essay on exam cheating

• 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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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.

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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Students’ Behavior and Cheating During Exams Essay (Critical Writing)

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The study concerning cheating by college students does not require an informed consent because of various reasons. First, an evaluation of students’ behavior during an examination is an educational practice that is necessary to establish behaviors associated with examination cheating. Students are aware of guidelines that restrict certain behaviors in an examination room. In this regard, they are likely to take caution to avoid cases of examination irregularity. Considering that students are aware of the consequences associated with certain behavior during an examination, the research does not expose them to any new risks.

Another aspect demonstrating that the research does not warrant an informed consent is the consideration that an informed consent may diminish the merits of the research. The experimental design for the research highlights the fact that providing students with indications concerning a study in which they are subjects could encourage them to alter their behavior so that it is no longer revealing. Furthermore, the lack of an informed consent ensures that the data obtained during the study does not reveal any sensitive information about the subjects.

The public health study concerning sanitary behaviors requires an informed consent. This research involves characteristics that the subjects may consider as an infringement of personal privacy. The researcher should consult with the subjects concerning the study and let them decide whether there are some aspects of the research that they wish to avoid. In this regard, participants should have an opportunity to evaluate various consequences associated with participating in the study. To obtain optimal results, the researcher should provide the subjects with an opportunity to encompass their preferences, values and goals in the research experiment.

An informed consent will allow the participants to evaluate the intended use of the information obtained during the study, and decide whether it may have negative effects on various aspects of their lives. Another consideration that promotes the need for an informed consent is the environment in which the research takes place. The conditions in the bathroom stall may have some restricting influences on the decisions of the subjects as they impose limits on individual choices.

Thus, the participants may alter their bathroom behaviors in consideration of the available resources. The lack of a capacity to make authentic decisions concerning participation in the research necessitates an informed consent.

Considering the nature of the research in the first case, an informed consent is not necessary. The research concerning cheating by students in a college entails a research design in which consent would have negative effects on the results of the experiment. In addition, the non-consent approach eliminates diverse aspects that could expose the subjects to various risks. The study concerning bathroom behavior requires an informed consent since the nature of the research exposes the subjects to various risks. The need for consent in this research is crucial in order to allow the subjects’ preferences, values and goals to influence the research.

I would feel comfortable participating in both studies as long as the first study does not incorporate an informed consent, and the second study entails an informed consent. In this regard, the two studies can be carried out to serve the interests of the subjects while eliminating various risks.

The research described by the discussion post does not expose the subjects to additional risks other than the risks considered as normal within the environment of concern. Thus, an informed consent is not necessary for the study. In fact, an informed consent may expose the subjects to several risks. In this regard, it does not serve the interests of the subjects. Furthermore, considering the nature of the research, the lack of an informed consent will facilitate the realization of satisfactory results. Undertaking the research without creating awareness among the subjects is the only approach that will promote the realization of candid results.

Suggesting that the subjects face harm by participating in the study will encourage them to avoid roles that may pose risks. Informing the subjects that they are under observation during the research will make them become extremely cautious to avoid incidences that may collide with their interests.

The lack of an informed consent will ensure there are no records that can allow the linking of sensitive information to particular subjects. Instead of employing costly measures that ensure that the collected information is safe, the researcher should adopt a non-consent approach. The board should not engage in acts that may influence the research process in relation to the preferences, goals and values of the subjects.

This is because the board may have personal interests in the study, which do not cater for the interests of the subjects. The study should allow the subjects to demonstrate their own will to participate in the study and ensure that the major influence over the study emanate from the subjects, and not other parties. Various considerations relating to this research do not warrant cooperation between the researcher and the subjects because this may have negative effects on the research process.

• Irrational Student Behavior and Its Causing Factors
• Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Perception Theories
• Why People Cheat
• Cheating in High Schools: Issue Analysis
• Cheating in the Universities or in the Schools
• Social Behavior Observation at Restaurant
• Student Behavior Observation
• Anxiety and Cultural Models in the Conflict
• Restaurant Tipping of Male and Female Servers
• Children Playing Minecraft Game Under Observation
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Doing away with essays won’t necessarily stop students cheating

Honorary Fellow, The University of Melbourne

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Julie Hare does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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It’s never been easier for university students to cheat. We just need look to the scandal in 2015 that revealed up to 1,000 students from 16 Australian universities had hired the Sydney-based MyMaster company to ghost-write their assignments and sit online tests.

