A Culture of Distrust
I realise that many institutions have undergone a massive overhaul of systems and infrastructure to allow students to continue to access some form of education during the covid-19 pandemic. I also recognise that the curricula wasn't designed for this mode of delivery and therefore compromise is to be expected. We are all doing our best under difficult circumstances. But still there seems to be an insidious culture of distrust hovering just below the surface of a the emerging new normal and I believe it's extremely harmful.
I've been thinking a lot about the theory of planned behaviour and its cousin, the theory of reasoned action recently which have been successfully applied in various fields to support or explain behaviour patterns and behaviour change. Common examples include applications in healthcare such as smoking, diet and exercise to name only a few.
But it struck me that this is also particularly relevant in an educational context too.
Acording to the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the biggest indicator or whether or not someone will behave in a certain way is intention. So the question we then have to consider is whether or not a student intends to cheat? The theory of planned behaviour suggests that there are three factors which increase someone's intention to behave in a certain way. These factors are: attitude, social norms and perceived behavioural control.
So the attitudes of students towards cheating has a major influence on whether a student will cheat in an exam or not. Perhaps some students cheat because they don't see any moral problem with it. Maybe some students would never cheat but wouldn't be particularly bothered if other people do. Maybe students who cheat in exams think it's worth the risk. Maybe some think that all tests should be open book because that's what real life is like. Interestingly Gardner and Melvin (1988) conducted an interesting study where they created a questionnaire which measured students attitudes towards cheating. They then created an experiment where students were given a test in which it was possible to cheat by providing a word list at the back of the booklet. The rubric directed the students not to cheat, but some of them did. Interestingly, Gardner and Melvin found a correlation and were able to predict those who cheated on the basis of their questionnaire. So attitudes towards cheating are a definite indicator of whether or not a student is likely to cheat.
But as educators, that leaves us with a choice to make. Do we adopt the role of the gatekeeper, always on guard for cheating and breeding a perpetual climate distrust in our classrooms (virtual or otherwise)? Or does the work of Gardner and Melvin provide us with an answer? Challenge the student's attitudes. In other words, do what we do best and educate the students. Teach them why cheating is morally wrong. Explain that cheating occurs in all forms. Point out that the consequences of cheating are not only academic, but relational too. If students understood the disappointment we feel as educators, in addition to parents and employers when we see a student has cheated on an exam, would they be more or less likely to cheat? Perhaps this is one way to safeguard the integrity of online education, to educate.
("Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character" by purplechalk is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
But there's more to consider here. What if our attitudes to cheating influence the behaviour of students?
The five facets of trust according to Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (1999) are benevolence, openness, reliability, honesty and competence. Therefore if we presume that students are not trustworthy, we are therefore questioning their honesty, competence, reliability and benevolence from the start which in turn breeds an atmosphere of closure, damages our relationship with our students and increases the likelihood that students will cheat. The very worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now I know cheating does happen and, as reprehensible as it is, I realise that we have to be on our guard. As such, that brings me nicely to the next aspect of the theory of planned behaviour - perceived behavioural control. In order words, if people think they can cheat and get away with it then this increases the likelihood that they will cheat. Moreover, it is our responsibility to be on our guard and to put appropriate mechanisms in place that will discourage students from attempting to cheat in the first place. But when students are operating in an open online environment what tools have we got at our disposal to enable us to ensure that summative assessment obtained is authentic?
Well, the truth is that there are tools and techniques out there that can help. Many Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) have security settings that enable us to take steps to ensure the authenticity of assessments. We can use plagiarism checking software, browser lockdowns, randomise questions and variables within the questions themselves, we could follow up assessments with oral questioning or even ask the students to record short videos asking the students to explain their answers for two or three questions in the assessment paper. We can set time limits on exams and we can even do online invigilation/proctoring using a range of free telecommunication tools available. But the truth is that none of these techniques are 100% bullet proof.
But what if we knew before hand what grades students are likely to get? What if we spend the time getting to know students abilities through simple conversations, online interactions and formative assessment? Then surely we would be better placed to determine whether or not a student has or hasn't cheated because we've taken the time to get to know the students, their abilities and their context for learning. By put less emphasis on the tools to detect cheating and more emphasis on building relationships to prevent cheating then perhaps teachers themselves would be able to recognise cheating when it happens. All the algorithms in the world can't replace human intuition.
Finally, the theory of planned behaviour points to social norms and how social pressures can increase the likelihood of certain behaviours. This is why websites often include customer reviews of their products and services. In an educational context some might be thinking that social norms have nothing to do with it - the student either performs and produces authentic evidence of their performance or they don't. But Harrison (2020) highlights that:
"Pressure and stress are key drivers of cheating behaviors, and students today are experiencing a lot of both. So, students who feel connected, supported and encouraged are less likely to cheat."
Research has shown that students are no more likely to cheat in online exams than they are in traditional exams carried out at bricks and mortar universities. Never-the-less, this year I have been involved in conversations and situations where it has been said that, "students will say or do anything to get out of sitting exams!" Then, when these students were placed under exam conditions and evidence of cheating emerged, all I could do was point to the fact that the pressure and stress they were under drove them to it. I have been involved in numerous exchanges where the words, "in normal times we would just ...!" Those exchanges inevitably lead to high stakes, high pressure assessment processes being conducted and then those same people wonder why evidence of cheating becomes clear. There is nothing normal about the times we are in and if we refuse to acknowledge that then we too have to accept some of the responsibility of placing excessive pressure or stress on our students which drives them to this behaviour.
But exam stress isn't the only form of pressure students are under at the moment. Some are experiencing excessive financial pressures. Some have their educational funding tied to their engagement and performance in exams. Some have experienced unemployment and are struggling to make ends meet. Some are under pressure from parents and employers. Many of them have children of their own to look after. The social norms that we had all taken for granted up until the arrival of coronavirus have all changed and with out so have our behaviours.
The question is whether or not the behaviours of our education system are adapting sufficiently well to the new normal? Yes, working in an open educational landscape does mean that students have access to tools and resources that enable them to access resources and communicate with other learners and exhibit behaviours that wouldn't be acceptable in traditional examination based assessment processes. However, the words of Dron and Anderson (2014) are worth bearing in mind:
"Unfortunately, one of the problems of being in an educational process where judgement is the norm is that the rewards and punishments that drive the system are almost inevitably demotivating, for both winners and losers."
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References
Dron, K. and Anderson, T. (2014) Agoraphobia and the modern learner [Online]. Available at: https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/2014-03/ (Accessed 23rd January 2021)
Gardner, W. M. and Melvin, K. B. (1988) A scale for measuring attitude toward cheating [Online]. Available at: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03334905.pdf (Accessed 22nd Jan 2021).
Harrison, D. (2020) Online Education and Authentic Assessment [Online]. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/04/29/how-discourage-student-cheating-online-exams-opinion (Accessed 23rd January 2021).
Hoy, K. and Tschannen-Moran, M. (1999) An empirical confirmation in urban elementary schools [Online]. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/105268469900900301 (Accessed 22nd January 2021).
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