Abstract
Numerous academic studies and reports indicate that as many as half of all students cheat on exams. Cheating on exams undermines the central purpose of a university, corrupts the meaning of grades as a measure of subject matter mastery, and significantly harms honest students. Although instructors are aware that many students cheat and they clearly oppose the behavior, they do little to punish cheaters. Accusing, prosecuting and convicting cheaters are time intensive, stressful and potentially costly activities for which faculty members receive few rewards. In this paper, we derive an equation to estimate the benefit that can be gained by a student who copies on a multiple choice exam. We then propose an exam design that not only eliminates the benefit, but also proportionately punishes cheaters, with little to no cost to instructors. Moreover, the exam system we propose can allow an instructor to determine, with a high degree of certainty, the odds that any student seated anywhere in the classroom cheated on any part of the exam.
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Notes
Interestingly, in this same study, 93 % of students said they were taught as children to behave ethically no matter the cost and 85 % claimed that the adults who most influenced their lives set good ethical examples. Based on these responses, the percent of students who actually cheated on an exam is in all likelihood higher than those who admit they cheated.
Although our technique works best in large class sections that use multiple choice or simple solution exams that are mainly problem oriented, extensions to other types of exams are possible.
The authors of this paper estimate that during their careers prior to implementing this exam design, they have given approximately 21,000 exams. They have accused 19 students of cheating (Pa = .0009), prosecuted 7 of these students (P p|a = .3684), and had two of these convicted (P c|a|p = .2857). To a student estimating the cost of being suspended or expelled by these professors, the probability of being convicted is (.0009)(.3684)(.2857) = .000095. Our guess is that most instructors reading this paper have similar probabilities.
The majority of multiple choice questions have five answer choices. The second most common type of question has four answer choices. For four answer choice exams, the only necessary change in the following equations is to change 8 to 75 and 2 to 25.
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Fendler, R.J., Godbey, J.M. Cheaters Should Never Win: Eliminating the Benefits of Cheating. J Acad Ethics 14, 71–85 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-015-9240-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-015-9240-8