their future success. In (Varble, 2014 ), it is stated that emphasizing the actual value of education will lead to the same result.

Varble ( 2014 ), indicates that by improving students’ skills such as time management skills, their academic performance will be highly enhanced; accordingly, their academic misbehaviors will be declined. The risks of being caught and the significance of punishments, are inversely related to students’ motivation for cheating.

Varble ( 2014 ) also mentions that applying formative assessment rather than summative assessment effectively reduces examinees’ desire for cheating due to improving their learning outcomes. Formative assessments aim to enhance the candidates’ learning performance rather than testing them. On the other hand, summative assessments mostly care about measuring candidates’ knowledge and are used to check if they are eligible to pass the course or not.

As an additional description about getting a formative assessment to work, Nguyen et al., ( 2020 ) mention that increasing the exam frequency forces students to study course materials repeatedly, resulting in longer retention of information and knowledge in students’ minds. This brings about alleviating candidates’ motivation for cheating (Nguyen et al., 2020 ). Varble ( 2014 ), also suggests that reducing the value of each test lowers the reward gained by the cheaters over each test; consequently, the motivation for cheating is declined.

A cost-efficient and effective method to lower cheating motivation is to declare the cheating policy for examinees before the exam starts (Moten et al., 2013 ). Warning students of the consequences of being caught makes them nervous and can significantly decrease cheating. It is necessary to have a confirmation button, so that no excuses can be made by cheaters after the exam. It is such effective that in two experiments, it decreased the number of cheatings by 50% (Corrigan-Gibbs et al., 2015 ). It is worth mentioning that in the online environment, having an honor system is much less effective than warning about the consequences of cheating if being caught (Fontaine et al., 2020 ).

3.5.2 During-exam prevention

Most cheating prevention methods were discussed in the before-exam section; still, there exist some during-exam prevention tactics, which are presented in this sub-section.

Think-aloud request

A rarely mentioned method called Think-aloud request was discussed in (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ). In this method, a request is sent to the student to think aloud about a specific subject (or current question) at random times during the exam. The student has to respond to the request orally, and the voice is recorded for further investigation and cheating detection (e.g., slow response and voice impersonation detection). This mechanism forces students to continuously be ready for responding, which reduces the chance of student cheating. The authors have also mentioned that this system and its questions could be implemented by an AI agent.

Cheat-resistant systems

Using cheat-resistant systems will inherently prevent some kinds of cheatings, although they are costly to be implemented (Korman, 2010 ). Using a browser tab locker (Chua & Lumapas, 2019 ) is one of them that prevents unauthorized movements and also identifies them by sniffing their network packets. Another method is using wireless jammers (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ) to disrupt any radio signals (Internet) in an area which usually is the examination hall, during semi-online exams.

In (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ), some valuable suggestions are given for oral exams. One is conducting the oral exam as a flow of short questions and answers, instead of a long initial question and an extended answer afterward. This is because a flowing dialogue significantly reduces the chance of the examinee following someone else’s cues of the solution. They have also suggested that asking the examinee to respond quickly, will facilitate achieving this goal. Besides that, if candidates delay, they may be known suspicious. If a candidate was detected suspicious by the instructor, it is good to interrupt the current question with a new question. This will neutralize the effort made by a third party to help the candidate answer the question.

Another suggestion presented in (Chirumamilla & Sindre, 2019 ), is to prepare a big pool of questions for oral exams to prevent questions repetition. As a result, the candidates cannot adjust themselves to the questions asked from previous candidates.

Bribery is a kind of organizational cheating. In (Kigwana & Venter, 2016 ) it is indicated that by assigning a random human proctor for the exam right before it started, bribery and beforehand contractions between examinee and proctor would be impossible.

4 Discussion

There is no doubt that online education has changed significantly in recent years. One of the main challenges in online education is the validity of the assessment. Specifically, during the COVID19 pandemic, the integrity of online examinations has become a significant concern. Cheating detection and prevention are hot topics in online assessments. In addition, it is needed to conduct more research on cheating motivation and cheating types. In this research, we review and classify online exam cheating comprehensively.

In this review, only publications written in English were investigated. This could result in review bias, however, it is too difficult and infeasible to review studies in all languages. Many systematic mapping researches consider only publications in English, such as (Nikou & Economides, 2018 ) (Martin et al., 2020 ) (Noorbehbahani et al., 2019 ) (Wei et al., 2021 ).

Figure 3 indicates that the publications trend is decreasing, contrary to the hypothesis that online learning is rising, especially with the emergence of the COVID-19. Notably, in this study, online cheating researches have been reviewed. So, Fig. 3 specifically corresponds to online cheating publications not online learning studies in general. However, more investigations of online cheating studies from February 2021 onwards are required to further analyzing the trends.

Several reviewed studies have made no distinction between cheating detection and prevention (Bawarith, 2017 ; Bawarith et al., 2017 ; Korman, 2010 ; Tiong & Lee, 2021 ). They employed detection methods to identify dishonest behaviors. Then preventive actions such as making an alarm to the student, or closing the browser tab are performed to deter student cheating. Regarding this definition of prevention, several studies have applied these terms interchangeably, confusing the reader. In this study, we define cheating prevention as strategies and methods that try to prevent the occurrence of cheating in online exams. Considering the latter definition, we attempted to provide a better review and clearer classification to the readers.

One limitation in this domain is the lack of statistics on the popularity of the types, methods, and tools. In (Sabbah, 2017 ), the most common cheating behaviors and their average risks have been discussed; however, the results are limited to 10 cheating types. Hence, more investigation is required to determine the prevalence of each cheating type and cheating motivation.

An important cheating reason that is overlooked by researchers is learning styles. Students and educators have different preferred learning styles (auditory, visual, kinesthetic and read/write). If teachers and educational institutes don’t consider this issue, the course will not be apprehensible for some students, and consequently, they will be motivated to cheat.

Another issue that should be addressed is to evaluate the feasibility of cheating detection and prevention methods. If the equipment for securing online exams is expensive, the students cannot afford it. Therefore, this factor should be considered when developing detection and prevention methods. Cluskey et al. ( 2011 ), believe that some solutions (e.g., proctors) that detect cheating during online exams are too costly, and their costs outweigh their benefits in some cases. Therefore, cost-effective systems and methods should be implemented.

Privacy and convenience are also vital for examinees. If employed security mechanism for online exams violates privacy and disturbs student convenience, the evaluation will not be practical due to induced stress. Accordingly, these aspects should be considered in cheating detection and prevention systems.

5 Conclusion

In this study, cheating in online exams is reviewed and classified comprehensively. It provides the reader with valuable and practical insights to address online exam cheating. To mitigate students cheating, first, it is necessary to know cheating motivations and cheating types and technologies. Furthermore, cheating detection and prevention methods are needed to combat forbidden actions. Detection methods without applying prevention methods could not be effective. As cheating detection and prevention methods are evolved, new cheating types and technologies emerge as well. Consequently, no system can mitigate all kinds of cheating in online exams, and more advanced methods should be employed. It seems the most efficient strategy for cheating handling is to lower cheating motivation.

It should be mentioned that we have not covered studies related to technical attacks and intrusions to online exam systems and teacher devices. This topic could be considered for conducting another review study.

The impact of COVID-19 on online learning and cheating in online exams could be analyzed in future work.

Another future work is to explore how ignoring students’ learning styles in teaching and assessment could affect cheating motivation.

Privacy issues, user convenience, and enforced costs of cheating detection and prevention technologies need to be examined in other studies.

In this study, publications from 2010 to 2021 have been reviewed. More investigations are required to review accepted but unpublished studies and publications in 2022.

http://www.duplichecker.com

http://www.turnitin.com

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Noorbehbahani, F., Mohammadi, A. & Aminazadeh, M. A systematic review of research on cheating in online exams from 2010 to 2021. Educ Inf Technol 27 , 8413–8460 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-10927-7

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Cheating — Why Cheating Is Wrong: An Ethical and Practical Examination

Why Cheating is Wrong: an Ethical and Practical Examination

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Introduction, ethical ramifications, detrimental effects on individuals, societal impact, body paragraph 4: long-term consequences.

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What is cheating?

How to cheat in an exam, what are the consequences of cheating in schools.

Cheating definition: 

Cheating is the act of obtaining advantages or rewards without following the rules that apply to others. Examples include cheating in a board game or in a test at school.

What causes cheating?

