Twenty students suspected
Psych department investigates cheating in online exams
‘We have proof that students were discussing the questions and their answers in WhatsApp group chats during the exam’, says Maarten Derksen, the exam committee chair. Other students in the group chats sounded the alarm.
They call upon any students who were part of the group chats to come forward to the committee. They have until the end of the afternoon on Wednesday. Derksen says they’re also approaching individual students. ‘Next, we want to decide what to do with the cheaters.’
Kicked out
They’ll go easy on the students who come forward themselves, he says. Anyone who doesn’t come forward and is proved to be guilty of cheating will most likely be kicked out of the course. ‘We’re not fully committed to that course of action just yet, but it’s likely.’
The English-language statistics II exam was administered to approximately three hundred students last Thursday, while statistics I.b was administered last Friday. Due to the corona measures in place, the exams were online, open-book exams.
No proctoring software, which allows lecturers to keep an eye on students through their microphone and webcam, was used during the exams. Two weeks ago, the university ran a test using proctoring software during a different statistics exam.
Evaluation
The cheating incident will be taken into consideration in the evaluation of online exams. ‘We’ll evaluate not just the cheating, but also the technology’, says Derksen. He doesn’t think this will lead to any big changes. ‘It’s an emergency solution.’
Measures were taken to make cheating harder, and students have to promise not to cheat before taking an exam, but it’s difficult to monitor it all, he says. ‘Everyone knows that online exams are a nightmare.’
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