Cheating among undergraduates: what can we do?

Dr Emile van Lieshout, School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne

Have you ever cheated on a test? I did once in high school and was caught by my patrolling physics teacher. Why did I cheat? Characteristically, I had left studying until too late and couldn’t suffer the indignity of a mark that reflected that. How relevant is this vignette for cheating among our students today?

For current undergraduates, the pressures to achieve academically are tremendous. Australia’s tuition fees are among the world’s highest¹ and, while domestic students can defer these costs, work commitments adversely affect attendance and performance for many². At the same time, students are concerned that low achievement affects their employability and future earnings^3,4. For international students, failing a subject may have visa implications. These stressors, and countless others, provide ample motive to cheat. The means to do so, these days, are manifold.

Prevalence and consequences

Cheating at universities, in one form or another, is pervasive. The use of commercial contract cheating, where students commission custom ghost-written work for assignments, is increasing and can represent up to 16% of students^5,6, with the majority repeat offenders⁷. Plagiarism, on the other hand, may be unintentional and depends on the criteria used, but estimates of 26% of submissions are considered conservative⁸. Collusion is perhaps even more difficult to quantify given its close proximity to collaboration. Nonetheless, collaboration on individual assignments or assignment sharing is estimated to apply to half of the student body⁹. If students believe that others are cheating, they are more likely to do so¹⁰.

Breaches of academic integrity are detrimental to all parties involved. For staff, the detection and processing of cheating imposes significant costs in terms of time and labour. In larger subjects, entire teams of academics are necessary to sleuth through Turnitin reports and determine how many fall foul of the ‘acceptable’ degree of similarity. For students, cheating undermines learning outcomes: who would want their doctor to have cheated their way through medical school? Cheating is also not victimless: it impacts other students’ relative grades, thereby violating fairness. Habitual cheating may have a corrupting effect on character⁴ and successfully pursued cases can have significant consequences for the student. Unfortunately, universities often sanction offenders with a slap on the wrist despite clear evidence that decisions to cheat respond to the severity of the penalty and the chance of being caught¹¹.

What can be done?

There is no singular answer to address academic dishonesty. Contract cheating can only be detected by inconsistency within a student’s work, which we currently don’t assess. Assessment authenticity does not appear to discourage outsourcing behaviours¹², but some other formats such as viva voce, personalised tasks, and in-class tasks may¹³. A recent survey across Australian universities indicated that a non-English language background was the prime predictor of outsourcing¹⁴, suggesting that these students require further scaffolding or alternatives if assessment is to be equitable. Other predictors identified included dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning environment, and sheer opportunity to cheat, which should prompt a re-think of the way we engage and assess students. Requiring outlines and draft submissions across the term, for example, prevents students from simply submitting a purchased work at the end of the subject.

For plagiarism, there is some evidence that Academic Integrity modules do in fact reduce the amount of plagiarism by educating students about proper quotation and citation⁸. Clear instruction on this topic from teachers can similarly reduce the incidence¹⁰. When combined with plagiarism detection software, the effectiveness increases¹⁵, although Turnitin scores must be manually confirmed¹⁶. Alternatively, giving students access to Turnitin results can promote greater awareness of what is appropriately paraphrased or attributed¹⁷. Clear policies that govern what happens upon first and subsequent transgressions, including grade reductions and remedial requirements, also appear to contribute to reducing prevalence¹⁸.

Preventing collusion in the digital age is a big ask. Social media chat groups make collusion during exams very easy and, while the occasional student might privately report these, such avenues are hard to eliminate without moving back to on-campus, invigilated exams. For assignments, one answer to this is to seize upon students’ collaborative tendencies by requiring group submissions, particularly when the data collection was collaborative in the first place. Alternatively, individualising assessments by embedding elements that differ between students, such as data, can reduce opportunity to collaborate.

Misconduct is as old as the academy. Yet, technological developments and the move to online following COVID have greatly expanded opportunities to engage in it. As educators, we need to co-evolve in our response to maintain a culture where cheating remains rare and unacceptable to all.

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This post was written before the release of ChatGPT and hence does not include any reference to it. Please see our other blog post for specifics on ChatGPT.

References

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