It’s known as contract cheating – when a student pays a third party to undertake their assignments which they then pass off as their own. Contract cheating isn’t new – the term was coined in 2006 . But it’s becoming more commonplace because new technologies, such as the smart phone, are enablers.

Read more: 15% of students admit to buying essays. What can universities do about it?

Cheating is taken seriously by universities and the national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency . Much of the focus has been on changing assessment tasks to ones deemed to be harder for a third party to undertake. This is called “ authentic assessment ”.

This type of assessment has been widely adopted at universities . They are comprised of tasks that evaluate knowledge and skills by presenting students with real-world scenarios or problems relevant to the kinds of challenges they would face following graduation. But new research found authentic assessment may be as vulnerable to cheating as other more obvious examples, such as essays.

What the research shows

This new study was conducted by academics from six universities, led by Tracey Bretag and Rowena Harper from the University of South Australia. The research – part of the federal government’s Contract Cheating and Assessment Design project – surveyed 14,086 students and 1,147 staff.

The goal of this research was to collect and understand student’s perceptions of the likelihood of cheating on 13 different assessment tasks. The research then asked teaching staff which of the 13 tasks they used.

The researchers have previously reported from this data set that 6% of students admitted to cheating. The purpose of the current round of analysis was not to understand the extent of cheating, but perceptions of how easily it might be done, and if that correlated with the tasks educators set.

They found, for both students and teachers, assessments with a short turnaround time and heavily weighted in the final mark were perceived as the tasks which were the most likely to attract contract cheating.

Assessments perceived as the least likely to attract contract cheating were in-class tasks, personalised and unique tasks, vivas (oral explanations of a written task) and reflections on practical placements. But these tasks were the least likely to be set by educators, presumably because they’re resource and time intensive.

Contract cheating and assessment design

The research confirms the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is a complex one. There was no assessment tasks for which students reported a 0% likelihood of contract cheating. Students who engage in contract cheating both see and look for opportunities to cheat regardless of the assessment task.

For universities, that means they must assume cheating is always possible and simply changing what assessments they use will not combat the problem.

Many experts have advocated the use of supervised exams to combat cheating. But this new research adds to a growing body of evidence that exams provide universities and accrediting bodies with a false sense of security. In fact, previous data has shown students reported engaging in undetected cheating on supervised exams at higher rates than other types of cheating.

Another common approach is to use a series of small, graded tasks, such as spontaneous in-class tests, sometimes called continuous assessment . Even here, students indicated these were the third most likely form of assessment to be outsourced.

Who’s most likely to cheat?

There has been much attention , particularly during the MyMaster scandal , on international students’ use of contract cheating. The new research suggests both international students and domestic students from non-English speaking backgrounds are more likely to engage in contract cheating than other students.

Read more: Don't assume online students are more likely to cheat. The evidence is murky

The research also found business and commerce degrees were more likely be perceived as attracting contract cheating. Engineering was also particularly vulnerable to cheating.

Students from non-English speaking backgrounds hypothesised cheating would be most likely to occur in assessments that required research, analysis and thinking skills (essays), heavily weighted assignments and assessments with short turnaround times.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, students who indicated they were satisfied with the quality of teaching were less likely to think breaches of academic integrity were likely. In other words, this confirms previous research which showed students dissatisfied with their educational experience are more likely to cheat.

So what do we do about it?

This research provides yet more compelling evidence that curriculum and changes to teaching strategies and early intervention must be employed to support students’ academic endeavours.

The researchers also point out high levels of cheating risks undermining the reputation and quality of Australia’s A$34 billion export sector in international education.

The data demonstrates assessment tasks designed to develop relevant professional skills, which teachers are highly likely to set, were perceived by students as tasks that can easily be cheated on. These might include asking accounting students to memorandums, reports or other communication groups to stakeholders, such as shareholders. In fact, among students from a non-English speaking background, the risks of cheating might actually increase for these tasks. This means authentic assessment might run the increasing risk of being outsourced.

