Are Online Exams an Invitation to Cheat?

Oskar R. Harmon () and James Lambrinos
Additional contact information
James Lambrinos: Union University

No 2006-08, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: This study uses data from two online courses in principles of economics to estimate a model that predicts exam scores from independent variables of student characteristics. In one course the final exam was proctored, in the other course the final exam was not proctored, and in both courses the first three exams were unproctored. If no cheating took place we expect the prediction model to have the same explanatory power for all exams, and conversely, if cheating occurred in the unproctored exam the explanatory power would be lower. Our findings are that both across and within class variations in the R-squared statistic suggest that cheating was taking place when the exams were not proctored.

Keywords: online; cheating; assessment; undergraduate economics; face-to-face (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 A22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
Date: 2006-03, Revised 2007-02
Note: Forthcoming in Journal of Economic Education
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Forthcoming in Journal of Economic Education

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http://www.econ.uconn.edu/working/2006-08r.pdf Full text, revised version (application/pdf)
http://www.econ.uconn.edu/working/2006-08.pdf Full text, first version (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uct:uconnp:2006-08

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