Cheating at online formative tests: Does it pay off?

Online testing has become a common way to organize formative assessment in higher education. When student participation is stimulated by grading formative tests that are held in an unproctored online environment, this raises the issue of academic dishonesty. In the literature, a debate is waged on the prevalence of cheating in unproctored online environments. The issue is whether online exams are invitations to cheat. We add to this literature by using the Harmon & Lambrinos (2008) and Jacob & Levitt (2003) approaches to detect cheating. Next, we go one step further by exploring whether cheating in online formative tests will do the suspected perpetrators any good. This is a non-trivial question, as students that cheat at formative tests forsake the opportunity to enhance their learning and may suffer the consequences in subsequent proctored summative tests. We investigate this using data from a large School of Economics in the Netherlands. We calculate a score that indicates the likelihood of cheating, based on unexpected grade patterns, and find that this score is negatively related to academic progress. Our evidence thus suggests that while cheating in online formative tests may happen, it does not seem to pay off.

[1]  J. Conway,et al.  Faculty and College Student Beliefs about the Frequency of Student Academic Misconduct , 2006 .

[2]  B. W. Brown,et al.  Can Web Courses Replace the Classroom in Principles of Microeconomics , 2002 .

[3]  Donald D. Carpenter,et al.  FACTORS INFLUENCING ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ DECISIONS TO CHEAT BY TYPE OF ASSESSMENT , 2006 .

[4]  N. Brown,et al.  An exploration of student nurses' experiences of formative assessment. , 2009, Nurse education today.

[5]  Beryl C. McEwen,et al.  Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies , 2007 .

[6]  J. W. Gikandi,et al.  Online formative assessment in higher education: A review of the literature , 2011, Comput. Educ..

[7]  I. Arnold,et al.  Motivation and Math Skills as Determinants of First-Year Performance in Economics , 2012 .

[8]  Cornelius J. König,et al.  Integrating Theories of Motivation , 2006 .

[9]  Kristen M. Kennedy,et al.  Academic dishonesty and distance learning: Student and faculty views. , 2000 .

[10]  Victoria Simpson Beck,et al.  Testing a model to predict online cheating—Much ado about nothing , 2014 .

[11]  Charles L. Sigmund,et al.  Can We Control Cheating in the Classroom , 1999 .

[12]  J. Hattie,et al.  The Power of Feedback , 2007 .

[13]  I. E. Allen,et al.  Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011. , 2011 .

[14]  Alan Fask,et al.  Comment on “The Impact of Online Assessment on Grades in Community College Distance Education Mathematics Courses” by Ronald W. Yates and Brian Beaudrie , 2011 .

[15]  Mark L. Berenson,et al.  Proctored versus Unproctored Online Exams: Studying the Impact of Exam Environment on Student Performance. , 2009 .

[16]  O. Harmon,et al.  Assessment Design and Cheating Risk in Online Instruction , 2010 .

[17]  R. Baumeister,et al.  Longitudinal Study of Procrastination, Performance, Stress, and Health: The Costs and Benefits of Dawdling , 1997 .

[18]  Gary A. Smith.  How Does Student Performance on Formative Assessments Relate to Learning Assessed by Exams , 2007 .

[19]  Stefan Fries,et al.  Exploring reasons and consequences of academic procrastination: an interview study , 2013 .

[20]  T. Wolsey.  Efficacy of Instructor Feedback on Written Work in an Online Program , 2008 .

[21]  Lori McNabb,et al.  Communities of Integrity in Online Courses: Faculty Member Beliefs and Strategies , 2009 .

[22]  Joe Kerkvliet,et al.  Academic Honesty and Online Courses , 2006 .

[23]  Donald P. Ely,et al.  Assessing Learners Online , 2007 .

[24]  Johan N. M. Lagerlöf,et al.  The Effects of Remedial Mathematics on the Learning of Economics: Evidence from a Natural Experiment , 2008 .

[25]  George Watson,et al.  Cheating in the Digital Age: Do students cheat more in on-line courses? , 2008 .

[26]  J. Young.  Online Classes See Cheating Go High-Tech. , 2012 .

[27]  Helen Lam,et al.  Assessing Student Achievement and Progress with Online Examinations: Some Pedagogical and Technical Issues. , 2008 .

[28]  Chelley Vician,et al.  Students' Perspectives of the Influence of Web-Enhanced Coursework on Incidences of Cheating , 2006 .

[29]  Clifford Nowell,et al.  Undergraduate Student Cheating in the Fields of Business and Economics , 1997 .

[30]  Oskar R. Harmon,et al.  Are Online Exams an Invitation to Cheat? , 2007 .

[31]  Eric Kuennen,et al.  Basic Math Skills and Performance in an Introductory Statistics Course , 2006 .

[32]  Michael F. Young,et al.  Does Moral Judgment Go Offline When Students Are Online? A Comparative Analysis of Undergraduates' Beliefs and Behaviors Related to Conventional and Digital Cheating , 2007 .

[33]  John Kane,et al.  "No Significant Distance" between Face-to-Face and Online Instruction: Evidence from Principles of Economics , 2004 .

[34]  B. Whitley,et al.  FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH CHEATING AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS: A Review , 1998 .

[35]  Marianne Johnson,et al.  Basic Math Skills and Performance in an Introductory Economics Class , 2004 .

[36]  Ronald W. Yates,et al.  The Impact of Online Assessment on Grades in Community College Distance Education Mathematics Courses , 2009 .

[37]  M. Fuss,et al.  The Determinants of Success in University Introductory Economics Courses , 1994 .