Earlier this summer, Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine dropped charges against students accused of using online materials to cheat on close-booked exams. The decision came after hundreds of students and other observers criticized the college’s original investigation, which was carried out by secretly tracking students’ activity on the college’s learning management system. Dartmouth is one of several institutions to be embroiled in cheating scandals in recent months, raising questions about academic dishonesty in online courses and how colleges and universities should respond.
Concerns about academic integrity have surged during the COVID-19 pandemic -- as have institution’s reliance on software tracking and monitoring students’ activity for signs of cheating. Within months of the nationwide shift to remote learning, 54 percent of colleges and universities were using online proctoring and surveillance tools. Alarming stories quickly emerged on social media of honest students failing exams after surveillance tools erroneously identified them as cheaters because their eyes wandered too frequently across the computer screen. Parents and students began demanding schools stop using such tools due to an array of privacy worries, concerns about racial bias, and accusations of ableism.
This potential increase in academic dishonesty and some institutions’ overly zealous -- and frequently invasive -- response is all an outgrowth of our outdated approach to learning and assessment. In an era where students have access to course material and study websites and where the answers to many exam questions are just a Google query away, our understanding of cheating and academic integrity is woefully behind the curve. So is our over-reliance on traditional assessments and tests. We created this world. Our students are just living in it.
For many students, earning a good grade is often simply more important than learning. There is a lot riding on grades. If a student fails a high-stakes exam, they are not only in danger of retaking the course and delaying their graduation, but losing crucial financial aid and dropping out. This concern has proven especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic. One study last year found that more than 20 percent of Pell Grant recipients were at risk of losing their aid after failing to make satisfactory academic progress during the pandemic. The pressure to cheat can be immense.
Dr. Jessica Rowland Williams
The way we codify our approach to academic integrity in policy also raises important questions about equity. The rapid growth and expansion of online, digital, and hybrid learning also raises profound questions around the accessibility of instruction and assessment. And yet, we largely still rely on the same uniform kinds of assessments like traditional midterms and final exams to determine whether learners are actually learning.
Educators are capable of finding better ways for students to demonstrate mastery, from authentic assessments focused on skills that can be applied outside of the classroom, to formative assessments that frequently measure learning throughout a course rather than at the end. We need to differentiate assessment and instruction in ways that meet the emerging majority of students.
