Students under stress during the pandemic often used technology to cheat at higher rates, a new survey by four professors reveals.
Cheating using smartphones, using multiple computers to avoid screen lock programs, or copying papers to turn in online aren’t new tactics. But these behaviors increased among students during COVID-19.
The increase was worst in online classes, according to the survey.
“The types of cheating have changed. So, the dynamics of using more technologies have given more access to greater cheating,” said Missouri State University professor James Sottile, one of the survey’s designers.
Marshall University professor George Watson, Sottile, Kansas State University associate professor Jia Grace Liang, and Missouri State professor Bonni Behrend emailed an anonymous survey to about 12,000 college students. Of those contacted, 701 students answered.
The results showed that cheating had changed dramatically during COVID-19.
About 29 percent of respondents said they had cheated more during the pandemic than in normal times.
The results showed that when students went online, the number of students cheating rose from 28.3 percent to 42.3 percent.
“When they’re under stress, and you’re anxious, and you feel like you have no alternative, I think cheating suddenly becomes an option for those who wouldn’t normally do it,” said Watson.
The advent of the smartphone changed cheating forever, he added. With phones, students had handheld access to vast amounts of information. Students can easily hide smartphones, look up information, and communicate stealthily with friends.
“It’s just become two clicks and you’ve sent it to everyone you know. It’s just proliferated,” Watson said.
When COVID-19 moved education online, educators faced a perfect storm for cheating, the survey said. Students felt stressed and teachers struggled to understand the new system.
Students could have chosen to endure these difficult learning conditions. Instead, they chose to cheat with readily available methods.
Often, students live so much in a world of free information that they don’t think much of taking information to cheat, Sottile said.
“What middle schools, high schools, and colleges need to do is clearly define when it’s cheating,” he said.
When schools catch cheating, they also need to follow through on punishing it. Today, students accused of cheating often hire lawyers in attempts to appeal their lost grades, he said.
As college has grown more expensive, many students have started believing that grades are something they bought, not something they have to earn, said Liang. Students justify their cheating because of the money they put into grades in college.
“They are more thinking, ‘I should have these grades, but you deducted the points,’ rather than thinking, ‘I’m earning the grades through these points,’” she said.
The increase in cheating wasn’t caused by new methods, the survey noted. Rather, the moral principles students had didn’t seem to stick in troubled times.
“Very few students, when asked in the survey, stated that they had researched ways to cheat since the pandemic transition,” the survey stated. “In other words, the students already knew methods of cheating.”
About 59 percent more students were caught in-person compared to online, the survey said. But students actually cheated more online.
“For almost every behavior listed, students in online courses scored higher for academic dishonesty,” the survey said.
The worst offenders for cheating were students in competitive fields, Sottile said. Graduate students and business students often cheated.
“The more competition there is, the greater the cheating,” he said.
But most students will cheat given the opportunity, Sottile said.
“It’s like the old saying. Why do you lock your doors at night? And the reason why you lock your doors at night is because you keep the honest people honest,” he said.
To prevent cheating, professors should create assignments that are impossible to cheat on, Liang said.
Instead of multiple-choice tests or essays, teachers should assign students projects that are difficult or impossible to cheat at using internet resources, she said.
“If you want to decrease cheating, you want to move away from standardized quizzes and standardized exams. And you want to create more project-based assignments,” Sottile said.
When compared to a similar survey that Watson and Sottile created in 2010, this survey revealed several changes in how students cheat.
In 2010, the percentage of students who cheated online compared to in-person was almost the same. But something snapped when students went online during COVID-19.
“For educators and educational institutions, it is necessary to realize that cheating is not going away any time soon, especially in a more and more digitalized world,” the survey concluded.
Also, the gender gap in cheating has closed, Watson said. Although cheating statistics for male and female students weren’t far apart in surveys, men cheated more in 2010. The most recent survey suggests that women cheat the same or more than men do.
“It’s going to be interesting to see if that carries on in the future,” Watson said.
Students are also more willing to admit to cheating, Liang said.
“I think another thing we noticed is how students will not hesitate in admitting they’re cheating. That’s a higher percentage of admitting they’re cheating, which means they have some kind of knowledge of what is dishonest behavior.”
