This article introduces you to EXAMIND and our approach towards better assessment design and academic integrity.
Our Mission
Our mission is to help instructors assess students, so they can spend more time on research and teaching instead of rewriting questions and worrying about cheating.
Our Vision
Every instructor can go from sign-up to exam-ready in under 5 minutes with no training and every student is given the chance to perform at their best, in a stress-free environment.
Our Values
Your Experience Over Our Experience: We believe in putting the human experience at the center of everything we do. This means making our product and service simple, accessible and user friendly. Sometimes, it means more work for us. But that's ok, because the right way isn't always the easy way.
Your Life is Your Choice: We believe everyone should live the life they want to live. We encourage others to be who they are, in life and at work. This means we support each other wherever life leads us. No one should ever feel like they have to hide their true self.
Your Life is Your Choice: We believe everyone should live the life they want to live. We encourage others to be who they are, in life and at work. This means we support each other wherever life leads us. No one should ever feel like they have to hide their true self.
We're Open and We're Honest: We believe in creating a place of transparent, open and honest debate. We see being transparent and open as a willingness to accept ideas that are outside of one's comfort zone. We see honest as having the courage to speak your truth. When we put these traits together, we sow the seeds for personal growth.
Our Word is Our Bond: We believe that our character is more important than our reputation. It shouldn't be hard to do what you said you were going to do. We try to be the example that leads others to live and work with high integrity.
Our Approach
To achieve our vision, we believe every assessment should exhibit the following characteristics:
- A high student satisfaction rating (NPS 50+)
- An inclusive user experience (WCAG 2.1 Level AA)
- A normal distribution of scores (70% class average with a standard deviation of 10%)*
- An assessment design in tune with the modern world and modern pedagogy (ex. incorporates ChatGPT instead of restricts it)
* Exceptions may occur, such as bimodal distributions in Organic Chemistry
Psychology Behind Cheating
We understand cheating through the lens of habit formation: trigger, action, and reward.
The Trigger
Triggers are cues instigating a behavior. They can be internal (e.g., hunger) or external (e.g., a fire alarm). Exams are stressful and can generate potent triggers for cheating, including fear of failure, anxiety, laziness, and external pressure to excel.
Triggers are cues instigating a behavior. They can be internal (e.g., hunger) or external (e.g., a fire alarm). Exams are stressful and can generate potent triggers for cheating, including fear of failure, anxiety, laziness, and external pressure to excel.
Initially, we observed that academic research mostly aimed at reducing the motivation to cheat to enhance academic integrity. A common practice included frequent, low-stakes quizzes.
The Action
The Action is the performed behavior. The easier it is, the more probable it becomes.
The transition of exams from paper to online made it simpler for students to cheat. Solutions like online proctoring aim to increase the effort required to cheat.
The transition of exams from paper to online made it simpler for students to cheat. Solutions like online proctoring aim to increase the effort required to cheat.
The Reward
The Reward is the ultimate goal of every habit. When cheating leads to passing grades without studying, it solidifies cheating as a viable academic strategy. The issue is that successful cheating often proliferates among students, creating a habit-formation loop that is challenging to break.
Consider Pavlov's dogs. The study shows that behavior is more likely to recur when positively reinforced. Removing this reinforcement can nearly obliterate the conditioned response. The key to academic integrity is to eradicate the benefits of cheating.
At EXAMIND, we concentrate on eliminating the rewards of cheating. Our approach emphasizes results over behaviors, setting us apart from conventional strategies and enabling new and innovative ways to assess students.
At EXAMIND, we concentrate on eliminating the rewards of cheating. Our approach emphasizes results over behaviors, setting us apart from conventional strategies and enabling new and innovative ways to assess students.
Structural Issues With Online Proctoring
Online proctoring is in a precarious position.
Increasing the sensitivity to detect cheating behavior leads to a higher number of reported incidents (and false positives), which results in a larger time investment required by instructors to maintain. However, decreasing the sensitivity undermines the software's efficacy and increases the number of false negatives.
As a result, "only about 11 percent of test sessions tagged for suspicious activity by AI tools are reviewed by the school or testing authority" and "reviewing the recordings of just a single, 60-minute exam for a class of 150 students can take nine hours, time that neither instructors nor their teaching assistants should be expected to invest" (source).
Increasing the sensitivity to detect cheating behavior leads to a higher number of reported incidents (and false positives), which results in a larger time investment required by instructors to maintain. However, decreasing the sensitivity undermines the software's efficacy and increases the number of false negatives.
As a result, "only about 11 percent of test sessions tagged for suspicious activity by AI tools are reviewed by the school or testing authority" and "reviewing the recordings of just a single, 60-minute exam for a class of 150 students can take nine hours, time that neither instructors nor their teaching assistants should be expected to invest" (source).
In both cases, students are positively reinforced for cheating without facing any negative consequences. This propagates the perception that online proctoring is ineffective, which further incentivizes cheating and teaches students to cheat.
Understanding Cheating Modes
After conducting over 250 one-on-one interviews with students from universities across North America, South America, and Europe, we identified six prevalent cheating strategies:
- Access to information: When students gain access to unauthorized materials during a closed book exam
- Asynchronous information: When students who have taken the exam share information with those who have not
- Group collaboration: When students collaborate in person or digitally during an exam
- Leaked content: When students acquire exam questions and answer keys from websites like Chegg, Course Hero and Quizlet
- Contract cheating: When students hire assistants help or write their exam
- AI-Content generation: When students use AI to generate content
Rethinking Assessment and Integrity
It's time for a transformative approach, and we are here to guide you. Effective assessment design can ensure high academic integrity. We need to reconsider traditional practices. Rather than attempting to limit access to information, we advocate for open-book exams to level the playing field. Allow us to help you streamline the process and alleviate your concerns about academic dishonesty.