The Exam Game: A new take based on Online School & Academic Integrity Violations
As students, I’m sure we’ve all had those weeks where time just seems to slip by us, pages full of loads of information and formulas flip before our eyes, and somehow, we still show up to the exam without the confidence the hours studying should have guaranteed us. The truth is, exams are merely a game, where both professors and students must make strategic decisions within the context of the exam. Both players play a role in strategically interacting: professors must pick the questions to ask on exams, whereas students must pick what topics to study. It’s an unpredictable game, at that, where the student does not know what topics the professor will ask and must therefore strategize to study what they value of importance (or think the professor values). This is the traditional way the game works: students study, professors ask, and there is little to no room for any loopholes.
The year 2020, however, proved to be anything but traditional. As the pandemic struck, lectures moved online and thus did their counterparts—homework assignments, lecture slides, quizzes, and most notably, exams. While positives certainly came out of this new method, many problems did as well, including many new forms of academic integrity (collaborating, buying and selling solutions to assignments, adopting “scapegoat” cheating methods). And thus, the exam game changed, now having to consider the new cheating variable. Professors no longer had to only pick questions and students only pick topics to study; now both parties must consider methods to build cheating into their strategies. Where professors have to extend the scope of their jobs to come up with solutions to minimize cheating, students have to now worry about other students cheating and possibly adopt certain unethical tactics to match these standards. It’s not that there weren’t violations of academic prior to online schooling; it’s that the range of people violating course policies exponentially spiked, forcing many to adapt.
Interestingly enough, a study conducted by Jeffrey S. Young, an assistant professor at Murray State University, proposed a method to reduce cheating in online classes—a “Prisoner’s Dilemna” if you will. As learned in class, a “Prisoner’s Dilemna” is a game pitting people against one another, where each player acts out their own self-interest, producing a less than optimal outcome for the group. In this case, Young proposes that a student who is collaborating with another on an exam can either choose to continue colluding (with the risk that the other student will confess to the professor) or choose to showcase evidence of cheating with, in turn, receiving a reward. By using this method and the principles of the “Prisoner’s Dilemna”, at least one student in the group would choose to confess, in turn helping professors identify what assignments are being violated by academic integrity and what methods are being used to obtain assignment aids; in other words, the purpose isn’t to gather names, but rather to gather information about methods to put a stop to them and minimize cheating (with these methods) in the future.
To further illustrate, let’s say there are 2 students, Student A and B, who are collaborating on an exam. If they do not confess, their grades decrease by 10%. If one confesses anonymously, then that student earns 5% on their average and if they both do not confess then they will just stay with the 7% that the assignment was initially worth. Additionally, if one confesses anonymously and the other one does so as well, then they will both earn 1% to their grade. Both of these students have averages of 67% and wish to at least have a C (70%-79%) to pass. Since they are cheating, rather than studying honestly, both of these students do not have a C-level of understanding and thus each student is presented with 2 options: either confess to earn the 5% boost needed to reach a C or not confessing (keep the 7%) with the fear that the other student will confess. Therefore, it is probable that one student will confess with the hope for a better grade and not risking the other student to confess.
While this does not solve cheating as a whole, the “Prisoner’s Dilemna” presented in this study offers an interesting perspective on how to prevent cheating in the future—especially with online exams. Students are typically not willing to give up and recount on their methods of cheating and thus identifying these methods via other outlets (surveys, etc…) is not probable. However, when presented with a game and payoff, the identification of these methods becomes easier, and thus, instructors can use this data to prevent further cheating in the future.
Article: https://www.aaea.org/UserFiles/file/AETR_2020_007ProofFinal_v1.pdf