Effects of honor code reminders on university students’ cheating in unproctored exams: A double-blind randomized controlled field study

Abstract

Unproctored exams have been increasingly adopted by universities globally to assess students’ learning and prevent cheating. Different forms of honor code reminders have been implemented with such exams, but no empirical research has directly compared their effectiveness in promoting academic honesty. To bridge this significant gap and inform educational practices for promoting optimal learning, we examined cheating among university students taking an unproctored exam in two field studies. Both studies used a double-blind randomized controlled design. Prior to the exam, students were provided with no reminders of academic integrity policies (most common in unproctored exams) or reminders of policies, actual cases of cheating, or negative consequences of cheating. Reminding students about academic integrity policies, actual cases of academic cheating, and the negative consequences of cheating led to significantly less cheating than providing students with no reminders. The present findings suggest that although university students may have been informed about academic integrity policies upon entry and have experienced unproctored exams, they need a brief reminder to ensure honesty just before taking them. Our findings also illustrate the importance of conducting well-controlled behavioral research that evaluates, in the field, the effectiveness of commonly implemented educational practices to ascertain that they indeed serve their designed pedagogical purposes to promote learning optimally.