You've gained admission to a college or university from which you expect to graduate with pride, to further your education and career. Things are going well for you. But then, you face school allegations that you cheated on an online exam. Caught in a technology thicket, you are frightened, confused, embarrassed, and unsure of your rights. You need help discerning your best way forward. You need help saving your education, reputation, and career.
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team has helped hundreds of students nationwide defend and defeat academic misconduct charges, including charges of online exam cheating. Our skilled and experienced attorneys know how to best handle these types of academic administrative matters. Call 888.535.3686 now to tell us about your case, or complete this contact form. Get the help you need for your best outcome to online exam cheating charges.
The Online Testing Problem
Online testing was once thought to be a solution to traditional exam cheating issues. Sophisticated exam software, it was once thought, would eliminate student access during the exam to unauthorized materials. Identification technology would eliminate the use of stand-ins to take an exam for the cheating student. Randomization of exam questions and answer options would eliminate rote memorization from stolen exams. Wherever schools and their exam proctors saw a cheating problem, technology offered a solution.
Online testing, though, hasn't solved the exam cheating problem. If anything, online testing has introduced an entire new set of disciplinary risks for students. Exam software that is supposed to catch cheaters can instead flag innocent students who suffer computer crashes, glitches, wifi or power interruptions, and other common anomalies. Professors are often unclear about how students may use their computers or other electronic devices during an exam. And the sheer number of available devices, services, banks, programs, and other resources further tempts and confuses students.
Online Testing Conditions
If you face online exam cheating charges, you already know that the conditions under which you took the test likely played a role in those charges. Online testing conditions can differ in any of the following ways, all of which influence the nature, investigation, proof, and outcome of the charges.
Online Exam Location Issues
Your online exam location may have been in a traditional classroom, a special online testing center, or in your dormitory room or off-campus housing. Classroom exams may leave students sitting next to other students with whom they usually study and share information. Classroom exams may lead students to suspect and incorrectly report cheating that has not in fact taken place. Testing center exams may lead to charges of testing center rule violations when no actual cheating took place. Online exams administered remotely to your own housing may lead to charges of unauthorized assistance from friends, family members, or roommates, or access to unauthorized materials or devices.
Online Exam Device Issues
Your online exam may have required you to use a school device, your own device, or a device you borrowed or otherwise obtained from another student or source. Using your own computer, tablet, or other device may lead to charges of unauthorized access to materials stored on your device or available remotely through your device. Using a school device may lead you to keystroke, password, or other device or system errors that may appear anomalous and lead to cheating charges. Using a borrowed device may lead to all of the above issues. Beware of device issues. Secure and save unaltered any device involved in the online exam cheating dispute. Your defense may depend on the device's forensic investigation by our retained forensic computer consultants.
Online Exam Software Issues
Your online exam may have required you to use a school learning management system, school exam software program, third-party exam software program, or online means your instructor designed. Third-party vendor exam software programs like Honorlock, Synap, Constructor Proctor, Digiexam, and Exam.net are especially common. Vendors claim their reliability in detecting cheating such as interruption of the exam program to access other programs or materials. But exam software can, in the worst case, be the source of the problem rather than a solution to actual cheating. False allegations may arise simply because of software anomalies or software flags triggered by innocent conduct, like the necessary reboot of a crashed computer.
Online Exam Instructions Issues
Your online exam may have been according to your instructor's written syllabus, oral instructions, or a school testing center code, or a combination of those regulations. Your instructor may have written one exam instruction in the syllabus but modified it orally in class. Or your instructor may have left the instructions ambiguous. You may have been subject to testing center rules that your instructor did not know or anticipate. Confusion over exam rules can be at the center of online exam cheating charges. Documenting and proving the instructions can be critical to your favorable outcome.
Online Exam Proctor Issues
Your online exam may have been before your instructor, a student teaching assistant, a school staff member, a part-time exam proctor, or another person or official. The proctor may have followed different rules than the instructor, syllabus, or testing center imposed. The proctor may also have mistaken innocent conduct as if it were instead cheating. Exam proctor issues can contribute to cheating charges.
Student Conduct Codes and Online Testing
When you face online exam cheating charges, your school's disciplinary officials will ground those charges in your school's honor code or student code of conduct, like the Honor Pledge at the University of Maryland. Your school's honor code will doubtless prohibit online exam cheating. Your school's code may or may not specify the forms of online exam cheating. Your school's code may simply prohibit academic dishonesty, or your school may also include details as to what may constitute academic dishonesty or cheating. The University of Maryland's Honor Pledge, for example, prohibits academic dishonesty while only mentioning, as an example, giving or receiving unauthorized assistance on an exam. But no matter how your school writes its honor code or student code of conduct, your school's code will likely provide for disciplinary charges, procedures, and sanctions for online exam cheating, right up to school suspension and expulsion.