• The problem is related to the issue of merit and rising competition. Students have to fight for the best possible grades in order to get into the most valued courses at university. Cheating in an exam is seen as an easy solution.
• This spirit of competition usually translates into the idea that all is fair, that only the result counts. But this idea is challenged by well-known sportsmen and women who are regularly involved in doping cases, even though they are role models for the younger generation . 🚴🏼
• When a child is under family pressure and is not allowed to make mistakes , or there is no room for failure, fraud and cheating may appear to be the only way to live up to expectations.
• Finally, a student may start cheating to join a group of peers or friends who encourage this malpractice, to try and rebel or to challenge the school system. 

But seriously, do you really think I'm going to encourage your child to commit a crime? Certainly not. 

• We all know the trick of the scientific calculator on which it is possible to record formulas or even definitions (but this does not work in French  or English lessons!)
• A cheat sheet can be written behind the label on the water bottle or hidden in the bottom of a pencil case
• The mobile phone wallpaper acts as a notepad, which we pretend to use to look at the time 👀

All these tricks are well known classics that sometimes work during an assessment but are incredibly risky, and evidence of malpractice and cheating in exams.

Online tools

During school isolation periods in the past few years, even the most serious students enjoyed the thrill of cheating on online exams, which were much more difficult to monitor by teachers and schools. 

This may have been collaborative fraud via chat groups with classmates on platforms such as Snapchat or WhatsApp. Others even paid more advanced candidates to take the exams for them. Or, more simply, they took their tests online with a second computer open on the Google homepage.

But keep in mind that whether online or face-to-face, the cheating student still faces the same risk of punishment! 👮

Cases of cheating in class 

If a student hasn’t managed to revise , wants to cheat and is caught in class, it can seriously damage his or her results, as well as reputation or even place at the school. They could get a zero on their assessment, contact home or even detentions and exclusion from the school. 

Parents and guardians even make an agreement with the school before their child starts to never cheat or be involved in any malpractice, which schools are serious about throughout their time there. 

What are the penalties for exam fraud?

National qualifications such as GCSEs , A-Levels and exams at university are all official exams recognised by the government. If an exam invigilator catches your child cheating in the examination room, a verbal and written report will be drawn up and an investigation will begin.

Depending on the seriousness of the situation and the exam board or school, cheating at the exam can lead to different types of sanctions:

• Reprimand. This is a disciplinary sanction, a call to order without too serious consequences, usually reserved for internal school exams only (not National qualifications where consequences are more serious)
• Removal from the course or overall diploma, sometimes resulting in having to restart completely
• Immediate contact to the exams regulation authority, JCQ , who monitor most exam boards like AQA or Edexcel 
• No awarded mark, grade, GCSE, A-Level or points for the course at university in that subject (usually named an ‘Ungraded’ or U)
• Sometimes a ban on taking any National exams for a number of years
• Sometimes, but infrequently, a ban on enrolling into a higher education institution for 5 years

Exam malpractice is rising; in 2019 Ofqual reported an 11% rise in malpractice reports, and this includes teachers and schools helping students to cheat!

Can you pass your driving test if you cheat at your exam? 

I've always heard that a student who is caught cheating on the exam is then likely to be barred from taking any other official exam, including the assessment to get their UK driving licence. 🚗

Today, I can officially tell you that this is an urban legend. As the driving licence is not linked with our education certification system, it is not affected by the sanctions. But, cheating in an exam (and getting caught) can change your mindset to all other exams you go on to sit for the worse. 

But rather than having to ask yourself this question, the best thing to do is to book some lessons online with our tutors. They will help your child to prepare well for challenging exams like GCSEs, without the need to cheat! 

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Cheating In School Essay | Why Students Cheat? and What We Do About It?

November 1, 2021 by Prasanna

Cheating In School Essay: Cheating is a crime. Whether you cheat your friend, parents, or an unknown person, it is an unethical way of achieving your aim. For example – Cheating in exams is wrong as you’re supposed to study, practice, and understand the concept before answering in exams. If you skip all the previous steps and try to copy it from someone else or any other source, it is considered cheating.

Cheating is an act where a person acts dishonestly or in an unfair way to gain some advantage. Cheating in any manner or anywhere can not be justified. Cheating is also used by our children and most commonly they use it at school. Cheating in school is done in many ways like copying in exams, doing someone else’s work, copying the work from someone’s notebook without their permission.

You can also find more  Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Nowadays children have also started using mobile phones for Cheating in their exam papers and to tell the answers to their fellow students. All these forms of Cheating are wrong and unethical, no doubt they are the shortcut to the goal. But not all the students are involved in Cheating. Cheating has many major after effects like they can get expelled from the school which can make them lose their self respect, integrity, etc. So, as elders we should try to make our children understand that Cheating in no way is acceptable.

Long Essay on Cheating in School 750 Words in English

Cheating in school means an unethical way to get early and easy access to your aim. Cheating in school means when a student tries to get good academic grades through a dishonest and unfair way. Cheating is a false representation of the child’s ability which he may not be able to give without Cheating. It is unfair to everyone involved as it deprives the true one of the chance to come on the top.

In reality, the cheater, the teachers and the classmates all are getting deprived of the benefits. Actually Cheating is like a bad temptation which pulls you towards itself when you are able to get something easily with the help of it. Like if a child is able to get good grades in an exam by Cheating, he will try to do the same in other exams also as he will start finding it easy. It’s like an addiction which is not easy to get rid of. You can get an A grade in an exam through Cheating but you know that you didn’t earn it through fair means and will start self-doubting. It makes the student less self confident and gradually losing his sanity and integrity which hampers the overall growth.

The child is not trying to learn, rather he is trying to find ways which are easy but not right. Cheating also has major setbacks like suspension, repeating the same class, etc. Cheating is morally wrong because it gives the cheater an undue advantage over the others truly deserving. Students resort to Cheating because of many reasons – desire to get good grades, the fear of failing, competition with friends and classmates to excel in the class, parental pressure, etc. Cheating affects the child mentally as it increases the anxiety levels in the child. He may start feeling bad for himself as he knows that whatever he has achieved is not because of his own hard work, which will gradually make him feel helpless and trapped. The teachers and parents should make it a point to make the children realize that Cheating is not a good habit.

They can do so by giving their own life examples, making them understand and stressing that winning is not everything, teaching them how to cope with failure, and being compassionate with them while discussing this topic so that they do not feel embarrassed. Ask the child to do more practice of the topic he finds difficult, praise him in the little efforts he is putting to improve himself, try and explore new areas in which the child is good so that he can regain his self esteem.

Short Essay on Cheating in School

• Cheating is an act of behaving in a way that is unethical. Trying to achieve our goal through dishonest and unfair ways is not a way.
• We all at some point of time resort to Cheating whether consciously or unconsciously. Our children also follow us.
• Children follow the practice of Cheating in school in various ways and mostly during their exams.
• In our education system, children get so many opportunities to work hard and get good grades. But instead of doing hard work, some children feel encouraged to take Cheating as a shortcut.
• Students at that time don’t understand that Cheating is not the correct way to deal with it as it is leading them on a wrong path.
• Cheating in school can be due to many different reasons like peer pressure, parental pressure, etc. and can have negative effects on a student in the future.
• Cheating makes a child make wrong decisions as he is blinded by the aim of success. The student loses his ability of self confidence, honesty and critical thinking.
• To excel in education or a subject, one must be clear with the basics of the topic. But when a child resorts to Cheating he is making way for future Cheating also as he will not be able to understand high level topics because he is not clear with the basics.
• Cheating as all other unethical habits have serious consequences like suspension and expulsion from the school, spoiled academic reputation.
• Parents and teachers as the well wishers of the students should try to make them aware of the severe consequences of it and try to make them come out of this bad practice as soon as possible.

FAQ’s on Cheating In School Essay

Question 1. Is Cheating in school common?

Answer: According to a survey, Cheating is very common at school level and 86% of students have cheated in school at one or another level.

Question 2. Why is Cheating in school so common?

Answer: Students cheat in school due to poor study skills, lack of confidence and the pressure to get good grades.

Question 3. What are some consequences of Cheating?

Answer: Cheating can lead to expulsion or suspension from school, class failure, degraded academic reputation, lowers self respect.

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Cheating in College Exams

Why some students cheat.

• The Hidden World of Exam Cheating
• People Cheat on Tests, But the Way They Do it May Surprise You

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How to Talk to Students Suspected of Cheating

• August 6, 2024

Cheating happens.

It happens at all levels of education. From the anxiety-inducing timed multiplication test in 3rd grade to high-stakes final exams in college.

It happens more often during online exams. A survey 1  found that students are about 50% more likely to cheat in online courses than in live classes.

It happens for many reasons. Sometimes students cheat because of competitiveness and pressure. Other times, they don’t feel prepared, or it may just be because they can.

It happens in different ways. Whether it’s sneaking a quick Google search on their cell phones, whispering questions to Siri and Alexa, or having entire essays written by AI chatbots, technology makes cheating quick and easy.