Read more: Assessment design won’t stop cheating, but our relationships with students might

This research shows the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is not a simple product of cause and effect. In fact, the nature of the task itself may be less relevant to the prevalence of cheating than other factors such as a student’s from non-English speaking background’s status, perceived opportunities to cheat or satisfaction with the teaching and learning environment.

All educators must remain vigilant about cheating. Teachers must be properly resourced by their universities to ensure they can create rich learning environments which uphold the integrity of the higher education system.

Burdened with large debts and facing a precarious job market after graduation, it’s perhaps unsurprising some students, particularly those who are struggling academically, take a transactional approach to their education. This new research provides more clear evidence contract cheating is a systemic problem that requires a sector-wide response.

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Essay on Cheating in EXAM

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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 )

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

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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1. Long Essay On Cheating In School By Prasanna

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“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.”

Prasanna begins the essay by defining cheating in schools and then incorporates how this unethical behavior occurs in reality. She further delves into the argument that cheating is not learning but an addiction that can result in students losing self-confidence, sanity, and integrity. 

Apart from showing the common causes and harmful effects of cheating on students, Prasanna also adds parents’ and teachers’ critical roles in helping students in their studies to keep them from cheating.

“It’s human nature to want to win, and some of us will go against the rules to do so. It can be harmless, but in many cases, it is annoying, or even hurtful.”

Kip defines cheating as human nature and focuses his essay on individuals who are hell-bent on wanting to win in online games. Unfortunately, these players’ desire to be on top is all-consuming, and they’re willing to go against the rules and disregard their integrity.

He talks about his experiences of being cheated in a game called AoE. He also incorporates the effects of these instances on newbies. These cheaters will humiliate, dishearten, and traumatize beginners who only want to have fun.

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“A cheater is more than likely lying to themselves more than to the people around them. A person can only go so far before their lies catch up to them, begin to accumulate, and start to penalize you.”

Mcbride dedicates her essay to answering why cheating is wrong, no matter the circumstance. She points out that there will always be a definite punishment for cheaters, whether they get caught. Mcbride believes that students who cheat, copy, and have someone else do their work are lazy and irresponsible. These students will never gain knowledge.

However, she also acknowledges that some cheaters are desperate, while some don’t realize the repercussions of their behaviors. At the end of the essay, she admits to cheating but says she’s no longer part of that vicious cycle, promising she has already realized her mistakes and doesn’t want to cheat again.

“Keep in mind that relationships are not based on logic, but are influenced by our emotions.”

The author explains how it’s challenging to define cheating in a relationship. It’s because every person has varying views on the topic. What others consider an affair may be acceptable to some. This includes the partners’ interaction with others while also analyzing the individual’s personality, such as flirting, sleeping in the same bed, and spending time with folks.

The essay further explains experts’ opinions on why men and women cheat and how partners heal and rebuild their trust. Finally, examples of different forms of cheating are discussed in the piece to give the readers more information on the subject. 

“…emotional cheating can be described as a desire to engage in another relationship without physically leaving his or her primary relationship.”

There’s an ongoing debate about whether emotional cheating should be labeled as such. The essay digs into the causes of emotional cheating to answer this issue. These reasons include lack of attention to each other, shortage of affectionate gestures, and misunderstandings or absence of proper communication. 

All of these may lead to the partner comparing their relationship to others. Soon, they fall out of love and fail to maintain boundaries, leading to insensitivity and selfishness. When a person in a relationship feels any of these, it can be a reason to look for someone else who can value them and their feelings.

9 Helpful Prompts in Writing Essays About Cheating

Here are some cheating subtopics you can focus your essay on:

Some types of cheating include deception, fabrication, bribery, impersonation, sabotage, and professional misconduct. Explain their definitions and have examples to make it easier for readers to understand.

You can use this prompt even if you don’t have any personal experience of being cheated on. You can instead relay events from a close friend or relative. First, narrate what happened and why. Then add what the person did to move on from the situation and how it affected them. Finally, incorporate lessons they’ve learned.

While this topic is still discussed by many, for you, is cheating a redeemable mistake? Or is it a choice with consequences? Express your opinion on this matter. Gather reliable evidence to support your claims, such as studies and research findings, to increase your essay’s credibility.

