Malpractice in Assessment

Who wants to engage in malpractice?

On 10^th September 2001, Major Charles Ingram took part in what became a much-scrutinised episode of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ on the UK’s ITV network. A surprisingly unsophisticated process of colluding with audience members through well-timed coughs allowed the contestant, Ingram, to validate his answers before committing. Although he never actually received the £1m prize, it highlights the lengths that some people will go to!

Now imagine how that episode may have played out if the host was ‘in on it’. Or if the contestant had access to the answers before the show. What if he’d been able to exploit some kind of technology, such as an in-ear device or a miniaturised screen in his glasses? With no way to spot these things, perhaps he would have gotten away with it after all.

In the world of high-stakes assessment, the landscape has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. The days of school students writing the answers up their arm or hiding cheat sheets in their sock are disappearing fast! As the nature of test delivery becomes more sophisticated through digital transformation, so too do the ways of trying to cheat the system.

The integrity of assessment

When we think about what constitutes the basis for integrity in assessed content, there are a few things to consider. I like to use the following as a bit of a guide:

1. Validity - does the content being assessed meet the criteria for assessment?
   1. If the assessment asked for insights into the outbreak of the American Civil War, and the candidate submitted a portfolio of architectural design, then it’s not valid!
2. Originality - is the content being assessed newly created for the assessment?
   1. If large sections of an essay are exact or near matches to other sources, like other candidates or something from Wikipedia, then it’s not original!
3. Attribution - can the content be attributed to the correct author?
   1. If the candidate hasn’t cited correctly or is trying to submit copied or paraphrased work as their own, then it’s not correctly attributed!

And of course, those three foci raise questions about the overall Admissibility of the content being assessed. If there’s doubt about the ‘safety’ of the content in terms of its validity, originality, and attribution, then of course the legitimacy of the award is called into question.

What constitutes malpractice?

Any activity that involves trying to get around measures designed to protect the integrity of an assessment can be seen as malpractice. Such activities are likely to fall into a number of categories.

1. Plagiarism - copying content from a published body of work
2. Collusion - working with others when it is disallowed
3. Use of Unauthorised Materials - marking use of course notes, for example, when it is disallowed
4. Impersonation - completing assessed work in place of the candidate who will receive the recognition
5. Maladministration - providing an unfair advantage to a candidate or candidates through some administrative capacity.

The use of other’s work may or may not be with their consent, but it is likely to fall under the category of plagiarism or collusion. It’s almost a philosophical consideration when discussing the use of generative AI content. Is it plagiarism if it’s original? Is it really original? Is the AI like a person, thereby making it collusion? I suspect these are questions for another day! But make no mistake, depending on the nature of the assessment, these likely constitute malpractice.

Is this really a problem?

It’s difficult to determine exactly how widespread malpractice is in the digital assessment space. From talking to assessment providers across a range of sectors, we know that protecting the integrity of both qualification and brand represents one of the most significant strategic challenges, and, of course, we’ve seen evidence of candidates attempting to work around malpractice countermeasures, typically through collusion. When it comes to assessment malpractice, it might be that the more we look, the more we find.

So, the question for educational establishments and awarding bodies isn’t “is malpractice a problem?” but rather two new questions:

1. What are the implications of failing to acknowledge and identify malpractice?
2. How do we take steps to protect the integrity of our qualification and brand?

We’re working on several fronts when it comes to identifying instances of potential malpractice in digital assessment.

Contact us

If you’re part of a school, college, or university, or if you’re part of creating, administering, and assessing qualifications within an awarding body, we’d love to hear about your experiences and how you address them today.

Email us: digitalassessment@rm.com