'Good Proctor or “Big Brother”? AI Ethics and Online Exam Supervision Technologies' by Simon Coghlan, Tim Miller and Jeannie Paterson comments
This article philosophically analyzes online exam supervision technologies, which have been thrust into the public spotlight due to campus lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing demand for online courses. Online exam proctoring technologies purport to provide effective oversight of students sitting online exams, using artificial intelligence (AI) systems and human invigilators to supplement and review those systems. Such technologies have alarmed some students who see them as ‘Big Brother-like’, yet some universities defend their judicious use. Critical ethical appraisal of online proctoring technologies is overdue. This article philosophically analyzes these technologies, focusing on the ethical concepts of academic integrity, fairness, non-maleficence, transparency, privacy, respect for autonomy, liberty, and trust. Most of these concepts are prominent in the new field of AI ethics and all are relevant to the education context. The essay provides ethical considerations that educational institutions will need to carefully review before electing to deploy and govern specific online proctoring technologies.
The authors state
Recently, online exam supervision technologies have been thrust into the public spotlight due to the growing demand for online courses [Ginder et al., 2019] and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic [Flaherty, 2020]. While educational institutions can supervise remote exam-takers simply by watching live online video (e.g. via Zoom), an evolving range of online proctoring (OP) software programs offer more sophisticated, scalable, and extensive monitoring functions, including both human-led and automated remote exam supervision. Such technologies have generated confusion and controversy, including vigorous student protests [White, 2020]. Some universities have dug in against criticism, while others have outright rejected the technologies or have retreated from their initial intentions to use them [White, 2020]. At the root of disagreement and debate between concerned students and universities are questions about the ethics of OP technologies. This essay explores these ethical questions. By doing so, it should assist students and educators in making informed judgements about the appropriateness of OP systems, as well as shining a light on an increasingly popular digital technology application.
OP software platforms, which first emerged in 2008 [ProctorU, 2020b], are now booming. A 2020 poll found that 54% of educational institutions now use them [Grajek, 2020]. Increasingly, OP software contains artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) components that analyse exam recordings to identify suspicious examinee behaviours or suspicious items in their immediate environment. OP companies, which can make good profits from their products [Chin, 2020], claim that automating proctoring increases the scalability, efficiency, and accuracy of exam supervision and the detection of cheating. These features have an obvious attraction for universities, some of which believe the benefits of OP technologies outweigh any drawbacks. However, the complexity and opacity of OP technologies, especially their automated AI functions [Hagendorff, 2020], can be confusing. Furthermore, some (though not all) students complain of a “creepy” Big Brother sense of being invaded and surveiled Hubler [2020]. Predictably, some bloggers are instructing students how to bluff proctoring platforms [Binstein, 2015].
Scholars have just begun exploring remote and automated proctoring from a range of perspectives, including pedagogical, behavioral, psychological, and technical perspectives [Asep and Bandung, 2019, Cramp et al., 2019, González-González et al., 2020]. Nonetheless, and despite vigorous ethical discussion in regular media [Zhou, 2020], blog posts [Torino, 2020], and on social media, the ethics of emerging OP technologies has received limited scholarly analysis (cf. Swauger [2020]). Although moral assessments can be informed by empirical data about online and in-person proctoring — such as data about test-taker behavior [Rios and Liu, 2017] and grade comparisons [Goedl and Malla, 2020] — moral assessments depend crucially on philosophical analysis. In the following ethical analysis, we identify and critically explore the key moral values of academic integrity, fairness, non-maleficence, transparency, privacy, autonomy, liberty, and trust as they apply to OP technologies.
Some of these concepts are prominent in the new field of AI ethics [Jobin et al., 2019], which is burgeoning as AI moves increasingly into many facets of our lives, including in education. In this paper, we suggest that OP platforms are neither a silver bullet for remote invigilation nor, as some would have it, a completely “evil” technology [Grajek, 2020]. This ethical analysis will help to inform concerned individuals while setting out important ethical considerations for educational institutions who are considering OP platforms, including how they might devise appropriate governance frameworks for their use and remain accountable for their decisions. It will also provide a context for various future empirical investigations of OP technologies.