Tax evasion is a crime with severe penalties. Explain what it is and its punishments through a famous tax evasion case your readers can immediately recognize. For example, you can use Al Capone and his 11-year imprisonment and $215,000 back taxes . Talk through why he was charged with such and add your opinion. Ensure you have adequate and reliable sources to back up your claims.

Start with a  5 paragraph essay  to better organize your points.

Some say everyone will cheat at some point in their life. Talk about the time you cheated – it can be at a school exam, during work, or while on a diet. Put the perspective that made you think cheating was reasonable. Did you feel guilt? What did you do after, and did you cheat again? Answer these questions in your essay for an engaging and thrilling piece of writing.

Since academic cheating is notorious in America, use this topic for your essay. Find out which areas have high rates of academic cheating. What are their penalties? Why is cheating widespread? Include any measures the academe put in place.

Cheating is a frequent cause of conflict on small and big screens. Watch a film or read a story and write a review. Briefly summarize the plot, critique the characters, and add your realizations after finishing the piece. 

Goodreads has a list of books related to cheating. Currently, Thoughtless by S.C. Stephens has the highest rating.

Use this as an opportunity to write a unique essay by explaining the quote based on your understanding. It can be quotes from famous personalities or something that resonates with you and your experiences.

Since cheating’s cause and effect is a standard prompt, center your essay on an area unrelated to academics or relationships. For instance, write about cheating on your diet or cheating yourself of the opportunities life presents you.

Create a top-notch essay with excellent grammar. See our list of the best grammar checkers.

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The problem of cheating in exams

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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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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.

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High-ranking Toronto cop demoted at disciplinary hearing

Insp. stacy clarke admitted to giving confidential information to black constables before promotion interviews.

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Toronto police officer Stacy Clarke has been handed a two-year demotion to the rank of inspector for her part in what disciplinary hearing officer Robin McElary-Downer called a "cheating scheme" in a Wednesday police act tribunal decision. 

"I found there is sufficient and tangible evidence in front of me that finds [Clarke's] actions amply illustrated abuse of position and abuse of power," McElary-Downer said. "This makes her an unsuitable candidate to be automatically reinstated to the rank of superintendent. Supt. Clarke will need to reapply down the road.

"When she does, I'm truly hopeful she will demonstrate her readiness to serve at the rank of superintendent."

Clarke's defence lawyer Joseph Markson had argued Clarke should be demoted to the rank of inspector for a year to 18 months, before being automatically reinstated to the rank of superintendent. 

Police prosecutor Scott Hutchison countered that Clarke be demoted two ranks to staff sergeant, with the opportunity to reapply to become a superintendent after two years.

Toronto police superintendent demoted to inspector over cheating scandal

After serving her 24-month penalty, Clarke can reapply to become a superintendent, McElary-Downer said.

The hearing officer asked Clarke, who was present at the hearing, if she wanted to address the tribunal after her sentence was handed down. She did not make any submissions.

Clarke won't rule out appeal

Speaking to reporters inside Toronto police headquarters for the first time since the hearing began, Clarke wouldn't rule out appealing the penalty, but said she's looking forward to moving on.

"Just very disappointed and very sad about it," Clarke said. "There's a lot of people who have shared these types of experiences ... There's a lot of work still to be done and I'm confident we'll get it done."

In response to McElary-Downer's ruling, the Toronto Police Service said it "respects the outcome" of the decision.

"Leaders at the Service are held to the highest standards of conduct, and we take any allegations of misconduct seriously," a statement from the office of Chief Myron Demkiw read. "We acknowledge this case brought forward a number of issues that the Service is addressing.

"The Service has implemented significant reforms in recent years. Hiring and promotional processes were overhauled and our workforce is diversifying at all ranks."

• Toronto cop felt 'invisible' advocating for Black mentees, disciplinary hearing hears
• Here's what happened when demonstrators questioned this officer's commitment to her Black community

Clarke pleaded guilty to seven counts of misconduct in September of 2023, but testified at a hearing this spring that she acted out of desperation to counteract what she called "anti-Black systemic racism" when she gave confidential information to six Black constables ahead of promotional job interviews in 2021.

McElary-Downer said Clarke committed a number of transgressions including photographing interview questions and answers and sending them to her six mentees, instructing one of the officers to delete photos she sent them and conducting mock interviews with officers.

