Deterring Cheating in Online Exams: The Effect of Passive versus Active Proctoring

Abstract

During the pandemic, tertiary institutions made an unprecedented shift to virtual teaching modalities. Administration of exams as learning assessments also shifted from in-person to online with a variety of approaches to proctoring and monitoring student behavior. Given that prior research shows business students are relatively more likely to cheat, the transition to online exams made business schools especially vulnerable to a potential surge in cheating behavior—something supported anecdotally by faculty experiences. To address this problem, we conducted a natural experiment to explore the differential impact of passive and active proctoring on potential cheating behavior during online exams in an introductory management course. Passive proctoring entailed the course instructor monitoring an online synchronous exam using Zoom with the instructor’s camera off. Active proctoring entailed an external proctoring service taking control of the students’ computer while they were aware their behaviors and activities were being tracked and recorded by the proctor with a live video feed. We use competing interpretations of a social facilitation framework to explore whether passive or active proctoring is more effective at reducing potential cheating. In support of a traditional social facilitation approach, we found nascent indirect evidence that active proctoring was relatively more effective than passive proctoring at reducing cheating behavior. We discuss the implications of our findings and suggest future research directions.