A Critical Analysis of Students’ Cheating in Online Assessment in Higher Education: Post-COVID-19 Issues and Challenges Related to Conversational Artificial Intelligence

The latest advances in conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) systems that are available to the general public have intensified the debate on cheating in online assessment in higher education. The issue of cheating in online assessment in the educational context had already been given significant attention owing to school closures (lockdown periods) during the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent transition from on-site to online teaching and assessment. In our paper we present statistical data on cheating in online courses and academic dishonesty in general, as well as an overview of motives for and methods of cheating reported in the literature, with a focus on the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations are also provided regarding the use of specific techniques and tools to prevent cheating in online exams. Since plagiarism is an important problem in academic assessment the potential misuses of CAI in higher education are also briefly analyzed. This paper comprises a synthesis of related review papers and meta studies with reports of empirical research findings, as well as the experiences of the authors of the paper.