In her decision, McElary-Downer said "it's clear rank brings a higher expectation of flawless behaviour.

"The nature of Supt. Clarke's misconduct undoubtedly shook the confidence and trust the public had in her, and on a broader scale, the Toronto Police Service," she added.

The hearing officer did note that Clarke recognized her wrongdoing and immediately took responsibility for her actions.

"Outside of this incident, Supt. Clarke has led an admirable career," McElary-Downer said. "Indisputably, she is held in high regard by the many people she has worked with. Her history reflects she is a rockstar."

Numerous high-profile police officers acted as character witnesses on behalf of Clarke throughout the hearing, including former Toronto police chief Mark Saunders.

Clarke is the first Black female officer to reach the rank of superintendent with Toronto police. Her lawyer referred to her as the "Black female face" of the force throughout the proceedings.

Clarke has been a police officer since joining the service as a cadet in 1998. She was promoted to superintendent in July 2020. McElary-Downer pointed to Clarke's record as a police officer while giving her decision.

Clarke's supporters call penalty 'harsh'

Supporters of Clarke were present at the hearing and throughout much of the process.

Some said after Clarke's demotion was handed down that's it's an example of what Black officers endure in society and the service.

"I think it's an extremely harsh punishment and merely a reflection of the justice system and the treatment of Black people from slavery up until now," said Roy Williams, a former member of the Toronto Police Services Board.

Williams, also a past president of the Jamaican Canadian Association, called the penalty a "disservice to the Black community and to the Toronto Police Service."

"Yes, she should have been punished," he said. "But I think the punishment is very severe. If there has to be a demotion, a demotion to inspector for no more than a year and [an immediate] return to superintendent."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tyson Lautenschlager is a writer and producer with CBC Toronto. He splits his time between writing and producing for TV, working on the assignment desk and writing for web. Tyson can be contacted via email at [email protected].

With files from Adam Carter

Related Stories

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Online Programs

Ap® us history (intensive, ncaa approved).

• Advanced CTY-Level
• Session-Based
• History and Social Science

Analyze historic material, synthesize your own ideas, and develop skills to make conclusions on the basis of an informed understanding of history in this course that successfully prepares you for the AP U.S. History exam. You’ll master the ability to interpret documents while learning how to persuasively present your reasoning and evidence in an essay format.

Through synchronous virtual class meetings every other week and one-on-one review sessions you can schedule directly with your instructor, you’ll chart the course of U.S. history from the Constitution all the way down to challenges of the 21st century.

Time Commitment: 8-11 hours per week (1 hour of class time every other week, 8-10 hours of independent work).  

Course Overview

What we'll do

We’ll explore U.S. history through textbook readings, projects, directed online activities, and live sessions with an experienced instructor that emphasizes critical thinking and applications. We’ll learn to interpret historical documents, master a significant body of facts, and write critical essays and short-answer responses. Students will analyze historical facts material, synthesize their own ideas, and develop the skills to make conclusions based on a knowledgeable judgment. They will also learn how to present their reasoning and clear evidence persuasively in essay format.

What we’ll learn

• How to construct a response to a prompt concerning the rise and fall of the Equal Rights Amendment within the context of a forum, a three-part response to a short answer question set concerning British and Spanish slave systems within the context of a forum
• How to construct a three-part response to a short answer question set involving primary sources on pre-Revolution British/Colonial relations in North America, the Louisiana Purchase, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, post-Civil War American industrialists, and the political alignment of FDR’s New Deal, within the context of a forum
• How to construct an essay using a secondary source concerning Henry Kissinger’s early appraisal of American involvement in Vietnam
• How to construct an essay in response to a document-based question prompt on American views of imperialism from 1898 to 1908; and post-World War II social movements through describing historical context, analyzing a set of primary documents and synthesizing the information into a thesis, analyzing multiple sources of evidence, both given and memorized, to support a thesis statement, and identifying and explaining at least three sources’ point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience
• How to construct an essay in response to a long essay question prompt about the American government's transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution; and the Jacksonian Democracy by describing historical context, synthesizing relevant historical evidence into a thesis, and analyzing memorized, multiple sources of evidence to support a thesis statement
• How to plan a written practice response to a document-based question prompt on British North American and Native American relations via an informational organizer
• How to plan a written practice response to a long essay question prompt on the social impact of Europeans and the social structures of Western Hemispheric peoples via an informational organizer

