4 Ways to Prevent Cheating and Plagiarism in Online Exam

Students take refuge in practicing unfair means for gaining a relative advantage. Online exam cheating is widespread amongst students, which spoils academic honesty. Circumventing cheating is essential. The unethical act induces a lack of respect and trust between teachers and learners. Proctoring or keeping a laptop or mobile camera focused on students can help in invigilation.

“Plagiarism” is integrating someone else’s words or into one’s writing without proper acknowledgment. Students plagiarize either intentionally or unintentionally during exams.

The Reasons and Ways Students Adopt to Cheat

Cheating is a severe violation of disciplinary rules. Often students cheat for lack of impactful in-person supervision, growing competitiveness, personal misjudgment, or as a thrill.

Well, several reasons are there behind cheating. However, some of them are pretty frequent because students primarily adopt these ways to cheat, and they are:

• By impersonation
• Using external resources
• Abetting cheating
• Utilizing sophisticated earpieces and microphones
• Saving answers on smart devices
• Misusing navigation rights
• Keeping hidden documents or browsers
• Disrupting the exams intentionally

Punishment for Cheating in Online Exams

Plagiarism and cheating have legal consequences that accused students need to bear.

● It may cause harm to students’ academic careers and lower them in the eyes of evaluators.

● Authority is empowered to rusticate the guilty from institution or university because of plagiarism and cheating allegations.

● Sometimes, students need to face financial loss or punishment with incarceration for the same.

Four Unique Ways to Prevent Cheating:

• Combining AI and human intervention

Employing sophisticated AI technology, using online proctoring software or a double shuffle exam software may help. Candidate verification and authentication may help.

• Neutralizing question banks

Lengthy question papers do not provide students time to discuss answers with peers. Innovative and thought-provoking questions are likely to differ one student’s answer script from the other. Authority can set a combination of both viva and written assessment.

• Detecting secondary smartphones, tablets, and laptops

Employing video surveillance could be beneficial to detect additional gadgets. Often these gadgets help the students in cheating. Hence, strict measures should be taken upon using these gadgets inside the examination hall.

• Offering full-time support

Teachers must try to make students participate in class discussions without taking them as mere recipients. They should appreciate group works; promote critical skills in them as most of the new world breakthroughs occur in groups. Teachers need to introspect and engage students in extensive debates.

Plagiarism Prevention Tips for Students:

Technological advancement has made it simpler to prevent plagiarism. Tackling plagiarism becomes manageable when students know the fundamentals of it.

Following are some tips to resist plagiarism and enable students to write unique and original papers.

Plagiarism disregards academic sincerity. It stands as an obstruction to students’ future careers. Students charged with plagiarism allegations need to compensate in several ways.

1. Source citation

While using phrases or ideas from eminent authors, students must refer to the sources in the papers and cite them. They must include publication date, author’s name, or other necessary stuff there.

2. Quotations inclusion

Adding verbatim is permissible to improve the writing quality. However, students may copy without knowledge. They must avert plagiarism by incorporating quotation marks at necessary places. Students can also employ a direct quote and acknowledge the sources and assist evaluators to relate to the context easily.

3. Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is restructuring someone else’s phrases or sentences into one’s language without changing the real meaning. However, students need to paraphrase attentively so that duplication does not take place.

The paraphrasing tools are beneficial for brainstorming ideas. If users need to write on similar concepts repeatedly, they can exploit paraphrase software and start working directly. Students can use paraphrasing tools in take-home assignments to write in a better way.

4. Writing original idea

Students must infuse new perspectives instead of directly copying from others. They must think of unique concepts and write with spontaneity. Source citation becomes crucial for students. They must learn how to cite sources from teachers.

When students are forced to write their thoughts on similar topics repeatedly, there are high instances of inserting the same arguments from previous tasks. It is known as “self-plagiarism.” Teachers may punish them with retribution or reject their answer sheets.

5. Using a plagiarism detector

While studying, some phrases or sentences may stay in the minds of readers for a long time. They can put those phrases in their articles unintentionally without any acknowledgment. Plagiarism checking tools assist in cheat detection when users opt for reviewing the papers before final submission.

A plagiarism checker such as Copyleaks produces accurate statements with both the proportion of originality and duplication. A plagiarism detector employs refined A. I. algorithms and checks URLs, documents, and raw texts. It performs broad inquiries across several databases and websites to specify plagiarism.

The tools show the copied sections and relate to the sites of plagiarizing. This procedure helps students to rewrite or delete the plagiarized section. Plagiarism recognizing software is driven by AI technology and Machine Learning.

These tips could be beneficial to avoid plagiarism in online exams. Students need to be informed about what, includes plagiarism, and follow the principles to create original content.

How Do Plagiarism Checkers Function?

Various plagiarism checkers for students are accessible online, but one must select them carefully. A Machine Learning and AI-based plagiarism checking tool like Copyleaks gives a concise and actual report. Students need to scan their papers to gain helpful feedback. It protects safety and educational integrity. It relates the writing with other websites, develops a rate of similarities, locates similar contents, and refers to the sources. Using plagiarism checkers is an effective and time-saving choice. Students must abstain from writing copied papers as it can damage their reputation. They need to focus on submitting texts with original ideas to impress teachers.