The essay is structured as follows. The Philosophical Approach section briefly explains the relevance of the central moral values to the OP debate. The Background section provides relevant context concerning exam invigilation and outlines central technological capabilities of popular OP programs. The Discussion section examines important ethical issues raised by the emergence of OP software. Finally, the Conclusion summarizes the ethical lessons for educational institutions and others.
'Assignment outsourcing: moving beyond contract cheating' by Rebecca Awdry in (2020) Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education states
The extent and reach of commercial cheating opportunities is ever present; thousands of websites promote differing business models offering assignments in multiple languages and currencies. In addition to commercial companies, students are known to outsource their assignments from friends and family. Assignment outsourcing and contract cheating are not a new problem, yet research to-date has been conducted utilising different survey tools and in different locations, thereby alluding accurate comparisons. This paper reports on a large international research project which utilised the same survey tool across multiple countries. Respondents most commonly reported outsourcing assignments from friends and family, and peer-sharing sites, as compared to essay mills. Large differences were found in the self-reported outsourcing behaviours between countries. Due to the differing outsourcing methods used, a new definition is offered for these behaviours: assignment outsourcing.
Awdry comments
The problem of students cheating at university by getting others to complete their assignments for them is something long researched in international literature (Bowers 1964; Stavisky 1973; Haines et al. 1986; McCabe 2005; Hughes and McCabe 2006a, 2006b). In recent years this has been referred to as contract cheating (Clarke and Lancaster 2006). Studies have looked at the motivating factors for cheating (Underwood and Szabo 2003; Devlin and Gray 2007; Beasley 2014; Rigby et al. 2015; Brimble 2016), the prevalence and extent of the problem (Clarke and Lancaster 2006; Curtis and Clare 2017; Bretag et al. 2018; Newton 2018; Curtis and Tremayne 2019) as well as demographic and predictor variables (McCabe and Trevino 1997; Stone, Jawahar, and Kisamore 2010; Ives et al. 2017). Contract cheating is not a new phenomenon, although only within the last decade or so has research been done which focusses on this type of cheating and the businesses offering it (for example, Harris and Srinivasan 2012; Lancaster and Clarke 2016; Bretag et al. 2018; Ellis, Zucker, and Randall 2018; Harper et al. 2018; Lancaster 2019; Medway, Roper, and Gillooly 2018; Rowland et al. 2018; Amigud 2019). Prior to this, research considered the wider terms cheating or plagiarism, and surveys may have included a question or two on outsourcing (for examples see Bowers 1964; McCabe 2005; Hughes and McCabe 2006a).
Students can outsource their assignments in a variety of ways, including essay mills, bespoke assignment services, essay bidding services, peer-to-peer file sharing sites (peer-sharing sites), and obtaining work from other students, colleagues, friends and family members. Bespoke, or ‘contract’, sites allow users to request a piece of work written to their specifications and to their timeframes; essay mills more commonly have pre-written assignments and users can search for their topic and purchase/download instantly. Whilst these sites usually provide services for a monetary fee, users may also gain ‘loyalty credits’ and can obtain assignments for free, or at reduced rates. Advertisements for these types of sites regularly appear in students’ social media feeds, Google searches, and on campus through unauthorised campaigns. The marketing and promotional methods used by the sites are advanced and sometimes predatory (see Medway, Roper, and Gillooly 2018; Rowland et al. 2018). Indeed, so advanced is the extent of these sites that there are review websites and blogs advising students which service would best meet their needs, for example, http://topaperwritingservices.com.
Peer-sharing sites are increasingly popular with student communities, often offering services for low or no cost. Sites allow users to upload their own documents in exchange for other materials which gets them credit towards a download. Available documents range from lecture notes and presentations to completed assignments (Rogerson 2014; Rogerson and Basanta 2016). Bidding sites, although offering a complete spectrum of tasks and skills for sale (from cleaning to construction), have been used by students to request others complete their work. The business model allows users to upload the requirements of what they are looking for, and respondents bid to complete the work, offering different prices and completion times; users then select the bid most preferential to what they require. Some sites are solely for academic work, for example, http://bid4papers.com (Lancaster and Clarke 2007; 2016).