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Identify and explain historical developments and processes
• Analyze sourcing and context of primary and secondary sources
• Analyze arguments in primary and secondary sources
• Analyze the context of historical events, developments, or processes
• Use historical reasoning processes (comparison, causation, continuity and change) to analyze patterns and connections between and among historical developments and processes
• Develop an argument

How we'll measure learning

Instructors evaluate student work using rubrics and provide detailed constructive feedback on each assignment. This course is aligned to the College Board AP U.S. History course skills and contents.

This course is

Register for an Online course by selecting an open class below. If no open classes are listed, then course enrollment is currently closed. Note: You will need to have an active CTY Account to complete registration through MyCTY

This course is not open for enrollment at this time. Please check back later.

Testing and Prerequisites

Students must achieve qualifying scores on an advanced assessment to be eligible for CTY programs. If you don’t have qualifying scores, you have several different testing options. We’ll help you find the right option for your situation.

Course Prerequisites

1 prerequisite

Successful completion of a high school history course

Cost and Financial Aid

Application fee.

• Nonrefundable Application Fee - $15 (Waived for financial aid applicants)
• Nonrefundable International Fee - $20 (outside US only)

Financial Aid

We have concluded our financial aid application review process for Academic Year 2023-2024 Online Programs (Courses with start dates July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024). Our application for Academic Year 2024-2025 Online Programs is expected to open in January. We encourage those who may need assistance in the future to apply for aid as early as possible.

Technical Requirements

This course requires a computer with high-speed Internet access and an up-to-date web browser such as Chrome or Firefox. You must be able to communicate with the instructor via email. Visit the Technical Requirements and Support page for more details.

This course uses a virtual classroom for instructor-student communication. The classroom works on standard computers with the Zoom desktop client , and on tablets or handhelds that support the Zoom Mobile app . Recorded meetings can only be viewed on a computer with the Zoom desktop client installed. The Zoom desktop client and Zoom Mobile App are both free to download.

Most course lectures may be viewed on mobile devices, but some assignments and quizzes must be completed on a desktop or laptop computer.

This course uses Respondus LockDown Browser proctoring software for designated assessments. LockDown Browser is a client application that is installed to a local computer. Visit the Respondus website for system requirements .

Terms & Conditions

Students may interact in online classrooms and meetings that include peers, instructors, and occasional special guests.

Courses may include videos from the web. Recommendations or links at the end of videos are provided by the video host and are not CTY recommendations. 

Virtual class meetings may be recorded for students to review.

After a you complete a course, your projects may be used to illustrate work for future students. 

You will need to create an account on a third-party site to access course resources.

About History and Social Science at CTY

Our online History and Social Science courses include the study of economics, U.S. history and government, world history, and psychology. Reading and writing are at the heart of all our offerings. Courses for older students cover material typically found in introductory college-level classes, while younger scholars enjoy studying world history and geography. All courses are guided by expert instructors who connect with you through virtual class meetings and interactive review workshops. Whichever course you choose, you’ll gain important insights into the inner workings of government, world civilizations, global culture, and the human mind.

Dig into World History and Geography

In the newly created Preparation for AP World History and Geography Eastern Hemisphere and Preparation for AP World History and Geography Western Hemisphere courses, students explore fascinating historical concepts of the past through historical analysis, engaging discussions, and dynamic live sessions. Students meet with their instructor and peers each week to investigate transformative world events and discuss their thoughts with one another. Taking these courses will help students prepare for the challenge of AP History courses.

Meet our History and Social Sciences Instructors

As an educator I believe that my job is to make learning easy. To that end, I always try to present the material in a way that is as easy for my students to understand as humanly possible. In doing so, students are inspired to want to learn because they see that effort gets results.

I enjoy building relationships with students, facilitating their learning, and helping them achieve a refined understanding of the complex world around us. Using a high energy, enthusiastic approach to learning allows me to deeply connect with my students while having lots of fun!

