Political Science Educator: volume 27, issue 2
Reflections
By Darrell Carter (darrell.carter@unlv.edu)
The current events shaping student development and perception have taught a common enough lesson that may systematically alter student norms on academic dishonesty. Living through events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, mass protest movements, climate change, mass shootings teaches students that “life ain’t fair, kid.” This perception leads many students, including high achieving students, to view some types of academic dishonesty as acceptable, or even necessary, to succeed academically. Student stress, anxiety, and academic dishonesty increased during and after the Covid-19 pandemic (Abdelrahim 2022, Jenkins et al. 2023, Deal & Lee 2023). News articles and opinion pieces in education magazines discuss this issue extensively (Redden 2021, Duckworth 2022, Lem 2023). While cracking down with greater technology and more serious consequences may deter cheating and plagiarism, we might also affirm the validity of this perception. Students are navigating a stressful and unfair environment to try to succeed. We should be building confidence in the fairness of our courses and our evaluations, offer resources to mitigate stress and mental health issues, and take extra steps to teach students how to be successful in our classes without resorting to academic dishonesty.
Over a couple dozen courses both as a teaching assistant and instructor of record I employed online exams taken outside of the class at the students’ discretion. These exams would be available for a fixed period, were timed multiple choice with randomized questions from question banks, required an academic misconduct honor pledge to begin, and would sometimes also employ software to counter cheating.[1] By moving exams outside of class time, I felt that I gained more time for instruction and gave students some flexibility in taking their exams. When we returned to in person or hybrid instruction in 2021, discussions with colleagues and students suggested views on academic misconduct had changed. High achieving students, students who we would normally expect strong norms against academic dishonesty, openly admitted to cheating on online exams and other assessments. To evaluate this in my own course, I employed an anonymous, non-scientific survey, with twenty student respondents. The results prompted me to redesign my exams and reevaluate my assumptions about my students’ experiences and behavior. A highlight of results are included in the table below, but students reported that “other students” were still likely to cheat even with an honor pledge question suggesting a change from previous research. Most students who reported cheating would be more likely to cheat on an online exam than in person, even if they would not be caught. Most interesting, 70% of students selected stress as a reason they or other students would cheat on an exam.
Unscientific Anonymous Survey of 20 Students
| Question Summary | “Yes” Response Rate |
| Do you feel an honor code pledge makes other students less likely to cheat?
|
25% |
| Knowing you would not be caught, would you or students you know be more likely to cheat on an online exam than an in person exam?
|
80% |
| Do you feel students you know are more likely to cheat on exams in a class they don’t consider to be important?
|
50% |
| Why would you or students you know be willing to cheat on online exams? (Cheating Reduces Stress Option Selected) | 70% |
These results prompted me to return to in person exams and to understand that even high performing students viewed their current environment as stacked against them. They viewed cheating on an online exam as justifiable to reduce the stress and pressure of succeeding. Recent research supports this sentiment by showing that cheating is on the rise during and since the Covid-19 pandemic (Abdelrahim 2022, Jenkins et al. 2023). With the stress and anxiety from the social isolation of Covid-19, “new cheaters” proliferated after the pandemic who most frequently cheated on summative assessments like exams and quizzes (Abdelrahim 2022, Jenkins et al. 2023).
Mental health, negative emotions, and stress are key factors in student academic dishonesty since the pandemic. Negative emotional states changed cheating norms to be more permissible, especially when assessments were more heavily weighted (Tindall et al. 2021). One study found the second most common topic in an open-ended response about why students cheat was about mental health issues such as high stress or depression (Deal & Lee 2023). They also found students reported cheating primarily because of feeling stress and disconnected (Deal & Lee 2023). This is supported by similar findings that, along with stress, feelings of isolation were associated cheating (Abdelrahim 2022). Students view their environment as unfair and high stress. Even when they are high performing students who know the material, they justify cheating because it reduces stress, possibly even viewing it as helping “level the field.” High levels of anxiety and stress “trigger self-serving and ethical rationalizing” to change acceptable norms on academic dishonesty (Abdelrahim 2022). Jenkins et al. argue that mental health issues lead students to “view cheating as a necessary evil to cope with the demands” of academia (Jenkins et al. 2023). Students see cheating as an acceptable coping mechanism because of their high levels of stress and the unjust academic environment. This is an important realization for us as educators in how we address cheating going forward.
