Educational Alternatives, Volume 20, 2022

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic poses challenges to universities worldwide. Resulting from the need to comply with distance requirements and hygiene rules, universities implemented more and more distance learning and online examination formats. This was intended to reduce the risk of infection for students and staff. In these pandemic times, replacing on-site examinations by alternative testing types and adjusting examination procedures have become necessary to allow students to continue their studies and to avoid infections among examinees and university staff. Beside the advantages innovative examination types offer, several disadvantages exist, such as their increased susceptibility to cheat. With this paper, the authors analyze if and why innovative examination types have supported and increased examinees’ motivation to cheat. As higher education institutions moved online in the COVID-19 pandemic, several universities are reporting significant increases in academic misconduct. The paper informs about that increase of dishonest practice in university examinations worldwide in the last years. By the means of literature review and from their longstanding experience, the authors analyze possibilities for cheating in traditional and new test formats. They discuss reasons why candidates use cheating to improve their examination results. Conclusion is that innovative examination types are susceptible to cheat and universities, in the interest of all honest examinees, have to ensure an equal treatment of all candidates even under the pandemic conditions. That means they have to undertake any efforts to prevent academic misconduct. In doing that, however, they shall respect students’ fundamental rights and the data protection law. It will be a challenge to develop technical solutions that comply with candidates’ rights and the examination law. Without any doubt, this problem will accompany universities in the next years if they will continue to use online examinations.