Frauds in academic milieus are of multiple types. This piece brings to the fore a few of the biggest frauds. Although cheating in exams within academic milieus has become an almost accepted phenomenon, it seems always a fresh topic to write about.
The reasons for cheating are always the same. Suggestions of how to strangle this absurd problem are made to a fault. The big question to answer here is: how does this problem spread across educational institutions? Let’s illuminate this debate from XI and XII level exams!
To secure an appropriate answer to the question, it is necessary to understand how this dishonest behaviour incites the cheating malfeasance among students. It is because the teachers are of three categories. First, those who are not good at teaching. Second are those who are not regular at their jobs. Third, there are those who look at the textbooks and fill up the boards and get their students to fill their copies with what they have written on the boards.
This is the first stage where students start copying others’ content, and it inflames the cheating addiction among them.
Look around the bookstores, and see how they are crowded with people in the days of exams. What is most shocking is that the parents go to purchase the solved papers’ booklets and guides, and other such books. Students too do the same, and it often happens when their parents are outrightly unserious in the matter of education. This dangerous wrongdoing increasingly affects younger generations too. Parents indispensably need to be serious about what is after all a serious concern. They should be warned through media of all types about the detriments which this demonic malpractice could carry out.
A study has found that some examinees tend more to hire external contacts who converse with them the answers on the sly. Siblings and friends go along with examinees to help them in cheating, infiltrating the examination halls. To discontinue this heinous misdemeanor, policemen are deployed. But they themselves turn accomplices in this malpractice, allowing people to infiltrate the exam halls or to deliver personally their copies to examinees. In return, they are paid off. It is very clear to note here that the police encourage not only the cheating system, but also they contravene the exam rules and further the rampant corruption.
A point to ponder upon is that the blogs have also started paricipating in strengthening this absurd system, introducing some new cheating tricks that can help students to cheat in exams. Such types of detrimental content move around students, and they share those tricks with their friends too. For this, a mechanism should be developed to remove this kind of content from websites or at least this kind of content must no longer be accepted.
For universities, it’s a globally recognized fact that these institutions are the final stage for students wherein they learn how to chart out their future plans. But the institutions are entirely at an unsuccessful war with themselves. Like X and XII level exams, they have fallen prey to the cheating system. Some institutions might, however, be busy in the war against cheating in exams. But the progress seems still unsatisfactory in most of the examination centres.
If the question papers are dexterous, students start raising the slogan of ‘out of course.’ This slogan is likely the result of rote learning toward some specific topics. The slogan ‘out of guess’ less often raised indicates this. Students touch nothing but notes, and this results in rote malpractice, and writing the learnt-by-rote things in the answer copies. This again is itself a kind of cheating.
An anonymous external examiner must be invited to conduct the viva voce of students at the end of every examination. This will underpin demystifying the quality of education. Most strikingly, the solutions are many, but the frauds of so many types have increased at such a speed that they could never be curbed at all.
At the university level, vigilant invigilation can truly play a significant role in breaking the legs of the cheating system. Students taking exams must not be allowed to communicate with one another as they let their friends look at their test papers, and no student should be offered lenience right after they are caught cheating. Besides, bringing mobile phones in the exam halls is always prohibited.
If these mobile phones are collected from students during exams, they are at risk of being stolen. Otherwise the chances of cheating are possibly many. For girls, burqas are helpful in this regard. As far as the time-rule is concerned, some students are given extra time in the exams, but others are left bereft of such a thing. This unjust practice ignores the rule of time.
Then there is the assessment of answer copies, which provides another opportunity of malfeasance. It is done unjustly to enough extent, if not at all. During assessments, a favour is done to some students by awarding them with high marks– no matter what rubbish they filled in their copies. To the best of my knowledge, some teachers receive texts after texts, and calls at full throttle, across the assessment process.
To stop this, assessed copies must undergo a double-blind peer review process so that the initial assessments can be done sincerely. A study argues that the assessment process puts the challenge to the credibility of degrees and certificates and the validity of qualification.
The appalling thing to note today is that students make phoney assignments copying others’ content. Not only such assignments full of copied-content, but also those made without copying anything, do not undergo a strong assessment to make a difference between copied and uncopied assignments so that the justice can be done in both ends. High-achieving students who show stellar performance in their academic endeavours must be appreciated so that they can mount more efforts to do their best.
It is to be regretted severely that the students are taught how to do online paraphrasing of the content. This holds them back from writing original pieces, and this may really undercut their career advancement.
During the pandemic-induced lockdown, plenty of students remained engaged in the academic dishonesty of cheating in online exams. Aligned with this dishonesty, a study carried out in 2020 confirmed that the students who practice dishonesty within academic milieus may probably do the same in the professional workplace in the near future. This is how cheating dishonesty disperses across the education sector.
The scholars should collect the views of teachers, civil society and the students as well, about cheating. This will truly point out many ways forward. For example, a study has found that students viewed the uselessness of material as the root cause of this dishonest behaviour. At least, this helps understand the need for a revised, updated and fresh syllabus to teach.
An anonymous external examiner must be invited to conduct the viva voce of students at the end of every examination. This will underpin demystifying the quality of education. Most strikingly, the solutions are many, but the frauds of so many types have increased at such a speed that they could never be curbed at all.
Is there any possibility to strangle this plethora of cheating? Unfortunately, not really.
