Online assessment: more student cheating than on-site?

Abstract

This paper discusses online student assessment which is one of the major concerns of higher education institutions during these pandemic times, forcing teachers to teach and assess in different ways and conditions than when using regular methods. Online assessment brings more challenges for the teachers and the fear that students could cheat more than in on-site or face-to-face conditions. More than a surveillance task, it is a question of having justice among different students’ socio-economic and learningconditions. Ethical issues, respect for the colleagues and trust in their own work and more suitable learning assessment methods could be strong reasons for the students not to cheat. For the teachers, this is a complex and controversial issue. Finding the best ways to prevent this from happening is not easy. This could demand a balance between less time and more complex online tests that require a lot of imagination and creativity. This paper gives some examples of face-to-face written tests and online tests, comparing grades of two cohorts of students (2019_20 and 2020_21) from three different courses. Those courses are lectured in the first and third year of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) Integrated Masters degree and the first year of the Masters in Engineering Project Management, at the University of Minho. Some practical tips and suggestions will be given to prepare online tests (e.g. diversity of assessment methods, type of questions included in the tests, tests could not be the only assessment method ...).