We should recognize the ways our students experience unfair conditions and try to restore confidence in both their ability to succeed without cheating and the fairness of their evaluations in the class. Tindall et al. (2021) suggest that stress-related cheating might be addressed through course redesign (Tindall et al. 2021). Flexible course design in assignment due dates, ‘free passes’ on minor assignments, lowering the impact of exams on their final grade, and providing dedicated study materials or review sessions for exams could mitigate coping motivated cheating. Abdelrahim 2022 also suggests reducing the weight of exams to mitigate stress and anxiety (Abdelrahim 2022). Beyond course design, we also should take time to explain the value of the knowledge the course provides, communicate openly with students about their struggles and legitimate accommodations that can be provided, provide transparent grading practices, and cultivate a perception that the student and instructor are partners in the course. These techniques will help build students’ confidence in their abilities and the fairness of their evaluation. Finally, we need to do more to raise awareness of mental health resources on campus (Tindall et al. 2021). More than just including links in syllabi or course pages, we should mention and normalize using these resources multiple times throughout the course, especially close to exam times.
Through these approaches of flexible course design, supportive instruction, and greater awareness of mental health resources, we can start to address a root cause of increasing academic misconduct, likely with more effectiveness than punitive measures. These are not new solutions. Their benefits have been supported in multiple studies. Now post pandemic and with other current events adding stress and pressure for our students, these practices may have additional importance for minimizing cheating, especially for online exams. Our students are learning what many of us already know: Life is not fair. Perhaps we should do more to acknowledge that fact in our classrooms.
References
Abdelrahim, Yousif. 2021. “The Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic on Online Exam Cheating: A Test of Covid-19 Theoretical Framework.” In Human Interaction, Emerging Technologies and Future Systems V: Proceedings of the 5th International Virtual Conference on Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies, IHIET 2021, August 27-29, 2021 and the 6th IHIET: Future Systems (IHIET-FS 2021), October 28-30, 2021, France, 443-453. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85540-6_57
Deale, Cynthia S. and Seung-Hyun (Jenna) Lee. 2023. “Hospitality and Tourism Students’ Views of Academic Dishonesty Before and During the Height of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 17(2), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2023.17210
Duckworth, Angela. 2022. “Why Cheating Increased in the Pandemic and What to Do About It.” Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-why-cheating-increased-in-the-pandemic-and-what-to-do-about-it/2022/04
Jenkins, Baylee. D., Jonathan M. Golding, Alexis M. Le Grand, Mary M. Levi, and Andrea M. Pals. 2023. “When Opportunity Knocks: College Students’ Cheating amid the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Teaching of Psychology 50(4): 407-419. https://doi.org/10.1177/00986283211059067
Lem, Pola. 2023. “Majority of Students Cheat in Online Exams – Study.” Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/majority-students-cheat-online-exams-study
Redden, Elizabeth. 2021. “A Spike in Cheating Since the Move to Remote?” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/02/05/study-finds-nearly-200-percent-jump-questions-submitted-chegg-after-start-pandemic
Tindall, Isabeau K., Kit Wing Fu, Kell Tremayne and Guy J. Curtis. 2021. Can negative emotions increase students’ plagiarism and cheating? International Journal for Educational Integrity 17, Article 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-021-00093-7
Endnotes
[1] Online exam grade distributions were comparable to in-class grade distributions, suggesting best practices mitigating cheating had some mitigating effect.
Darrell Carter is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science department at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. Darrell has been teaching courses in political science at UNLV and the College of Southern Nevada since 2020.
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. All issues of The Political Science Educator can be viewed on APSA Connects Civic Education page.
Editors: Colin Brown (Northeastern University), Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
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