Alejandro Lozano

History and Social Sciences Instructor

Teaching AP World History: Modern , I'm frequently astonished at how natural it is for students from both the United States and across the world to meet and learn about a global subject from not just their instructor but, just as importantly, so many different student perspectives!

Tyler Meinhart

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Jacobs School of Music Bulletin 2024-2025

•   IU Bulletins
• Undergraduate
• Regulations and Procedures

Admission Requirements

• General Requirements for Bachelor's Degrees
• Curricula for Bachelor's Degrees
• Bachelor of Music Degrees
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Undergraduate Division

Indiana university bloomington requirements for incoming freshmen.

The standards listed below represent the minimum levels of preparation and achievement necessary to be considered for admission. Most admitted students exceed these minimum levels. Each application is reviewed individually. When making admission decisions, the university is primarily concerned with the breadth and depth of the college-preparatory program including the student’s cumulative grade point average, SAT/ACT scores, academic curriculum and the grades received in those academic courses, grade trends in college-preparatory subjects, class rank, and other additional factors.

High School Graduation

Applicants must earn a diploma from an accredited high school (or must have completed the Indiana High School Equivalency Diploma) to be eligible for admission consideration. Students who are homeschooled or attend an alternative school should submit credentials that demonstrate equivalent levels of achievement and ability.

Academic Preparation

Applicants should complete at least 34 credits of college-preparatory courses, advanced placement courses, and/or college courses in high school, including:

• 8 credits of English , such as literature, grammar, composition, and journalism
• 7 credits of mathematics , including 4 credits of algebra and 2 credits of geometry (or an equivalent 6 credits of integrated algebra and geometry), and 1 credit of pre-calculus, trigonometry, or calculus
• 6 credits of social sciences , including 2 credits of U.S. history, 2 credits of world history/civilization/geography, and 2 additional credits in government, economics, sociology, history, or similar topics
• 6 credits of sciences , including at least 4 credits of laboratory sciences - biology, chemistry, or physics
• 4 credits of world languages
• 3 or more credits of additional college-preparatory courses. Additional mathematics credits are recommended for students intending to pursue a science degree and additional world language credits are recommended for all students.

Alternative college-preparatory courses may be substituted for courses that are not available in the applicant's high school.

Grades in Academic Classes

Cumulative GPA, as well as the grades earned in the 34 courses required for admission, is an important part of the application review process. Weighted GPA is also part of the review, if included on transcript.

Application Essay

An IU-specific essay of 200-400 words is required.

Standardized Test Scores

ACT or SAT scores are accepted as either official or self-reported scores. Self-reported scores can be entered in the Indiana University application. If offered admission, the offer will be contingent upon receipt of official test scores from testing agencies, which must match or be higher than those self-reported during the admissions process. IU's test-optional admissions policy allows students (both domestic and international) to choose at the point of application whether to have SAT or ACT test scores considered as part of the admissions review. For applicants who choose not to have test scores considered, a greater emphasis will be placed on grades in academic courses and grade trends in the admissions review. Applicants receive equal consideration for admission and scholarship to the Jacobs School of Music, regardless of whether or not they applied under the test-optional policy. There are several groups of students who will be required to provide SAT or ACT scores. Homeschooled students, students who have attended a school with non-traditional evaluation methods where traditional alpha or numerical grades are not assigned, and student athletes subject to NCAA eligibility standards will be required to submit a standardized test score. Applicants who are at least 21 years old or have been out of high school for three or more years may be considered for admission without standardized SAT and/or ACT test scores.

Information

For additional information, contact the Office of Admissions, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; (812) 855-0661; [email protected].  

International Students

To be admitted, international students must complete above-average work in their supporting programs. International applicants whose native language is not English must meet the English Proficiency requirements of Indiana University for undergraduate degree-seeking students. A complete description of options to complete the English Proficiency requirement is available at the Office of International Services (OIS) website.

Admitted undergraduate international students are also required to take the Indiana Academic English Test (IAET) and must register for any supplemental English courses prescribed based on the results of this examination or, if necessary, enroll in the intensive English language program.

For additional information, contact the Office of International Services, Indiana University, Ferguson International Center, 330 N. Eagleson Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405; [email protected] ; (812) 855-9086; http://ois.iu.edu/admissions/index.html .

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