Abstract
Academic integrity establishes a code of ethics that transfers over into the job force and is a critical characteristic in scientists in the twenty-first century. A student’s perception of cheating is influenced by both internal and external factors that develop and change through time. For students, the COVID-19 pandemic shrank their academic and social environments onto a computer screen. We surveyed science students in the United States at the end of their first COVID-interrupted semester to understand how and why they believed their peers were cheating more online during a pandemic. Almost 81% of students indicated that they believed cheating occurred more frequently online than in-person. When explaining why they believed this, students touched on proctoring, cheating influences, and extenuating circumstances due to COVID-19. When describing how they believed cheating occurred more frequently online, students touched on methods for cheating and surreptitious behavior. The student reasonings were associated with four theories (game theory, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, neutralization theory, and planned behavior theory) that have been used to examine academic dishonesty. Our results can aid institutions in efforts to quell student concerns about their peers cheating during emergencies. Interestingly, most student beliefs were mapped to planned behavior theory while only a few students were mapped to neutralization theory, suggesting it was a novel modality of assessment rather than a pandemic that shaped student perceptions.
Highlights
In March 2020, most United States higher education institutions were forced to move all their courses to online instruction within a matter of days and continue remotely for the rest of the semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Crawford et al 2020)
STEM academia during COVID-19 For many science professors and students, March 2020 was their first exposure to online learning assessments, and concerns of cheating immediately centered on highstakes online exams
We found that undergraduate science students believed that willingness to cheat and pressure to cheat were higher online than in-person during the first COVIDinterrupted semester
Summary
In March 2020, most United States higher education institutions were forced to move all their courses to online instruction within a matter of days and continue remotely for the rest of the semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Crawford et al 2020). We refer to this semester that was partially in-person and partially remote as the first COVID-interrupted semester. Science students were concerned about having to learn to use the online testing software and encountering technological glitches that may occur during their online exams (Dicks et al 2020; Holton 2020; Petillion and McNeil 2020), increasing the students’ stress levels around taking and performing well on exams in new environments with unfamiliar systems
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