As online evaluation options become more prevalent among employers and educators, students start exploring ways to leverage the loopholes in remotely proctored evaluations. What can be termed cheating during online exams? Any form of intentional or unintentional form of academic misconduct that gives exam takers an unfair edge over others may be termed as cheating. Cheating or fraud is a serious violation of disciplinary rules that leads to severe consequences for students and institutes conducting the exam.

Let us explore how students cheat on online proctored exams.

While taking online exams, students may use multiple monitors. On one monitor, they may be attempting the test questions and simultaneously approach a friend for help with answers by sharing the reflection of the screen or sharing the screen with friends.

Impersonation is one of the most common forms of malpractice during exams. In this method, a student makes someone else take the test in their place. Impersonation may happen before the exam or during the online exam. Students try to bypass the authentication process by sharing login details with the impersonator prior to taking the test.

The Impersonator can be easily legitimized through skillful alteration of identity proofs and admit cards. Another interesting impersonification technique is switching during the exam. When the exam begins, the actual test taker might sit for authentication, once authentication is complete the impersonator may switch places during the exam.

It has been observed that in high-stakes exams like CAT, MAT, etc. students are using minute, undetectable Bluetooth devices for cheating. The use of high-tech calculators that can store formulas is another way of using technology to cheat in online exams. Cheating using hand-written notes is a traditional way of cheating in exams.

Cheating and fraud using mobile phones are on the rise. Connected devices like mobile phones help fellow takers find answers from external sources or each other.

Easy and unmonitored access to the internet and social media is a popular means of cheating in online exams. The candidates may log in to unauthorized websites or paste questions into the URL to find solutions.

Auto coding software is used by students to clear school/university exams or recruitment tests. Candidates need not write any code during the exam when they use this software.

Students use external devices like hard drives, microSDs, hard drives, and other external devices that are hard to detect and easy to hide. Taking a step further, students insert these devices to make a copy of the online exam to share with other students.

Friends or family present in the room help students while taking online tests. These people are present in the room but cannot be detected by the webcam. They provide answers to the candidate by whispering or showing it in written format.

Copy-pasting the answers by using various keyboard shortcuts is another popular way of cheating in online exams. Candidates copy-paste answers to frequently asked questions or popular questions on a clipboard to use during the exam.

Students deliberately exit from the exam by giving excuses like poor internet connection or other technical issues to shut down the camera. While the camera is not switched on candidates can conveniently cheat in the exam. Sometimes, they exit from the test in order to gain time to find answers. For example, in a Zoom proctored exam cheating is done by sabotaging the webcam.

Students and job aspirants come up with many innovative ways to cheat in online exams by using technology. Students can figure out ways to cheat in ATI proctored exams or integrity proctored exams by smart usage of technology.

Companies designing online proctoring software must be one step ahead of students/candidates so that they can include effective anti-cheating and anti-fraud checks. Understanding various ways that candidates adopt to cheat in online proctored exams helps design fraud-proof and cheating-proof software. Ways to cheat using technology external resources or other means must be explored and included in the design of online proctored software.

Using pre-employment skill assessment software like SkillRobo ensures that anti-cheating, anti-prevention checks are in place. Using this software ensures that the test is conducted in a secured browser environment so that no cheating is done. The candidate’s online activity is monitored throughout the exam/test.

Here are some of the effective measures that online proctoring tests must follow in order to prevent cheating:

Preventing Impersonation: A dynamic authentication process is an effective way to prevent impersonation. Other identification techniques are 3-point authentication, random identity authentication, and AI-enabled facial recognition. Advanced impersonation checks like these can prevent impersonation during online exams.

Preventing External Help: Proctoring techniques based on AI are highly effective in identifying any suspicious behavior through voice images or video. High-quality audio proctoring software scans the physical environment for additional noises, whispers, or mumbling during the test. The exam taker may be asked to take a 360-degree view of the venue where the test is being taken at periodic intervals to rule out any external help.

Prevention of External Resource Use: Proctoring in a secure browser environment is one of the best ways to check the use of external resources during the exam. A secure exam browser is a web-based lockdown browser that converts any system into a safe workstation. In such an environment, the test takers cannot venture outside the test environment. SkillRobo enables a secure browser environment for all its tests. Other fraud prevention techniques include high-quality audio proctoring software, advanced video proctoring access, and live proctoring and auto proctoring features.

Prevention of On-Screen Cheating: A secure browser environment is an effective way to prevent on-screen cheating. This environment locks the examination into a kiosk mode that whitelists only websites specific to the exam.

Curbing Intentional Sabotage: Dealing with intentional sabotage of the test is a tricky situation. One way to deal with such situations is to provide a fresh set of questions once a test is interrupted. When candidates repeatedly report sabotaging, the institute can take stringent action.