Educational dishonesty is considered an extensive violation of ethics. Once you start doing dishonesty it will continue and you won’t be able to stop this at any point in time. Also, it is quite extensive, despite being an inexcusable activity. Hence, it upholds that ethical failure, such as Cheat in Online Exams in any assessment, happens more frequently than we would like to believe.
As these suspicious activities are increasing day by day. The methods by which students cheat in assessments are equally surprising. With the advancement in information technology and the IT sector, students are keen to know about much smarter ways to cheat in exams during assessments. Before any student can proctor an exam they are gathering information related to new and creative ways to cheat in examinations rather than concentrating on their studies. In these ways, students can bypass the auto proctor.
There are multiple ways by which these suspicious activities are taking place and we will try to uncover some of the ways students are following. Also, we will let you know about some of the ways by which online proctoring technologies can prevent them.
It includes:
- Pretending themselves before the exam
- Pretending themselves as a different person during the exam
- Using options like screen mirroring
- Using hi-tech gadgets such as earpods
- Using multiple smartphones
- Exploiting Internet
- Storing answers to multiple questions on different devices
- Involvement of family and friends in the same room where the exam is conducted
- Regularly logging in and out of the test window
- Encouraging Cheating
Impersonating before the exam- Cheat in Online Exams:
Make use of someone else by letting him take the assessment on your behalf as this idea is taken from the scenes of some TV shows or movies. During the conduction of assessment using remote proctoring, the chances of a student making use of an impersonator are common. Moreover, they don’t use multiple devices, instead, they let an intelligent person take the exam on their behalf by providing them login details.
Impersonating during the exam- Cheat in Online Exams:
If you are an educator or exam administrator you will think that impersonation can only occur before the starting of any assessment then you should be in shock to know that impersonation can also occur during exam time. Many candidates pass the authentication step but after the examination has started they leave the system midway and wait for the other candidate to step in and finish the examination on their behalf.
Making use of screen mirroring- Cheat in Online Exams:
Whenever candidates are taking assessments from their preferred location, then candidates make use of multiple monitors with their friends and family simultaneously in which they get the access to the exam question and deliver them with a solution on a different screen. In this modern era, many applications like discord are present in the market that have some embedded features like screen sharing which are in use by candidates and helps them during any assessments.
Making use of hi-tech gadgets such as ear pods and microphones- Cheat in Online Exams:
Have you ever heard of remote proctoring cheating using small-sized cameras? Institutions that conducted high-profile exams like GATE, CAT, MAT, and other competitive assessments said in a press conference that candidates are using small-sized cameras on their clothes and buttons that are not detectable by proctors.
Some candidates are using microphones and earphones and use them for cheating in which they are connected with a person on another end that tells the candidate all the solutions. Some candidates are making use of calculators by writing formulas and other important information on calculators and using them during the assessments to score high marks in the assessments.
Using smartphones:
Even though making use of multiple smartphones to proctor an exam is not allowed, this is one of the most common techniques used by all candidates. Students and candidates are storing the solution to all the questions that can appear in the assessment on their smartphones. Some of the candidates are sharing the image of the question paper by making use of the features of a camera and texting their friends to find solutions to these questions.
Exploiting Internet:
Students are misusing the internet regularly and social media tools to perform unfair means in their remote proctoring. They go to the browser and log onto any website they see on the top of the search results and paste their questions on them and search for the solution. Once found they copy and paste it.
Storing answers on external devices:
During the online assessment, some intelligent candidates store the answers to every possible question which they have studied during the course in their storage devices which can secondary or portable storage devices such as hard disks, USBs, pen drives, micro SDs, or any other external smart devices that can be used to transfer the solution without getting detected by the proctor.
Involvement of family and friends in the same room where the exam is conducted:
One of the most common and basic ways of cheating during an online assessment that is in use is taking the help of family and friends. In this method, they let the helper in the room where they are giving their assessment. These helpers are positioned in such a way they cannot be seen using a webcam but they can easily see the question present on the screen. These helpers help the candidate by writing the solution on paper or by whispering the solution softly so that it is not detected by the proctor.
Regularly logging in and out of the test window:
Candidates who plan to cheat during an online assessment make use of this method in which after reading multiple questions they log out of the software and search for the solution to that question on the internet or their copies and later will log in to the software by giving excuses such as power cuts and poor internet connectivity.
Abetting Cheating:
