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I am a 4th year neurosurgery resident. My career aspirations include becoming proficient in a wide variety effective teaching strategies that help me to become a role model and mentor in my field.

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The Covid-19 pandemic expedited the adoption of distance learning, particularly the version that utilizes technology, as stated by Hussein et al (2020). The implementation of online exam proctoring was a logical outcome of the introduction of online educational courses. However, while it was necessary at the time, it now raises significant concerns about the academic integrity of this approach, as highlighted by Hussein et al (2020). In this article, I will analyze the various forms of online proctoring, the four crucial prerequisites of online proctoring systems and software, as well as the issues that arise regarding the legitimacy of online proctoring. In fact, Hollister and Berenson (2009) stated that, “the most commonly reported challenge in online assessment is how to maintain academic integrity”.

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To proctor an exam, verifying identification is necessary. One can do so through face recognition, key-stroke analysis, or presenting proof of identity documents (Gautam, 2017). Once the identity is confirmed, the room is inspected to make sure there are no red-flag features, such as the presence of other individuals. Subsequently, the software is activated to restrict the use of the computer for purposes other than the exam. Then, for the remainder of the exam period, one of the following types of proctoring is utilized, as explained by Hussein (2020):

Live proctoring

A proctor is responsible for monitoring students remotely and in real-time during their exams. They have been trained to detect any irregular facial expressions, gestures, or unauthorized use of electronic devices. However, from a human resources standpoint, finding a suitable time and date for the exam with human supervision can be challenging. Additionally, the proctor must maintain a high level of alertness for several hours.

Recording proctoring

The exam is recorded in its entirety, with the student being captured on camera throughout. After the exam, the recording is carefully scrutinized to ensure that no cheating occurred before the grades are released. This system allows students to take the exam at their convenience, but it does demand a significant amount of human resources to review all the footage.

Automated proctoring

The process entails identifying suspicious occurrences using AI, which are then reviewed by a human proctor, thereby reducing the requirement for human resources. The system may generate false incident claims depending on its sensitivity, however, it is a more cost-effective and scalable option compared to alternative methods.

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Major Requirments of Online Proctoring Systems

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Major Requirments of Online Proctoring Systems

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1) Internet connection

2) System to verify student identity

3) Recording device

4) Integrity monitoring

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Have you completed an online, proctored exam?

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I did not enjoy it, for non-technical reasons (location, format)

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There were serious issues which made me question the exam result.

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I conducted a small focus group of first and second-year residents. They unanimously noted that online proctoring was susceptible to cheating. Many studies support this, Holden et al. (2021) noting that 41% of students admitted to cheating in some form in an online class.

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In Allesio and Messinger (2021) a mere 2% of students in one survey preferred online proctoring and 70% of students felt it was an invasion of their privacy

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This column is an opinion by Veselin Jungic, Andie Burazin and Miroslav Lovric. Jungic is a post-secondary math educator at Simon Fraser University. Burazin is a mathematics educator at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Lovric teaches at McMaster University. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

Judging by the amount of discussion within the university instructor community, the largest headache for many of us is student cheating; or to use a phrase university administrators prefer, students "committing acts of academic dishonesty."

There is no doubt that many students cheat on their assessments, such as homework and exams (an assessment is any piece of work in a course which bears credit toward the final course grade). It's not a new phenomenon - in a paper published in 2006 in The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, University of Guelph Professor Julia Christensen Hughes reported that more than 50 per cent of Canadian undergraduates admitted to some form of cheating.

Research conducted between 2002 and 2015 by the U.S.-based International Center for Academic Integrity revealed that a disappointing 68 per cent of the 71,000 undergraduate students surveyed admitted to "written or test cheating."

However, based on our recent experience and that of colleagues from across Canada, we are absolutely certain that, compared to the pre-pandemic face-to-face assessments, the number of students who have been involved in cheating on tests and exams since classes went online in March this year has further increased.

A webinar on contract cheating - situations where a student hires someone else to write their paper, test, or exam - organized by Simon Fraser University in July, filled the Zoom meeting to capacity with frustrated, hopeless instructors from campuses across Canada. They were all desperately seeking a solution in the losing battle against students cheating.

The reasons why students cheat have not suddenly changed, but the environment has.

There are many more ways to cheat: from consulting the internet, to using symbolic calculators and graphing software, to chats and social networks, to collaboratively working when expected to do individual work, to using a tutor or a peer or a sibling, to paying someone to take a test.

Moreover, "cheating online" seems to be much less risky than doing it in person, even if online invigilation is in place during an assessment.

So, what is a university instructor supposed to do?

One approach is - do nothing. Keep your sanity! Let the students cheat, if they do not know better. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. If students want to cheat, they will find a way to do it. Trying to anticipate the ways in which a student can cheat, and then identifying the strategies to catch those who do, has been a losing battle for instructors and university administrators. True, we manage to catch and subject some to academic discipline, but the lucky ones, and those with creative and innovative strategies, we do not. We are advised to develop a "culture of honesty" in our classrooms, but to little avail.

2. If a university instructor repeatedly pleads with their students, underlining that cheating is an unhealthy and dangerous habit which will catch up to them sooner rather than later, and a student decides to cheat nevertheless, why would the instructor assume any further responsibility for their students' actions? Is it reasonable to expect that, say, a calculus instructor does a better job at providing a moral compass to a student than their parents, family, friends, or role models, including previous teachers, celebrities, social media influencers, professional athletes, politicians, activists? Definitely not.

3. Invigilation of online assessments is expensive. If a university with 20,000 students decides to use a professional invigilating service for all its courses for a year, the price would be close to $400,000 (based on the pricing by Respondus Monitor, a company that provides "fully automated proctoring for online exams"). There must be a better way of spending that money.

4. Online assessment invigilation may breach both a student's privacy and an instructor's comfort zone. Moreover, some students use their real or fictional privacy concerns to refuse to be invigilated. This means that instructors sometimes have to use alternative ways of assessing, which comes with many hours of additional work.

5. "Academic integrity" is a myth. The current Canadian university model is a combination of a military/aristocratic hierarchy, a political entity, and a business enterprise. As the outcome of those dynamics, the idealistic side of academic integrity as the ultimate principle in academia necessarily becomes "flexible."

6. Are we, academics, ready to invest the resources necessary to expose those members of our community who use "alternative facts" when presenting their achievements and contributions? How much energy, knowledge, and time does an average academic - who worries about their own future, their research, the next round of funding, and juggling other life responsibilities - have to fight injustices, including the major ones such as academic freedom and social justice, that they witness daily? We often turn our cheek the other way in daily life, so why have different standards and principles in our classrooms?

The penalties are not severe enough to send out a strong warning to the students.

7. In the absence of a "cheating police," an instructor is mostly left to their own devices. Why bother to spend days of frustration proving that Alice paid a predatory tutoring online company to find a derivative of a function? Or that Bob and Carol copied from each other based on the fact they had the same, word-for-word, solutions to a question whose solution allows for multiple approaches? In general, academic integrity offences are hard to prove and time-consuming to discipline. As well, the penalties are not severe enough to send out a strong warning to the students. Some instructors decide to ignore dishonesty cases and act only when they have no other choice. Who can blame them?

8. Any instructor would prefer to commit their time and energy to supporting students who are eager to learn, than to live through the nightmare of a single academic dishonesty case. At least there is a tangible benefit to supporting those who want to learn.

9. Thinking about cheating is like cancer - it eats up our trust in our students and ruins the joy of teaching. We yearn to contribute, in positive ways, to the lives of students who are truly committed to learn, to explore their interests and talents through honest work.

And lastly ... 10. Say that a student cheats their way through their post-secondary degree. Has this experience prepared them adequately for the real world and a future career? The answer, we're afraid, could well be "yes."

As a conclusion, however, we offer to the reader our confession that, even though we are convinced that the points made above hold true, we will not follow our own advice. When faced with student cheating, we are not going to look the other way.

The main reason is that we care deeply about the well-being of our students.

We believe that, as teachers, we have the responsibility to protect students who work diligently and honestly.

We must do whatever we can to educate all of our students, and to convince them that it is in their best interest to adhere to the fundamental values of academic integrity: honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility.

And we are ready to pay the price for it.

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OPINION | Opinion | Why it's tempting for teachers to look the other way when students cheat | CBC News

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The reasons for academic dishonesty have not suddenly changed, but the environment has, say post-secondary teachers Veselin Jungic, Andie Burazin and Miroslav Lovric.

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Professors at Radford University, a public school in Radford, Virginia, found that remote proctoring ... [+]
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In response to the rapid, probably unprecedented rise in academic cheating during remote learning, online proctoring companies - companies that record or review or live monitor online exams and assignments - have done quite well. Some reports show their customer bases and service needs expanding five, seven and even nine fold over the past year. That makes sense. The more online courses and tests, the more need to be sure that those tests are being delivered and completed fairly and equitably.

Until recently, the connection between cheating prevention and proctoring was merely logical - that the more likely students are to be caught, the less likely they are to cheat. Surprisingly, and despite that obvious logic, there's been some debate about whether watching people take online exams deters cheating.

