ERIC Number: EJ1402095
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0260-2938
EISSN: EISSN-1469-297X
Available Date: N/A
How to Use Academic and Digital Fingerprints to Catch and Eliminate Contract Cheating during Online Multiple-Choice Examinations: A Case Study
Emery-Wetherell, Meaghan; Wang, Ruoyao
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, v48 n8 p1135-1150 2023
Over four semesters of a large introductory statistics course the authors found students were engaging in contract cheating on Chegg.com during multiple choice examinations. In this paper we describe our methodology for identifying, addressing and eventually eliminating cheating. We successfully identified 23 out of 25 students using a combination of unique academic and digital fingerprints, and identified students who used virtual private networks (VPNs) to protect their online identity. There were two forms of cheating - posting questions and waiting for responses from tutors, and looking for questions that had already been solved. We found that 165 questions from these examinations were posted by 10 different students, but that the most common form of cheating was searching for answers that had already been posted. This paper discusses these patterns of Chegg usage, the consequences of not catching cheating early on, and how students reacted to being caught. Also provided are R and Python code that readers may use to identify cheating students in their own courses.
Descriptors: Computer Assisted Testing, Multiple Choice Tests, Cheating, Identification, Programming Languages, Introductory Courses, Statistics Education, Tutors, Computer Software, Test Items, Computer Networks, Integrity, Item Analysis, Difficulty Level
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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