From anxiety-inducing timed multiplication tests in 3rd grade to high-stakes final exams in college.

A survey 1  found that students are about 50% more likely to cheat in online courses than in live classes.

Sometimes students cheat because of competitiveness and pressure. Other times, they don’t feel prepared, or it may just be because they can.

Whether it’s sneaking a quick Google search on their cell phones, whispering questions to Siri and Alexa, or having entire essays written by AI chatbots, technology makes cheating quick and easy.

Click below to skip ahead

Find what you need

Talking to students about cheating is difficult but necessary.

No instructor looks forward to talking to a student about cheating ( we really hope not ). And while these are the last conversations you want to have with your students (and they feel the same), they’re necessary— no matter who, what, when, where, why, or how cheating happens.

But to make these conversations effective, you need to approach them thoughtfully. Talking to a student about cheating requires careful planning, consistency, emotional intelligence, solid evidence from the online proctoring software, and a deep understanding of disabilities and accommodations, which are often overlooked.

The ripple effect of addressing academic dishonesty

Responding to cheating the right way helps build a culture of academic integrity among your students.

“Instructors at our partner institutions have told us that addressing suspected cheating has an impact beyond each individual case,” said Jordan Adair, VP of Product at Honorlock. “Providing consistent feedback to students on their proctored exam results helps reduce future incidents and sends a clear message to students and their peers that academic integrity is valued at their institution.”

So, what's next?

• How do you start the conversation?
• What should you say, and what should you avoid saying?
• What evidence do you need to prove they cheated during the proctored exam?
• What if their story is believable, but you still have concerns about academic dishonesty?
• Have you considered how disabilities may play a role?
• Are your test rules as objective as they should be?

This article provides strategies for preparing for a conversation with a student about cheating, practical approaches for discussing it effectively, and templates for what to say in different situations.

Preparing to talk to a student about cheating

Review the institution’s academic integrity policy, determine the purpose of the conversation.

What do you want out of this conversation? Be more specific than just “to discuss cheating.” Establishing a clear goal helps guide the conversation and your preparation for it.

Do you want to…

• Inform the student that the exam proctoring software flagged certain behaviors and discuss how to avoid them next time?
• Determine if the student needs additional support and resources?
• Hear their side of the story before deciding how to proceed?
• Discuss the next steps in the academic misconduct investigation process and potential consequences?

Notify the student via email

Instructor note: If multiple students are involved in the same instance of misconduct, email each student individually and do not mention the other students’ names. This protects student privacy and addresses each situation individually.

Templated email to request a meeting with the student

Subject line: Meeting Request: Important Discussion Regarding [Course Name]

Dear [Student First & Last Name],

I am writing to inform you of my concerns regarding your recent submission for the [exam/assignment name] in [course name] this semester (Semester 20__). 

During the [exam/assignment], the proctoring software flagged behavior that appeared inconsistent with the provided rules and academic integrity policies at [Institution Name].

To ensure a fair process, I would like to meet with you to discuss the software’s findings, hear your perspective, and clarify any questions before taking further steps.

I am available [virtually or in my office] on [list dates and times]. Please reply with a date and time by [date and time].

I’ve included [links/attachments] to [Institution Name]’s Academic Integrity Policy and the course syllabus:

• [Institution Name] Academic Integrity Policy [link and/or attach document]
• [Course Name & Number] Syllabus: [link and/or attach document]

Thank you for your cooperation.

Example from email: “ … the proctoring software flagged behavior that appeared inconsistent…”

Example from email: I would like to meet with you to discuss the software’s findings, hear your perspective, and clarify any questions before taking further steps.

Example from the email: I am available [virtually or in my office] on [list dates and times]. Please reply with a date and time by [date and time].

Example from the email: I’ve included [links/attachments] to [Institution Name]’s Academic Integrity Policy and the course syllabus:

Templated email for other conversation purposes

Use this to inform the class of commonly flagged behavior:

The proctoring software flagged several behaviors among quite a few students during the last exam. I wanted to share these issues with you all and offer some tips on how to avoid them in the future. Please take a look before your next exam. [Add a bulleted list after this of the behaviors with specific tips to avoid them]

Use this text at the beginning of the email if the purpose of the conversation is to determine if the student needs additional support and resources:

Review your test rules and instructions

Two example test rules that aren’t as objective as they seem:

1. Do not use any AI chatbots to write any portions of your essay.

This rule work because it includes “any” chatbots writing “any” portions of their essay, but students might think:

• I can’t use AI chatbots to write my essay, but I can use them to edit it.
• I can use Grammarly to rewrite and improve my essay because it’s an AI writing assistant, not an AI chatbot.

Do not use any artificial intelligence (AI), including chatbots, voice assistants, writing assistants, or editing software, to write, edit, or improve any part of your essay. All essay content must be your original work, created entirely by you, without assistance from any external electronic technologies.

2. Do not use a cell phone, tablet, or other computers during the proctored exam.

Seems pretty clear, right? Well, students might think:

• I can’t use my phone, tablet, or another computer, but it doesn’t say I can’t use my smartwatch.

With those examples in mind, play devil’s advocate as you review. This helps prepare for the conversation and refine your test rules. If updates are needed, inform students via email and LMS tools like messages, forum posts, and announcements.

Instructor Tip

You can use an unscored question at the beginning of the next test to confirm their acknowledgment of any updates to test rules and instructions.

Consider disabilities when reviewing evidence from the proctoring software

If the evidence (exam reports and video recordings from the remote proctoring software) shows suspicious behavior, it’s natural to assume it’s cheating. However, this “suspicious” behavior could be related to disabilities and accessibility needs.

For example, a student might be repetitively looking off-screen during the exam.

At face value, this behavior seems suspicious—like they might be looking at notes or receiving help from someone off-camera.

But what if the student has a condition, such as Tourette Syndrome (TS) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), that causes involuntary head movements?

Another thing to consider is that many college students don’t disclose disabilities to their instructors 2 , often due to unawareness 3 and stigma 4 :

• Unawareness: many students don’t know they need accommodations, aren’t aware accommodations are available, and/or don’t know how to find help at their institution.
• Stigma: fear of judgment and being treated differently by peers and instructors prevents students from disclosing disabilities; some are even ashamed to seek accommodations.

If the evidence (exam reports and video recordings) from the proctoring software shows suspicious behavior, it’s natural to assume it’s cheating. However, this “suspicious” behavior could be related to disabilities and accessibility needs.

“Understanding ADA guidelines and different accommodations that students need is invaluable in education and academic integrity,” said Dr. Lee Conerly, Director of Academic Instruction at Coastal Alabama Community College, “Students’ behaviors during exams may look like cheating, even when they absolutely are not cheating.”

Dr. Conerly gave an example of how the behaviors of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), like repetitive head twitching and fidgeting, can be mistaken for cheating, “I watched the exam recording, and the student was repeatedly looking off to the right, which makes it easy to assume they were looking at something or someone for answers. But I recognized signs of ADHD in their behavior. So, instead of jumping to conclusions, our conversations with the student focused on the human elements to learn more about them and their accommodation needs.”

However, the student didn’t disclose this information to the instructor before this conversation, which is common among college students 2 , mainly due to unawareness 3 or stigma 4 .

Tips for instructors to increase awareness and reduce stigma related to accommodations:

1. Talk about accommodations often

Engage in open conversations with students to increase awareness and understanding of disabilities and accommodations. Discuss accommodations before each assessment and encourage the use of campus support services. Share anonymous examples (to protect students’ privacy) of students who have successfully used accommodations in your courses.

Be very clear: accommodations are support, not special treatment.

2. Make it easy to find support

Provide links to campus support services in various areas of your online course, such as Announcements, Discussions, Chat, and syllabus.

3. Use anonymous surveys

Ask students to complete an anonymous survey in your LMS or through a tool like SurveyMonkey. This helps identify common challenges without revealing specific student needs.

For example, if several students report mobility disabilities that impair typing, you could allow talk-to-text dictation options for tests and other assignments.

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How to talk to a student about cheating

There’s no way around it: talking to a student about suspected cheating is inherently awkward, challenging, and even emotionally draining for both of you.

While we provide practical strategies and scripts for various situations, it’s important to recognize that each case is unique and rarely straightforward. However, being direct and sticking to the facts—firm and factual—keeps emotions in check and the discussion focused.

Focus on the objective information

Prevent opinions and biases from getting in the way by focusing on objective information:

• The evidence you’ve gathered from the online proctoring software
• Your course policy and the exam/assignment rules
•  The institution’s academic dishonesty policy

Explain the flow of the conversation

Thank the student for meeting with you, then tell them that you’ll discuss your concerns, present evidence from the online proctoring solution, and review academic integrity policies for your course and/or institution.