Now though, in what should be a breakthrough in managing remote learning and promoting academic integrity, research confirms the connection between remote exam proctoring and reduced cheating.

Seife Dendir, a professor in the Department of Economics at Radford University and R. Stockton Maxwell, in the Department of Geospatial Science, also at Radford, published a paper in December titled, "Cheating in online courses: Evidence from online proctoring."

It's as clear as research gets.

Their research found that cheating was happening in unproctored online classes. In those situations, cheating was both common and highly rewarding. When a remote proctoring tool was used to watch the exam, cheating went down. They wrote pretty directly that, "some form of direct proctoring is perhaps the most effective way of mitigating cheating during high-stakes online assessments."

No kidding.

Even so, the size of the impact came as news, even to the researchers.

"Moving from an unproctored to a proctored environment is bound to have some effect, so the results were not totally surprising. The size of the decline in grades with webcam monitoring was somewhat surprising and indicate that educators might have more work to do in guiding online education," Dendir said.

In their test, the Radford team compared identical asynchronous online classes across different disciplines - one set with proctoring and one set without. The system they used was Respondus Monitor, a record-and-review tool that allows professors or other school leaders to review suspicious or unusual activities after a test session - in essence, a security camera approach to exam integrity.

"These results parallel what we've heard from professors for years - that when they introduce Respondus Monitor to their online courses, the average score on exams drops about one letter grade. However, this is the first time we've seen the research done in a scholarly way," said Jodi Feeney, Chief Operating Officer at Respondus.

About the debates around proctoring and preserving integrity during online courses, Feeney added, "While most news articles focus on students who dislike remote proctoring, there is a large contingent of students who favor it because it levels the playing field. Good students get frustrated when other students cheat their way into a good grade - and it compels good students to cheat too."

That mirrors other research from last year showing that when professors or colleges don't monitor their exams, simply not doing it can invite cheating - not just by pressuring students to keep pace with cheaters, but by sending a message that the test is not important enough to protect.

Not proctoring online work can also, by default, send students a message that online courses are not as valuable or as serious as their in-person counterparts. That's a distinction that can get washed up in the "debate" about online assessment security.

"These technologies are not meant to be prohibitive or punitive, rather they are meant to create accountability similar to the in-person classroom," said Dendir, the Radford professor. "Again, ultimately, online proctoring is just one more step toward creating a level of equivalence between traditional/face-to-face courses - where in-person proctoring is the norm - and online courses," he said.

Making online classes "similar to" or on "a level of equivalence" to face-to-face classes ought to be enough of a reason to monitor exams. But in case it's not, there are two other big bottom lines about this research.

One is that remote exam proctoring in online courses works to reduce cheating. Even though it should be obvious, whatever debate existed about that point, this should help end it.

The second is that professors and schools that are teaching online now, which is just about every single one, should heavily weigh the messages they send by not investing in enhanced forms of course integrity. There's little such thing as too much investment in integrity. In their research, Dendir and Maxwell used "a series of mitigation measures" even before they used proctoring. These included, "the use of a special browser, a restricted testing period, randomized questions and choices, and a strict timer" and students still cheated. In other words, whatever a school is doing to limit cheating, it probably isn't enough.

"We will certainly continue to use the online proctoring for high-stakes exams in our courses," Dendir said.

It certainly seems as though he should, others too. That's good news for the proctoring companies, even better news for those who don't want students cheating their way to grades and degrees.

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Research Shows Remote Exam Monitoring Reduces Cheating

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Research published in December shows that remote exam monitoring reduces cheating in online courses.

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Alessio, H. M., & Messinger, J. D. (2021). Faculty and Student Perceptions of Academic Integrity in Technology-Assisted Learning and Testing. Frontiers in Education, 6, 629220. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.629220

Gautam, M. (2017, December 20). 3 types of online proctoring services and how to select the best for hiring.  Hackerearth.  Retrieved  from https://www.hackerearth.com/blog/talent-assessment/online-proctoring-for-hiring-developer

Holden, O. L., Norris, M. E., & Kuhlmeier, V. A. (2021, July). Academic integrity in online assessment: A research review. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 6, p. 639814). Frontiers Media SA.

Hollister, K. K., & Berenson, M. L. (2009). Proctored versus unproctored online exams: Studying the impact of exam environment on student performance. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 7(1), 271-294.

Hussein, M. J., Yusuf, J., Deb, A. S., Fong, L., & Naidu, S. (2020). An evaluation of online proctoring tools. Open Praxis, 12(4), 509-525.