Table of Content
The anecdote on academic integrity before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Table of Content
Nutchanon Jariyanurut, 5 Oct. 2022
(Edited: Aug. 2025; grammar)
Note: This was written after the relaxation of the 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 what happened at that time will not be forgotten.
I don’t know much about how other academic institutions handle this kind of problem, but at my faculty of engineering at Chulalongkorn University, academic integrity is regulated very strictly. (Maybe it depends on the professor of a course, but on 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 that 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 be 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 HW scores would be stripped down entirely, even though the breach of the rule was only one HW. The lesson he (and also I, 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 Teams, whatever). The possibility of students cheating on exams was obviously higher. Cheating was rampant, and some professors tried to mitigate it. However, many (most of the) professors in the department just let it go and didn’t care much. I mean, compared to other faculty in the university. For example, at the Faculty of Pharmacy, I asked my friend about how they handle online exams, and he said that their professor bought the software to lock each student’s laptop during the exam and even monitored them to see if they wanted to go to the toilet. My examination experience was much more relaxed. For example, I did not have to declare when I wanted to go to a toilet, or I even had a chance if I really wanted to see the course material during the exam, because the professor allowed the use of an iPad to write the exam paper, and he obviously cannot see the students’ iPad screens.
The solution to this problem, for most of the professors, was to 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 chance to help 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 monitor students by making them use their phone to open a Zoom online meeting, one midterm examination led 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 helped each other during the exam, obviously because of a lack of monitoring, but the exam was so hard that they still could not do it all, even with the help of teamwork.
There was a group for cheating on exams during the COVID-19 pandemic, inevitably. It existed on a platform called Discord. One of my best friends, who was leading and let his/her friends copy his/hers, invited me to that Discord server twice (obviously, that server was not only for cheating, but for every activity, such as chatting and meeting to discuss university work). I also had to quietly leave that server twice because I didn’t want to associate, or even want to acknowledge, 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 to eat 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-19 pandemic, the grades of students were apparently inflated. For instance, the CULI course COM PRES SKILL had a 30-score listening exam, and the cheating in that part was very rampant, according to my friends. If you think about it, a 30-score exam that took only one and a half hours 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, like before, grades 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 want to pursue computer engineering before COVID times 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 that is possible, and if someone said that to me in 2019, I would not have believed it!
Now, it is back to normal. The exams are conducted on-site like before, and cheating methods mentioned in all the above paragraphs will not occur anymore (hopefully!). Anyway, I would want to bring a very good quote from my friend when addressing 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 with whom I studied every day. He studied so hard in GEN PHYSICS II that he went out with me and practiced problems until late at night for many weeks before the exam, giving up his time to play basketball in the evening because of this endeavor. Turns out that his dedication could not help him reach 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 a very high score, the thing that he wanted but could not achieve.”
Not only did they cheat on the exam and ruin the morale, but also cheated on others’ time and dedication, which they could have spent on something else, but they did not.”
This final paragraph is the conclusion of all the above that I have written so far.