You also need to tell them they’ll have an opportunity to share their side of the story and ask questions. After that, the conversation can be similar to the email you sent them.

Discuss your concerns

Tell the student exactly what your concerns are. Be specific and concise.

Example: “During the [exam name], the test proctoring software flagged you for [specific behavior, such as using a cell phone off-screen], which is against academic integrity policies.”

Present the evidence

Then, you can transition to presenting the evidence:

“I watched a recording of the behavior, which the remote proctoring software flagged and was reviewed by one of their trained proctors. We can watch the recording together right now if you’d like.”

If they want to watch the recording:

“I have the video ready. Feel free to explain your actions as we watch. Let me know if there are times you’d like to pause or parts you’d like to rewatch.”

Instructor tips:

• Have the video cued and ready
• e.g., The student’s cell phone is visible at :20, :33, :45
• For example, instead of asking a leading question like, “Were you looking at your cell phone here?” ask, “Can you describe what you were doing here?”

If they don’t want to watch the recording:

• Acknowledge their decision “I understand you’d rather not watch the video of the proctored exam, and that’s perfectly okay. We can discuss the flagged behavior based on what I observed.”
• Be highly descriptive (and accurate) when describing the flagged behavior

Always be direct and concise, but give as much detail as possible when describing the flagged behavior, like in the examples below.“During the exam, the proctoring platform flagged several instances where you…”

• covered your mouth and asked Siri for answers, which can be heard in the video. I’ll read them from the transcript provided by the Voice Detection software within the proctoring platform, [read transcript].
• used a cell phone, which the AI detected was nearby , to search for answers to test questions.

Ask for their explanation

Whether they choose to watch the recording or not, ask open-ended questions to get their side of the story, such as:

• “Can you help me understand what was happening during when [specific behavior]?”
• “Can you describe what you were doing when [specific behavior]?

Responding to different explanations

Responding when the explanation resolves the situation

“Thank you for explaining what happened. Based on your explanation, it seems this situation can be resolved. I appreciate your honesty and cooperation. Let’s continue to follow the guidelines to avoid any future misunderstandings.”

Responding when you’d like to seek guidance from another expert

“Thank you for your explanation. Hearing your perspective helps me understand the situation better. To ensure fairness and handle the situation appropriately, I’m going to consult with [specific expert, department, etc.] to better understand [specific topic]. I’ll follow up with you once I have more information.”

Responding when students accept responsibility for cheating

The conversation can be difficult even when the student admits to cheating and accepts responsibility. Your response may depend on the institution’s academic integrity policy, which could require you to report it, or it may be left up to you. 

“I appreciate your honesty in admitting to cheating. However, academic integrity is fundamental, and I’m required to follow the academic integrity policy, which means reporting this incident. The appropriate office will determine the consequences. I understand this isn’t ideal, but it’s necessary to maintain fairness for all students.”

Responding when students deny cheating

The best response when students deny cheating (even with clear evidence in the video recording) is to use neutral language, stick to the facts, and ask clarifying questions.

“I understand that you have a different perspective, but the video shows repeated instances where you [state the observed behaviors]. We can address each instance individually. Can you explain why you were [first observable action].”

If there’s little progress, explain the next steps: 

“Given the evidence and your explanation, I need to follow the university’s academic integrity policy. This involves reporting the incident to the academic integrity office for further review. They’ll evaluate the evidence, and you’ll have an opportunity to share your perspective and ask questions.”

Address the integrity policy, next steps, and consequences

Unless their explanation resolves the situation, you should review your institution’s policies for addressing acts of academic dishonesty, the next steps in the investigation and/or process, and the potential consequences for violations.

Instructor note: continue using neutral language, regardless of what you learned in the conversation.

For example, i nstead of saying, “Since you cheated on the exam, you’ll be [insert consequence],” say, “Violations of this policy can lead to these consequences…”

Dealing with cheating is difficult but worth it

Talking to students about suspected cheating isn’t easy, but it’s key to maintaining academic integrity and protecting your reputation.

Take the time to prepare: review your course policies, the institution’s academic integrity policies, the evidence from the online proctoring platform, the objectivity of your own test rules, and consider disabilities.

Consider the student’s perspective: these conversations can be stressful for students, so remember to give them the opportunity to share their side of the story while actively listening.

Every word matters: from the first email you send to request a meeting to the conversation itself, stay objective, focus on the evidence, and have a real dialogue with your student to keep the process fair and constructive.

Proctor online exams effectively: use the right proctoring solution to deter and prevent cheating while keeping the test experience fair, customizing exam settings to accommodate students’ needs, and making it as stress-free as possible.

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Resources to prevent cheating and improve exams

Preventing cheating on online exams.

13 Ways to Prevent Cheating on Online Tests

Proctored Essays & Written Assignments

Honorlock’s Online Proctoring Software Detects Cell Phones

Strategies to stop new types of contract cheating

Hint: Plagiarism detection can’t really detect AI

How Honorlock proctoring can stop ChatGPT

Improving online exams & courses

9 Best Ways to Improve Online Course Design

How to Create a Culture of Academic Integrity

How to Make Test Rules for Online Exams (With Examples)

How to Write Better Test Questions (Tips With Examples)

Prewritten AI Policy Statement

Tips to Create Online Authentic Assessments (with examples & rubric template)

Preparing students for online proctored exams

Preparing for a Proctored Exam & What to Expect

4 Strategies to Help Faculty Reduce Student Test Anxiety

Best practices for online test room scans

Accessibility.

Meeting Students Where They Are: Building Accessible & Equitable Online Courses With AI

Creating Accessible Online Classes (with examples)

What is Web Accessibility and What are Compliance Standards?

1 Newton, P.M., Essex, K. How Common is Cheating in Online Exams and did it Increase During the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Systematic Review. J Acad Ethics 22, 323–343 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-023-09485-5

2 Adam, T., & Warner-Griffin, C. (n.d.). Use of Supports among Students with Disabilities and Special Needs in College. Data Point. NCES 2022-071. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED618477

3 Driving Toward a Degree 2023: Awareness, Belonging, and Coordination – Tyton Partners . (2023, November 16). Tyton Partners. https://tytonpartners.com/driving-toward-a-degree-2023-awareness-belonging-and-coordination/

4 Herrick, S. J., Lu, W., & Bullock, D. (2020). Postsecondary Students With Disabilities: Predictors of Adaptation to College. Journal of College Student Retention , 24 (2), 603–624. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025120941011

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Incident of cheating at the exams (primary 4 essay for 10 year olds by elijah wee, singapore).

This comment has been removed by the author.

Wow! You so smart leh

Students are ready to do everything to pass their exams, including cheating, if you wonder why they prefer this instead of studying a displine, this source can explain you in details http://livecustomwriting.com/blog/why-do-students-cheat-on-assignments-and-exams

this is a good example that if children did not study for their test or examination, they will cheat.If they cheat, they would be found out very soon no matter how much they hide from the invigilator. Good example :D

Nice story . No wonder you got good marks for your exam . Congratulations to you !!!!!

Wow! very impressive story

Vry waL DEN

"was a momentary silence as the frantic writing of text ceased" can I know the meaning?? I searched it on Google but I still can get it...

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Paragraph on Cheating in Exam – by Rajan Karle

Introduction:

Cheating in exam has become a serious issue these days. Exam plays an important role in every student’s life.

Unfortunately, some circumstances come up that lead student to start cheating in exam.

The actual and foremost reason that drives students for cheating in exam is the desire to secure higher scores. It has found that many students start cheating in exam only because they are pressurized to score good marks; this pressure might come from any direction, from their family, teachers, relatives, or any other person who has direct impact on his or her career.

They get frightened with the feelings of getting punished by the parents, receiving insulting look from the friends or getting snubbed in front of the relatives. Under this kind of pressure, they cannot imagine the bright future.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

One more thing that drives students for cheating in exam is to see the higher scores obtained by other classmates. As a part of human nature, it feels bad when someone of our age does a good job and people start making comparisons. One of the most common things that drive students for cheating in exam is the inability to prepare well for the exams. Some students actually possess the low brain power or IQ that makes them completely blank during the exams.

Prevention:

It is necessary to make them realize the power hidden inside them. Psychological studies have shown that the students who secure average or higher marks in exam have positive attitude. They consider exams as an opportunity to shape their goals. Conversely, the students who cannot perform well in the exams have a little different approach to face the exams. Once this approach is changed via concentration, counseling and hard work, they can also perform even better than the studious students. Severe punishment to be ensured examination centers where rampant cheating takes place must be scrapped and action should be taken against the authorities.