Detecting Online Testing Cheating
How your school claims to have detected your alleged online exam cheating may also influence the outcome of your cheating charges. Schools tend to detect online exam cheating in one or more of several ways. Instructors may suspect exam cheating from the answer forms or exam scores. Instructors may suspect cheating when students perform far better on an exam than on prior exams or assignments or when their answers are more complete, precise, or formulaic. Instructors may use comparison software to flag suspected copying.
Proctors are another source of online exam cheating detection. Schools retain, train, and employ proctors to discourage and detect cheating. Proctors may be much more observant and much more willing to allege exam cheating than instructors may be. Proctors may base online exam cheating allegations on furtive movements, materials or devices recovered from a student in the exam room, and frequent or prolonged student restroom breaks. Remote proctors may watch a video of the student completing an exam and allege cheating when the video appears to reflect the student engaging in any of the above suspicious conduct.
Fellow students are another source for detecting online exam cheating. Students taking the exam together may report another student for suspicious behavior of any kind, such as unauthorized materials or devices, starting early or concluding after the called time, or unauthorized collaboration. Students may also report that other students sought online exam assistance or bragged after the exam of having cheated. Online exam software, though, may be the most common way in which schools detect and charge suspected cheating. Exam software uses algorithms to flag suspected cheating from keystrokes, software interruptions, screen monitoring, and even audio and video monitoring.
Kinds of Online Testing Cheating Charges
The type or kind of cheating your school charges, along with its frequency, reprehensibility, and severity, will also influence the outcome of those charges. Colleges and universities generally pursue online exam cheating charges in one or more of the following forms.
Unauthorized Assistance as Online Exam Cheating
Unauthorized collaboration or assistance is a common allegation relating to online exam cheating. Unauthorized assistance may be especially tempting and easy to accomplish in a remote online exam setting when collaborators are present to assist but off-screen. However, unauthorized assistance can also occur in a classroom or exam room. It can also involve more than just two students, even a whole class of students. Schools often charge unauthorized assistance when one student admits involvement and turns in other students. However reporting students may also be mistaken or may exaggerate and even retaliate with false charges.
Unauthorized Materials
Using unauthorized materials is a second common form of online exam cheating charge. The unauthorized materials may be a textbook, notebook, notecards, or other printed materials, or may be electronic materials the student accesses from the testing computer or other device. The materials may be answer keys, problem sets, formulas, definitions, or summaries of course materials. A proctor's recovery of the materials during the exam may be the incriminating evidence. However, substantial confusion may exist over what materials the instructor may have authorized or failed to prohibit.
Unauthorized Devices
Using unauthorized devices is another common form of online exam cheating charge. The device may be a second computer, laptop computer, tablet, or smartphone the student uses to access printed material or the internet. The student may use the device to contact an online study service for answers or to contact another student or collaborator. Other unauthorized devices may take the form of a calculator, a thumb drive, or even a smartwatch. And the issue may not be with the device but with the program, macro, or other shortcut the alleged cheater may have arranged on the device. Exam software may detect anomalous uses of the exam computer.
Impersonation
Using a substitute or stand-in to take the online exam is another common form of online exam cheating charge. Online exam protocols typically require some form of identification. But that form may be as little as a checkbox or other voluntary verification that the exam taker is the student purporting to take the exam. In other words, authentication may be no more than an honor system. If authentication is instead more rigorous, such as with photo identification or even face recognition or fingerprint recognition, impersonation may yet occur after authentication. Impersonation is a serious online exam cheating charge. Take such charges especially seriously.
Computer Crashes
Computer crashes can contribute to online exam cheating charges. Crashes may require the student to reboot the computer, switch devices, exit and reenter the exam software, or continue the exam past the scheduled time. Crashes may also show up as suspicious activity when, to the contrary, the student did nothing wrong.
Facing Online Exam Cheating Allegations
If you face online exam cheating charges, know that your school will have some form of protective procedure to ensure that you get to tell your side of the story. When you retain our Student Defense Team, our attorneys can invoke those protective procedures for your best outcome. Those procedures must ordinarily include fair notice to you and a formal hearing on the charges. They may also include appeal rights even if you have already lost your misconduct hearing. Penn State's academic misconduct procedures are an example. Our attorneys can help you gather and present exonerating and mitigating evidence, challenge the school's evidence, appeal any adverse ruling, and seek alternative voluntary special relief.
Premier Student Defense Available
Take online exam cheating charges seriously. Don't throw away your education. Get the skilled and experienced representation you need for your best outcome. The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team has helped hundreds of students nationwide defend and defeat academic misconduct charges. Call 888.535.3686 now to tell us about your case, or complete this contact form.