Aside from the organised methods and companies, a common method through which students cheat at university is by getting a friend, family member or other student to complete their work for them (Đogaš et al. 2014; Bretag et al. 2018). Advice by the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) states that ‘third-parties’ offering assignments to students may include websites, peer-sharing sites or individuals such as a friend, relative or colleague; obtaining an assignment might not always involve a monetary exchange, and may be free or ‘for favours’ (Quality Assurance Agency 2017).
Whilst the term contract cheating may be suitable when describing some behaviours (such as bespoke essay production or other forms of contracting out work), it does not necessarily accurately describe other methods of obtaining work, for example from friends or family. Anecdotally, getting ‘help’ on assignments from a family member or other student is not something which students deem to be contract cheating, as no contract is involved. The original definition of contract cheating posed by Clarke and Lancaster (2006), was based upon students’ use of assignment bidding sites. The definition has been altered in response to increased awareness in these types of behaviours from students globally. However, although Lancaster’s current definition is broader, it appears counter to the term itself:
Contract cheating describes the process through which students can have original work produced for them, which they can then submit as if this were their own work. Often this involves the payment of a fee and this can be facilitated using online auction sites. (http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/contract-cheating, October 2019)
Specifically these behaviours may not be based upon a contract and the use of the word ‘can’ in the second line demonstrates that the student may not submit the work for credit, which would therefore not denote cheating. Additionally, it appears counter intuitive to alter the meaning behind the term, and rather retain it for those behaviours which can be considered contract cheating (essay mills, bespoke and bidding sites). Student cheating behaviours are varied and broad, hence a more encompassing term to represent these complexities is proposed (and used throughout this paper): assignment outsourcing.
Most data on university cheating are limited to a disciplinary, institutional or country focus and do not present a global context. Whilst a local context may be useful for understanding some student behaviours, due to the international nature of websites (where domain names, IP addresses, local contact numbers, and writers may all be situated in different countries [Sivasubramaniam, Kostelidou, and Ramachandran 2016; Ellis, Zucker, and Randall 2018]), an international survey of students may provide global insights to understand cheating from the users’ perspectives. xx Further, as Ives et al. (2017) noted, much less work has been done in regard to surveying students on attitudes about academic dishonesty and reasons for engaging in these behaviours in South America, Eastern Europe and Africa than in Australia, the UK and North America; and specifically on outsourcing behaviours. When considering student understandings and engagements with cheating and outsourcing, and policy approaches across Europe, large differences were seen between countries in their attitudes towards cheating (Glendinning 2014, 2016; Council of Europe 2017). Moreover, as students can undertake part of their course in another country or language, contextualisation between different educational settings and common local outsourcing methods could provide useful insights for study tours and collaborations between international institutions (Glendinning 2016).
Data currently available on contract cheating, from different survey tools, definitions and behaviours, have found variance in reported rates of outsourcing. For example, Newton (2018) reported an average self-reported contract cheating rate of 3.52% based on historical analyses of studies undertaken internationally; Bretag et al. (2018) reported 5.78% for a range of contract cheating behaviours in Australia (2.2% obtained assignments); 30.6% was reported in Romania (Ives et al. 2017) and 8% in the Czech Republic (Foltýnek and Králíková 2018). Surveys used to explore the topic differ between studies and countries; surveys/research question are not consistent or similar; studies are located in one discipline, university or country. This prevents any direct or longitudinal data comparisons, and evaluations between research studies remain a challenge.
Finally, most research has considered outsourcing as one category, having combined the different methods or modes through which students obtain the work. By exploring assignment outsourcing within only one paradigm, the methods, modes and purposes are not clearly differentiated, nor compared, which is a significant gap in existing research. Without having a far deeper understanding of the ways in which students outsource their assignments, pro- and re-active strategies may be ineffective. A strategy to reduce students’ temptations to buy an assignment from a contract cheating service may be entirely ineffective for promoting honesty and encouraging students to complete their own work, and not provide assignments to peers.