Conclusion:

Whatever the reasons are; cheating in exam is always considered as a mal practice. A few marks obtained through the hard work have more importance than the larger marks obtained by cheating in exam. Cheating might help at the outset but it contains a lot of long-standing impact on future. As no knowledge is gained through cheating in examination.

Cheating in exam is not a good habit and it must be controlled at its starting face. This can be achieved in many ways. First of all, parents should stop burdening their child to score good marks. Giving complete freedom to a child will definitely result in gradual but growing progress. Another thing to follow is to stop making comparisons among two students.

Instead, it is preferable to generate self-confidence in his or her mind. There should be a separate lecture in every school or college that can pass the message of being honest into the minds of students. The disadvantages of cheating in exam should be highlighted in front of the students at least once in a month. It is pretty simple to restore good morals inside a child at his or her younger age.

Related Articles:

• Short Paragraph on Exam Phobia – by Supriya
• Paragraph on the Days of Preparation for Exam – By Silki
• Paragraph on a Unhappy Day of My Life – by Rajan
• Short Paragraph on Respect for Teachers

Will OpenAI's new AI detection tool put an end to student cheating?

According to a BestColleges survey, more than half of students use AI to cheat . Those numbers are in line with a Stanford University study that found 60 to 70 percent of students cheat . However, AI may soon cease to be the lazy student's answer to writing papers. A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story reports that "OpenAI has a method to reliably  detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper" -- with 99.9% accuracy. 

Also: How AI lies, cheats, and grovels to succeed - and what we need to do about it

As my colleague David Gewritz has pointed out, many programs already promise to detect AI-written text . However, he concluded, "I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable threatening a student's academic standing or accusing them of cheating based on the results of these tools."

OpenAI hasn't revealed in any detail how its new method can be near-perfect in identifying AI-written text. It certainly isn't because it can spot AI hallucinations. It can't.  As OpenAI co-founder John Schulman said last year, "Our biggest concern was around factuality because the model likes to fabricate things. "

That will never change. According to Mohamed Elgendy, co-founder and chief executive of Kolena , a machine learning testing service, "The  rate of hallucinations will decrease , but it is never going to disappear -- just as even highly educated people can give out false information."

Instead of some magical deep way of spotting AI text, it appears OpenAI is using a much simpler way of identifying AI-written text: The service may be watermarking its results.

In a newly revised blog post, Understanding the source of what we see and hear online , OpenAI reveals it's been researching using classifiers, watermarking, and metadata to spot AI-created products. We don't know yet how this watermarking works exactly.

Also: The best free AI courses (and whether AI certificates are worth it)

We do know that OpenAI reports it's "been highly accurate and even effective against localized tampering, such as paraphrasing." However, the watermarking is "less robust against globalized tampering." 

That means the feature doesn't work well on translated text or something as mindlessly simple as inserting special characters into the text and then deleting them. And, of course, it can't spot works from another AI model. For instance, if you feed the ChatAPT AI-text spotter a document created by Google Gemini or Perplexity , it probably won't be able to identify it as an AI-created document. 

In short, with a little more effort, students and writers will still be able to pass an AI chatbot's work off as their own. Well, they can try anyway. In my experience with AI, the results still tend to be second-rate at best. But if that's good enough to get you a passing grade, it may be all you need. 

At least one self-professed professor on Reddit isn't impressed: "The problem is that you can just copy-paste the text into another program, translate it into another language, and then translate it back. But honestly, most students aren't going to do that, so it would catch pretty much everyone. "

Also:  How Pearson's AI assistant can help teachers save time

Of course, that might not bother OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who told The Harvard Gazette, " Cheating on homework is obviously bad . But what we mean by cheating and what the expected rules are does change over time."

I don't know about that. Cheating is cheating, but this new tool in the OpenAI arsenal doesn't sound like it will help much to prevent it. 

Oddly, while OpenAI is still wrestling with when -- or indeed if -- it should release this new service, the company will soon release a DALL·E 3 provenance classifier. This means that, eventually, almost every image you make with DALL-E  will be marked as a DALL-E AI creation. OpenAI relies on C2PA metadata, a digital content standard, to mark and identify images. If you're a graphic designer who's been relying on DALL-E to make "original" graphics, it may be time to return to Photoshop.

Artificial Intelligence

Openai launches searchgpt - here's what it can do and how to access it, beware of ai 'model collapse': how training on synthetic data pollutes the next generation, how pearson's ai assistant can help teachers save time.

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Cheating scandal tests confidence in international baccalaureate exams..

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Roosevelt, N.Y.: Photo of child writing on test booklet on April 13, 2016. (Photo by J. Conrad ... [+] Williams, Jr./Newsday RM via Getty Images)

The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) had a significant scandal following the May 2024 Diploma Programme (DP) exams. There are 936 schools in America approved to give this exam. The IB diploma programme, based in Switzerland, spans two years and is a widely respected qualification for university entry. Nearly 180,000 students worldwide took it last year. “The IB has admitted for the first time that Time Zone Cheating, where students who sit [for] IB exams earlier in one time zone and share the exam questions with students who sit [for] the same exam later in another, is real and happening.” notes John Westly in UAE’s iShares MSCI UAE Capped ETF Schools Compared .

The cheating scandal has revealed an operation where students in earlier time zones disseminated exam questions on social media platforms like Reddit, Telegram, and Discord. Students in Oceania and East Asia are sharing papers with later time zones. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are major beneficiaries. This has led to a widespread investigation by the IBO, as it works to maintain the integrity of its examination system and ensure that all students are assessed fairly.

On May 3rd, the Hindustan Times discovered that exam questions from the May IB tests, taken from April 26th to May 2nd, were being shared. The report noted that the “paper leak was less likely to benefit Indian students, but those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe, and the Americas might have benefitted.” Further reporting in South China Morning Post and others followed up with details. They reported that the leaked exam content spans multiple subjects, including mathematics, business management, global politics, physics, biology, chemistry, and computer science. “Time zone cheating occurs when students who have finished their exams share their recollection of questions to help others in regions who are yet to take the tests.”

Though the IBO stated on May 4 that “there is no evidence of widespread cheating” the SCMP report found otherwise. “A downloading site showed that two documents – “Paper 2 Math AA HL” and “Maths AA HL Questions” had been downloaded by more than 17,000 and 18,000 people, respectively, as of Sunday afternoon.” Documents labeled “Business Management Paper 1” and “Global Politics HL Paper 2” had also been downloaded over 8,000 and 2,000 times, respectively.” The report estimated that test questions were downloaded 45,000 times.

On June 22, the IBO came out with another statement , reported in Gradepod, that “no genuine IB examination papers were posted on social media”. They stated that they maintain vigilance over social media sites to “identify student work which appears to have been influenced by this cheating and have identified a number of students involved, including the person who set up the main site sharing the content.” They tried to minimize the impact of the cheating scandal, arguing that “the competencies that IB assessments seek to test take months, if not years, of consistent application to acquire and cannot be mastered in the few hours prior to examination.” They conclude that “to date we have no evidence of widespread cheating, and we are confident that no grades will be adversely impacted. This means, as things stand, we will not be changing grade boundaries as a result of timezone cheating.”

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To make things worse, the South China Morning Post revealed on May 9th that IBO computer files from 2018 were hacked. Though the IBO stated that no exam materials were accessed, the article quotes a group, ‘vx -underground’, which claims to have the largest collection of malware source code on the internet. “This breach looks legitimate and like they got everything. They’ve released nearly 100 photos of proof and the proof is damning.”

Many students and parents feel that the IBO’s response has not adequately addressed the scale of the problem, and they demand more robust actions to ensure that the integrity of the examination process is upheld and that those who adhered to the rules are not unfairly disadvantaged​. Online petitions demanding the cancellation of the exams or a fair rectification process have garnered thousands of signatures​.

In light of the scandal, the IBO will likely implement stricter security measures and consider synchronizing exam schedules more effectively across different regions to prevent future incidents​. Enhancing their monitoring of social media platforms will also be crucial in detecting and combating cheating more swiftly​. The IBO has a significant task ahead in restoring confidence in their examination process and ensuring that such breaches do not recur.

The IB media team responded that they have taken many of the recommended steps, including working with social media companies to identify and respond to cheating allegations. “The IB is promoting open dialogue about academic integrity and encouraging students to take pride in their own achievements, rather than resort to dishonest conduct. Internal review teams are working tirelessly to ensure that students responsible for cheating are held accountable, and those who did not engage in cheating will not receive a lower grade than they would have otherwise.”

