Table of Content
The anecdote on academic integrity before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Table of Content
Nutchanon Jariyanurut, 5 Oct. 2022
Note: This was written after the relaxation of COVID-19 policy of Chulalongkorn University; Every course in Chula was conducted on-site as usual at the time of writing. So, the title of this writing was marked as “anecdote.” I wrote this as a memory so it is not forgotten what happened at that time.
I don’t know much about how other academical institutions handle this kind of problems, but at my faculty of engineering at Chulalongkorn U., the academic integrity is regulated very strictly. (Maybe depends on the professor of a course, but in average, that moral is seriously emphasized.)
I have one friend who had his engineering drawing (yes, the 1st year course) AutoCAD HW copied from his friend. The reasoning was he could not have done it on time. Secondly, he thought that the professor could not really have time to check whether the HWs of his students were copied from others or not, since there were more than 300 students per course per semester, and checking them all would obviously, virtually impossible. Turns out that the professor literally had his python code to check all AutoCAD HWs whether there were pairs of copied files or not, and it took around just one minute to check all of them. The punishment was already declared in the first lecture: all HWs score would be stripped down entirely even though the breaching of the rule was only one HW. The lesson he (and also me since I’m his friend) got was tough and awfully memorable.
During the COVID time, the midterm and the final exams of every subject had to be moved to the online platform (Zoom, MS team, whatever.) The possibility of students to cheat on exams was obviously higher. The cheating was rampant, and some professors tried to mitigate that problem. However, many (most of the) professors in the department just let it go and didn’t care much. I mean, comparing to other faculty in the university (for example, Fac. of. Pharmacy where I asked my friend about how they handle online exam, and he said that their prof bought the software to lock the laptop of each student during exam, and even monitored them if they want to go to the toilet,) my examination experience was much more relaxed. For example, I did not have to declare when I want to go to a toilet, or I even had a change if I really want to see the course material during the exam because the prof allowed the use of iPad to write the exam paper and he obviously he cannot see the students’ iPad screen.
The solution of this problem, for most of the prof, was let the exam be an open book. Furthermore, even the take-home exam was utilized. Maybe the prof would think that even though the students had a change to help with each other, the exam was hard enough to, still, evaluate their knowledge.
I remember very vividly that, despite the normal situation of online exams that monitors students by making them use their phone to open Zoom online meeting, one midterm examination let by Prof. David (LIN CON SYS II, if you wonder,) was not monitoring his students at all. I remember that I made hot tea for myself during an exam because the environment was so relaxed. I even finished the exam on time and my score was given full marks! Some of my friends were helping each other during the exam, obviously, because of lack of monitoring, but the exam was so hard that they still could not done it all, even with a help of teamworking.
There was a group for cheating exam during the COVID time, inevitably. It was existing in a platform called Discord. My one of the best friends, who was leading and let his/her friends copied his/hers, invited me to that discord twice (obviously that server was not only for cheating, but for every activity such as chatting and meeting to discuss the university works.) I also had to quietly leaved that server twice because I didn’t want to associate, or even want to acknowledge, about this kind of moral breaching. It was such an unpleasant situation, because s/he is really my friend, but the teacher(s) also knew about the cheating when I went for eating with him/her once. S/he even got caught once by another prof, but luckily could get away with it.
I would like to speculate that during the COVID time, the grades of students were apparently inflated. For instance, the CULI course COM PRES SKILL had one 30-score listening exam, and the cheating of that part was very rampant according to asking my friends. If you think about it, 30-score exam that took only one and a half hour could change the student’s grade entirely, and it could be cheated easily! (Or not? I don’t know because I did the exam myself.) The CULI, same as before, grading the students by a bell curve, and the A-letter threshold was pushed up to 86!
The same situation was happening to 1st year students’ grades. Normally, the lower bar of the GPAX for those who wants to pursue in computer engineering before a COVID time was about 3.10, a bit lower but never exceeded that. However, in 2021 the bar was up to more than 3.10 for the first time, and in 2022 the bar was pushed higher to 3.26! I cannot even comprehend how can that possible, and if someone said that to me in 2019, I would not have believed!
Now, it is back to normal. The exams are conducted on-site like before and the ways of cheating mentioned in all the above paragraphs will not occur anymore (hopefully!) Anyway, I would want to bring the very good quote from my friend when addressing about the academic integrity. He states that:
“When you think about cheating an exam, or even a HW, you may justify yourself that you cannot do that because of your personal reasons, but how can you even know that the other people, who are not cheating like you, do not have the same reasoning as yours, but they are still not cheating.”
“There was one of my friends whom I studied with every day. He studied so hard in GEN PHYSICS II that he went out with me and practiced problems until late night for many of weeks before the exam, gave up his time to play basketball in the evening because of this endeavor. Turns out that his dedication could not help him reaching his anticipation.”
“I was not angry because his dedicated determination could not fulfill his goal. I was angry because there was someone who cheated and got the very high score, the thing that he wanted but could not be reached.”
Not only they cheated the exam and ruined the morale, but also cheated on other’s time and dedication, whose they could have spent on something else, but they were not.”
This final paragraph is the conclusion of all the above that I have written so far.