The production of ‘proper cheating’ in online examinations within technological universities

Abstract

This paper uses poststructuralist theories of governmentality, agency, consumption and Barry’s (2001) concept of Technological Societies, as a heuristic framework to trace the role of online education technologies in the instantiation of subjectification processes within contemporary Australian universities. This case study of the unintended effects of the adoption and usage of an online educational technology (WebFreedom) for online examinations in an Australian university setting is analysed using poststructuralist theories of governmentality, agency and consumption. The analysis demonstrates how techniques of governing the learning practices of students via online educational technologies intersect with the agentive capacity of students who are relocated as consumers in the higher education marketplace. In particular the paper focuses on the production of unintended localized online examination behaviours resulting in a form of ‘subterranean ethics’ or cheating in online exams. The results from this case study raise critical questions concerning the ways in which both students and tertiary educators are constituted within neoliberal governmental thought, as well as the ways in which students produce themselves in practice as autonomous agents and educational consumers within tertiary education. Suggestions on the focus of future research in the area are discussed.

Notes

1. We are using a modified version of Barry’s concept of interactivity. As Barry (2001, p. 149) contends, ‘interactivity turns the user (visitor, school child, citizen or consumer), into a more creative, participative subject without the imposition of a direct form of control or the judgement of an expert authority [it] is associated with the expectation of activity’. However, in university settings we would argue that interactivity involves the use of ICTs as technologies of agency and performance and as disciplinary techniques to normalize intra‐institutional populations (see Kitto, 2001, 2003; Kitto & Higgins, 2003). Thus, the term interactivity is used in this paper to describe discourses and practices around ICTs that seek to express increased and networked participation, choice, experimentation and feedback while retaining disciplinary and normalizing components.

2. This Australian Research Council funded project concerned the study of the implementation of an online educational technology using an actor‐network theory approach. A principal component of the study was to investigate the work required to assemble complex arrangements of human and non‐human actors within universities into online educational networks that serviced both off‐campus and on‐campus students. Interviews were conducted over an 18‐month period by Simon Kitto with approximately 57 subjects, including students, lecturers and university teaching management staff (technical and academic).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Kitto

This manuscript was accepted by Bronwyn Davies, QSE’s regional editor for Australia and New Zealand, in Octobar 2005.