Joshua Swift Rawal - Source

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Education: Why Do Students Cheat? Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Works cited.

Cheating is a common phenomenon among students at all levels of education. It happens in high schools, colleges, and universities. In addition, it occurs in both traditional and online settings of learning. Students have sufficient time and resources that give them the opportunity to work hard and pass their exams through personal effort (Davis et al. 35). This begs the question: why do students cheat?

Research has revealed that several reasons and factors are responsible for cheating in schools. A study conducted to find out the prevalence of cheating in colleges found out that approximately 75 percent of college students cheat at one time in the course of their stay at school (Davis et al. 36).

There is need to find a lasting solution because cheating does not reflect the real potential of students. Effects of cheating are reflected in students’ performance at workplaces. Students cheat because many schools define excellence through grades, lack of self-confidence with one’s ability, pressure from parents and teachers to do well, and poor teaching methods that do not fulfill the goals of learning (McCabe et al. 51).

Students cheat because many institutions of learning value grades more than attainment of knowledge (Davis et al. 36). Many school systems have placed more value on performing well in tests and examination than on the process of learning. When assessment tests and examinations play a key role in determining the future of a student, cheating becomes an appropriate channel to perform well (McCabe et al. 51).

Few institutions encourage mastery of learning materials rather than tests. In such institutions, students develop a positive attitude towards education because they are not worried about their performance in tests (Davis et al. 37). They focus more on the attainment of knowledge and skills. Psychologists argue that placing high value on tests teaches students to value short-term effects of education and ignore the long-term effects.

True or false questions, multiple choice questions, and matching tests are examples of assessments used by institutions that value grades (McCabe et al. 53). On the other hand, essay questions, research papers, and term papers are methods used to teach in institutions that value the learning experience and attainment of knowledge more than grades (Davis et al. 39).

Lack of confidence in their abilities motivates students to cheat. Lack of adequate skills and knowledge are some of the reasons that lead to the loss of confidence by students. According to McCabe et al,

“Teachers who focus more on grades have poor methods of teaching compared to teachers who value knowledge.” (51).

Students who think that they are not smart enough to cheat are more likely to cheat in order to get good grades. Learning that puts emphasis on grades involves repetition and memorization of learning materials (Davis et al. 41). Students forget much of the knowledge gained after sitting for their exams. Bored students have little or no connection to their teachers and are therefore likely to cheat because they are never prepared.

Such learning methods make learning boring and uninteresting (McCabe et al. 53). It does not motivate students to work hard and attain knowledge that could be useful in their careers. Interactive learning endows students with the confidence, which makes them believe in their ability to handle all kinds of challenges and situations (Davis et al. 42).

Students cheat because of pressure exerted on them by their parents and teachers to attain good grades (McCabe et al. 54). Many teachers and parents gauge the abilities of students by their grades. Many colleges use grades as a way of choosing the students who are qualified to join college. Self-efficacy is an important aspect of learning because it gives students the confidence to handle various tasks (McCabe et al. 55).

Teachers can cultivate a sense of self-efficacy in students by believing in all students regardless of their grades. However, many teachers alienate students who get low grades and give more attention to students that get high grades. On the other hand, many parents promise to take their children to college only if they get high grades. This motivates students to cheat in order to gain entry into college.

It is important for teachers and parents to find the weaknesses and strengths of all students and help them to exploit their potential. Sidelining some students is wrong and a good enough reason to cheat.

Another reason that explains why students teach is poor leaning and teaching methods (Davis et al.44). Good learning methods involve movements, inventions, creativity, discussions, and interactions. These methods improve comprehension among students and facilitate proper sharing of knowledge. However, many teachers find these methods tedious and time-consuming.

The aftermath is resentment form students because the teachers use methods that make learning boring. People learning through various methods. In addition, different students have different learning needs (McCabe et al. 56). Therefore, using a single teaching method does not serve the needs of all students. Some students develop a negative attitude towards learning and their teacher.

These students are likely to cheat in exams. Teachers should evaluate their students in order to develop teaching methods that cater to them all (McCabe et al. 58). Otherwise, some students might feel neglected in case they fail to comprehend certain subjects or disciplines.

Finally, students cheat because of laziness and lack of focus. According to Parker, students cheat because of lack f goo morals and laziness. According to Parker,

“A startling number attributed variously to the laziness of today’s students, their lack of a moral compass, or the demands of a hypercompetitive society.” (McCabe et al. 59)

She further argues that society demands much of students. This leads to cheating because students feel under pressure to perform well. Laziness is common among students. Students who waste their time on unimportant things have little time to study and do their homework (McCabe et al. 62).

They are unprepared during exams and result to cheating in order to perform well. On the other hand, many employees determine the capabilities of potential employees based on their grades. This motivates students to cheat in order to get high grades.

Reasons for cheating include lack of self-confidence in one’s ability to perform well, pressure from parents and teachers, and poor teaching methods that do not fulfill the learning needs of all students. In addition, many learning institutions place great value on grades rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Cheating is a common phenomenon among students at different levels of learning.

More research needs to be conducted in order to ascertain why students cheat. Further research is necessary because different students cheat for various reasons. Moreover, it is important for teachers to lay more emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge and skills rather than good grades.

Students have different learning needs that are satisfied using different teaching and learning methods. Teachers should evaluate their students in order to determine the most important teaching methods that cater to the learning needs of all students.

Davis, Stephen, Drinan Patrick, and Gallant Tricia. Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do . New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print.

McCabe, Donald, Butterfield Kenneth, and Trevino Linda. Cheating in College: Why Students Do It and What Educators Can Do About It. New York: JHU Press, 2012. Print.

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XY Athletes in Women’s Olympic Boxing: The Paris 2024 Controversy Explained

The historical, political, and medical context of the Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting cases.

With the return of the Olympics, it’s time for another predictable global uproar about XY athletes competing in the female category. This is now a century-old problem in elite sport that we’ve somehow not yet managed to solve in a uniform way. The Paris 2024 iteration of this debate is arguably the most explosive ever due to a confluence of at least three factors:

• This time around, the athletes are boxers not runners, which means they’re going to be punching their competitors. Physical safety and gender norms, not just competitive fairness, are front-and-centre in people’s minds. 
• After the debates about Lia Thomas and Caster Semenya (which I discussed  in an essay for  Quillette  in 2019), the public knows a lot more—though still not enough—about the two categories of XY athletes who might be included in female competition: transwomen like Thomas and people like Semenya with disorders or differences of sex development (DSD). DSD are also sometimes called intersex conditions or sex variations by those who prefer non-medical terms.
• The domestic culture wars around sex and gender have since heated up significantly to become a global battle, with LGBTQI-rights organisations and their allies in the international human-rights community arguing that sex isn’t real or doesn’t matter—either at all or as much as gender identity. Authoritarian regimes led by the Kremlin, meanwhile, describe gender diversity as a harbinger of the end of Western civilisation.

Social media has amplified all of this to the point that the story of the moment, about a boxer from Algeria and another from Taiwan, is top of the news worldwide. Provocative visuals—ubiquitous in boxing—elicit highly emotional responses from some, while others sell their misleading or uninformed political wares (“There’s no evidence these fighters are not cis women!”).

In what follows, I offer a primer on the underlying facts so that readers can follow the story as it unfolds and understand its historical, medical, and political context.

Who are the boxers at the heart of the current storm?

Imane Khelif is a 25-year-old welterweight from Algeria. Lin Yu-ting is a 28-year-old featherweight from Taiwan. Both have medalled at previous world championships in the female category, and both are participating in their second Olympic Games having already competed in Tokyo.

Why is their eligibility for the female category in question?

The International Boxing Association (IBA)  issued a statement  on 31 July explaining that a “recognized” test had established that Khelif and Lin do not meet the eligibility standards for female competition. The IBA says this was not a testosterone test, which means it’s referring to a genetic test. 

Here’s the relevant detail:

On 24 March 2023, IBA disqualified athletes Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif from the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships New Delhi 2023. This disqualification was a result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA Regulations. This decision, made after a meticulous review, was extremely important and necessary to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition. Point to note, the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors. The decision made by IBA on 24 March 2023 was subsequently ratified by the IBA Board of Directors on 25 March 2023. The official record of this decision can be accessed on the IBA website here . The disqualification was based on two tests conducted on both athletes as follows: • Test performed during the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in Istanbul 2022. • Test performed during the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi 2023. For clarification Lin Yu-ting did not appeal the IBA’s decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), thus rendering the decision legally binding. Imane Khelif initially appealed the decision to CAS but withdrew the appeal during the process, also making the IBA decision legally binding.

Officials from the IBA have separately added that both fighters have XY chromosomes and high testosterone (“high T”) levels.

“High T” is one of the ways that testosterone levels outside of the female range tend to be described when one is speaking about an athlete in the female category. As you can see from Figure 1, immediately below, male and female T levels diverge at about the age of thirteen. Both Figure 1 and Figure 2 below make clear there’s no overlap in male and female T levels after early adolescence. Doping and being male are two ways that an adult athlete might have “high T.” 

It’s important to note that the IBA’s statements about Khelif and Lin are doubted by the IOC and others because the IBA has a reputation for being less than reliable, and because the IOC says it hasn’t seen the results of the tests that were the basis for the IBA’s decision to declare them ineligible. Alan Abrahamson reports , however, that the IBA sent them Khelif’s results back in June 2023.

Are Khelif and Lin transgender?

Like Caster Semenya, there’s no indication that either Khelif or Lin identifies as transgender. This makes sense given that they were apparently assigned female at birth—meaning that this is what was written on their birth certificates—and because being transgender is generally a matter of self-identification.

It is understandable that people are confused, however, because the word transgender is also sometimes used to mean a male who identifies as female. Khelif and Lin both identify as female based on their identity documents and their sex of rearing.

In any event, in sport at least, it seems their cases are being treated by everyone concerned as DSD cases.

What are DSD and why does elite sport care about them?

There are many different disorders or differences of sex development (DSD).

Depending on which you’re talking about, they can affect only males, only females, or both. As shown in Figure 2, immediately below, the only DSD of concern to sport affect genetic males who are also androgen sensitive—either fully, e.g. in the case of athletes with 5 alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), or substantially, e.g. in the case of athletes with partial androgen insensitivity (PAIS).

This makes policy sense. The point of the female category is to ensure that females only compete against each other and not against those with male biological advantage, and androgens are the primary driver of sex differences in athletic performance. As rough and insensitive as sex testing has been historically, the basic goal has remained constant.

Athletes with 5-ARD and PAIS have an XY chromosomal complement; they have testes; their testes produce testosterone well outside of the normal female range; their androgen receptors read and process their “high T”; and as a result, their bodies masculinise through childhood and puberty in the ways that matter for sport. Thereafter, their circulating T levels continue to have their usual performance-enhancing effects.

In other words—as shown in Figure 3 below, which compares athletes with 5-ARD to transwomen and sex-typical males and females—their variations from the male norm (such as underdeveloped external genitalia) are irrelevant to athletic performance. When they enter female competition, they carry male advantage.

Do Khelif and Lin have DSD that should make them ineligible for the female category?

As I write, there are currently three running versions of the answer to this question.

The first is the one from the—reputedly unreliable IBA—that Khelif and Lin do have DSD that should make them ineligible. That is, the IBA or its representatives have said they’re genetic males with male advantage. The latter generally means their T is bioavailable—they’re not androgen insensitive—and they’ve otherwise masculinised in the ways that matter in the arena. 

The second is the one that’s trending on social media and in some press commentary saying—without evidence—that Khelif and Lin are entirely female, XX chromosomes, ovaries, and all. Some concede the point that the athletes’ phenotypes are masculine, but they say that lots of women—a status they tend to read broadly to include transwomen—have masculine phenotypes and so this is just a matter of accepting that premise.

The third seems to be the IOC’s present position if we carefully parse its highly coded pronouncements—that Khelif and Lin may well have XY DSD with male advantage, but because they were identified at birth as female and continue to identify as such,  they’re women .

The IOC has spent a lot of time over the last few days lamenting the attacks on Khelif and Lin. We should all be lamenting them—they’re truly awful. Still, this volatile situation is almost entirely of the IOC’s own making. It’s sending impossibly mixed messages that were to be expected given its complicated relationship to sex and gender in sport.

CORRECTION In today’s IOC – Paris 2024 press briefing, IOC President Bach said: “But I repeat, here, this is not a DSD case, this is about a woman taking part in a women’s competition, and I think I have explained this many times.” What was intended was: “But I repeat, here,… — IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) August 3, 2024

• In June, the IOC issued a language guide that disallows the use of sex-based language to describe athletes at the Games and that requires the treatment of gender diverse XY athletes who identify as women to be unequivocal: they are women.
• This language guide follows from the positions the IOC took in 2021 that gender diverse XY athletes should not be considered to have male advantage in the arena simply because they’re male, and that male T levels shouldn’t be disqualifying—despite their scientifically well-understood role as the primary driver of the performance gap between the best males and the best females. 

The idea was to make the controversy about XY athletes like Caster Semenya and Lia Thomas in the female category disappear by disappearing the relevant biology and the language we use to talk about it.

The IOC wasn’t going to get away with this, of course, once the IBA called it out on its inclusion of Khelif and Lin in the female category. But it had tied its own hands in advance, and because of this—in my opinion—much of what has come out of its spokesperson’s mouth is a combination of “inside baseball” and sleights of hand.

Still, an excellent piece on 2 August by Alex Oller of Inside the Games tells us that knowledgeable reporters who are going with one of the two XY DSD versions of the answer to the question likely aren’t wrong. I recommend you read Oller’s reporting in full (and Inside the Games in general), but in sum:

Formally, the IOC is going with the gender that’s listed in Khelif and Lin’s passports, which undoubtedly say that their legal gender is female. You can think of this as the IOC’s current sex test—it’s using legal gender as a proxy for sex and/or eligibility for the female category.

The IOC has also said it has not seen anything to indicate that what’s in Khelif and Lin’s passports isn’t consistent with their sex. The IBA’s statements say otherwise, of course, but the IOC says it can’t trust the IBA’s statements on this because of the “arbitrary” procedure that yielded them.

At the same time, on the substance, the IOC has acknowledged that after Khelif’s first win on Thursday, it scrubbed from its own website the notation that at least Khelif—if not also Lin—has high T. To explain this, it said in part that T levels don’t matter, that lots of females also have high T. This is intentionally misleading. 

Female athletes with high T—including those with polycystic ovaries—have T levels towards the top of the female range, not outside of the female range or inside the male range. Their sex is not in doubt. As I explained above, “high T” in an athlete who seeks to compete in the female category is code in international sports for either doping with exogenous androgens or being biologically male with bioavailable endogenous androgens. There’s no indication that either Khelif or Lin is doping.

As an aside, the reason many federations and the IOC itself for years used T as a proxy for sex is that it’s an excellent one: neither ovaries nor adrenal glands produce T in the male range, only testes do. If you’re looking for biological sex rather than legal gender, it’s certainly more accurate than a passport.

The IOC has also said that it has given up sex testing because there’s no way to get it right practically and in a nondiscriminatory fashion and because scientifically there’s consensus Khelif and Lin are women.

It is impossible to reconcile the IOC’s statements here, even if you’re an insider. Either they had experts look at the files on the athletes or they didn’t. If they didn’t, there can’t be scientific consensus about anything.

By contrast, the rest is internally consistent. For political reasons in general, not with respect to Khelif and Lin in particular, the IOC doesn’t want to test athletes for sex because, in its view, it’s “impractical”—meaning expensive in the multiple ways it cares about—and “discriminatory” against XY athletes who identify as women.

Why were Khelif and Lin able to compete for years before being barred last year?

Khelif and Lin have been competing internationally in the sport of boxing for several years. They were only barred from global competition in 2023.

Prior to 2022, the International Boxing Association didn’t evaluate biological sex or male advantage with a chromosome or testosterone test. Instead, as the IOC is doing now, it relied on the athletes’ passports as a proxy for sex and/or eligibility for the female category. If an athlete was entered into international competition by their domestic federation in the female category and their identity document said they were female, the IBA accepted that as proof of their eligibility.

According to the IOC, the IBA “suddenly” and “arbitrarily” changed its approach in 2023. The IBA says it started conducting at least some biological tests after the Tokyo Games—at its world championships in 2022—but that it only began excluding ineligible athletes beginning in 2023.

Why is the IOC not the IBA in charge of whether Khelif and Lin compete in Paris?

The Olympic Charter normally leaves it to the international federations to set the eligibility standard for their sports. But as a result of governance failures and corruption scandals, the IOC hasn’t recognised the IBA’s authority to regulate the sport at the Olympic Games since 2019. Instead, competition in Tokyo and Paris has been run by an  ad hoc  group appointed by the IOC for this purpose. This group rejected the IBA’s biologically-based determination of Khelif and Lin’s sex in favour of the old passport test, which the IOC describes as “the rule in place in 2016.” As noted above, this happens to be consistent with the IOC’s own policy preferences.

How do Olympic Movement politics play into their story?

Olympic Movement politics are a huge factor in this story in at least two ways, both of which I’ve mentioned already.

The first of these is the IOC’s fight with the IBA. The IBA happens to be aligned with the Kremlin, which is separately hostile to the IOC for its stances on doping and the war in Ukraine.

The second is the IOC’s policy choice to align itself with trans-rights advocates and against advocates for a sex-based female category. Here, the IOC is not just at odds with the IBA but also with some of the Olympic Movement’s most important federations like World Athletics and World Aquatics. Unlike the IOC, these federations are determined to prioritise fairness and the preservation of the female category for female athletes.

Where do we go from here?

The Khelif and Lin cases demonstrate that everyone loses out when the eligibility rules are not firmly set in a way that’s consistent with the goals of the competition category. The firestorm this issue regularly and predictably causes, and the consequent damage to the organisations and athletes involved, should catalyse change. Continuing to push the matter away—as the IBA and other federations, including most prominently FIFA, have done over the years—only means that further ugly controversies will arise in the future.

I will close by reiterating the three basic points that I and other experts in girls’ and women’s sport have been making for a long time.

First, the female category in elite sport has no  raison d’être  apart from the biological sex differences that lead to sex differences in performance and the gap between the top male and female athletes. The suggestion that we could choose to rationalise the category differently—for instance, on the basis of self-declared gender identity—or that we could make increasingly numerous exceptions in the interests of inclusion (as the IOC seems to have done to allow Khelif and Lin to compete in Paris) has no legs outside of certain progressive enclaves.

Second, any eligibility standard—like the IOC’s framework—that denies or disregards sex-linked biology is necessarily category-defeating.

Finally, federations that are committed to the female category and to one-for-one equality for their female athletes must step up and do two things. They must craft evidence-based rules and then stick to them consistently. And they must seriously embrace other opportunities to welcome gender diversity within their sports.

This article has been updated to include a reference and link to Alan Abrahamson’s report.

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Olympic officials address gender eligibility as boxers prepare to fight

PARIS – The case of two Olympic boxers has drawn attention to a thorny issue: Who and what determines which female athletes can compete.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan both were disqualified from the 2023 women’s boxing world championships when they reportedly failed gender eligibility tests.

But this week, the International Olympic Committee confirmed the two boxers have been cleared to compete here at the Paris Games , as they both did at the Tokyo Games in 2021. The issues of so-called gender verification or sex testing have fueled discussion at the Olympics as the fighters prepare to enter the ring at North Paris Arena.

Khelif, a silver medalist at the 2022 world championships, is scheduled to fight Thursday against Angela Carini of Italy in the welterweight division at 146 pounds. Lin, a two-time world champion, is scheduled to fight Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan in the featherweight division at 126 pounds.

“Yeah, it’s really tricky," Australian boxer Tiana Echegaray told reporters Tuesday when asked about the situation. "I don’t know exactly what their circumstances are."

IOC spokesman Mark Adams indicated Tuesday no personal information about the boxers' medical histories would be disclosed. "They've been competing in boxing for a very long time," Adams told reporters. “They've achieved all the eligibility requirements in terms of sex and age. We're following the rules in place in Tokyo."

Who's in charge of boxing?

At the Summer Olympics, when it comes to gender eligibility, the IOC defers to the international federations that govern each of the 32 sports.

The IOC does provide a framework to the international federations . But it's “nonbinding."

In other words, it’s not up to the IOC. And the situation has grown especially complicated with boxing.

Last year the IOC banished the International Boxing Association (IBA), long plagued with scandal and controversy that jeopardized the future of Olympic boxing. In fact, the IOC denied IBA the right to run Olympic boxing during the Tokyo Games in 2021 and instead turned over control to an ad-hoc unit.

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With that ad-hoc unit in charge, Kehlif and Lin both competed at the Tokyo Olympics. Neither won a medal.

But the IBA has maintained control of the world championships and gender eligibility rules. And after Lin won gold and Kehlif won bronze at the event in March 2023, officials announced the boxers had failed medical eligibility tests and stripped them of the medals.

IBA president Umar Kremlev said DNA tests “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded."

What's the eligibility criteria?

A passport could be key, based on comments from Adams, the IOC spokesman.

“I would just say that everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules," he said. “They are women in their passports and it is stated that is the case.”

Thursday Adams added that the issues with the previous tests for the boxers "was not a transgender issue, there's been some misreporting on that in press. ... These women have been competing as women for many years.

"What I would say just quickly on testosterone is, the testosterone (test) is not a perfect test. Many women can have testosterone, even what would be called 'male levels' and still be women and still compete as women. So this is not a panacea − this idea that suddenly you test, do one test for testosterone. Each sport needs to deal with this issue but I think we agreed, I hope we're agreed, we're not going to go back to the bad old days of 'sex testing'. That would be a bad idea."

In the past, other eligibility standards have hinged on science.

Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in track and field in 2012 and 2016, was forced to give up competing in the 800 meters because her testosterone levels were too high based on tests administered by World Athletics, the sport’s international federation previously known as the IAAF.

Semenya was assigned female at birth. She said she was told at age 18 that she has XY chromosomes and naturally had high levels of testosterone.

Khelif and Lin have not publicly addressed details of their medical histories regarding the tests.

The issue of eligibility surfaced as a source of controversy in the United States in 2022 when swimmer Lia Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA championship.

At the time, the NCAA required transgender female athletes to have undergone one year of testosterone suppression treatment to be eligible to compete on a women's team in any sport. The NCAA has been under pressure to update its guidelines after the NAIA banned all transgender athletes from competing in women's sports.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a decision in June by World Aquatics, the international federation for swimming, that prevented Thomas from competing in elite competitions through World Aquatics or USA Swimming.

Who are these two boxers?

Lin, 28, has been fighting as an amateur for more than a decade, according to BoxRec, a widely regarded boxing site.

She made her official amateur debut about three months shy of her 18th birthday, winning at the 2013 AIBA World Women’s Championships. She won gold medals at the world championships in 2019 and 2022.

At 5-foot-9, she often has enjoyed a height advantage while amassing a record of 40-14 with one knockout. The record does not reflect the four fights she won at the 2023 world championships before her disqualification, which resulted in the outcome of the fights being changed to “no contest.’’

She lost her last fight – a split-decision defeat against Brazil’s Jucielen Cerqueira Romeu in April at the 2024 USA Boxing International Invitational in Pueblo, Colorado.

Khelif, 25, made her amateur debut at the 2018 Balkan Women's Tournament. She won a silver medal at the 2022 world championships.

At 5-foot-10, she also has enjoyed a height advantage while amassing a record of 36-9 with four knockouts, according to BoxRec. That does not include the three fights she won at the 2023 world championships before her disqualification resulted in the fights being changed to “no contest.’’

In one of those fights, Khelif stopped her opponent by TKO.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard

UP Police Constable Recruitment Exam Start on August 23, Alerts Issued Amid Paper Leak Concerns

Curated By : Diksha Modi

Translation Desk

Last Updated: August 06, 2024, 20:47 IST

New Delhi, India

Recruitment will be conducted for 60,244 constable positions across the state. (Representational Image)

Approximately 48 lakh candidates had applied for the exam, which has now been rescheduled to August 23, 24, 25, 30, and 31, 2024.

The Uttar Pradesh Police Recruitment Board issued a special alert ahead of the UP Police Constable Recruitment Exam, following the leak of the exam paper on February 18-19, 2024. Approximately 48 lakh candidates had applied for the exam, which has now been rescheduled to August 23, 24, 25, 30, and 31, 2024. In response to the previous leak, the Uttar Pradesh Police Recruitment Board implemented stringent measures to ensure the integrity of the upcoming examination.

An important notice posted on August 5 on the board’s social media accounts calls for public assistance in reporting any suspicious activities related to the exam, including paper leaks and cheating. The notice outlines that information can be reported anonymously through an email address and WhatsApp number provided by the board. The contact details are: [email protected] and WhatsApp number 9454457951. The board assures that the identity of those providing information will be kept confidential.

Any information regarding attempts to undermine the recruitment examinations – such as paper leaks, buying or selling of papers, cheating, solver gangs, or other undesirable activities – should be reported to the board. You can provide such information by emailing [email protected] or sending a message to the WhatsApp number 9454457951, read the statement.

The upcoming exam will be held in two shifts each day, accommodating a total of 5 lakh candidates per shift. Recruitment will be conducted for 60,244 constable positions across the state. The board emphasises its commitment to conducting the examination fairly and warns that those involved in fraudulent activities could face severe penalties, including life imprisonment and fines up to Rs 1 crore.

The UP Police Recruitment Board is determined to prevent any recurrence of the previous issues and is calling on the public to aid in safeguarding the examination process.

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