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ABSTRACT
The recent pandemic necessitated a migration to online instruction leading to concerns regarding the integrity of online assessments as a result of the presence of fee-based websites that disseminate answers to students. We validated this concern by evaluating student performance on an online quiz where some of the questions had easily searchable answers, and others that had been altered so that an internet search would return no usable results. Analysis of the results showed that students performed better on the readily searchable questions compared to those that were not. A follow-up study was conducted in which access to other websites was prohibited. In this assessment, students performed significantly worse on the previously searchable questions, but their performance on the de-identified questions was unchanged. Collectively, these results indicate that there was student use of homework assistance websites to obtain answers, a problem that should trouble accounting educators across the globe.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 While we believe that academic misconduct can be at least partially described by mapping certain personality traits onto the fraud triangle/diamond (e.g. Bicer, Citation2020), this investigation is limited to exploring only capability and opportunity. Thus, this paper’s scope is limited to providing evidence that students have both the capability and opportunity to use homework assistance websites to obtain an unfair advantage.
2 According to Section 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations (45 CFR), the controlling guidance for research involving human subjects in the United States, research of this type is exempt from review. Specifically, “Research that only includes interactions involving educational tests (cognitive, diagnostic, aptitude, achievement), survey procedures, interview procedures, or observation of public behavior” is exempt from review requirements – provided that the “information obtained is recorded by the investigator in such a manner that the identity of the human subjects cannot readily be ascertained, directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects” (45 CFR § 46.104-d (2)).
3 The university on the east coast is a comprehensive public university that offers a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a general MBA. The university in the south is an R1 research institution offering bachelors, masters, and doctorate accounting degrees. Both schools possess AACSB business and separate accounting accreditation.
4 Only students from the university on the east coast participated in Study 2 because the university in the south did not have access to the assessment integrity tool.
5 Ten percent of students (n = 16) had a perfect score on Part 1 and a score of 5 or less on Part 2.
6 A paired sample t-test can result in different significance levels for the same difference score depending on the pattern of the differences. For example, in two cases, a difference score of + 5 was only marginally significant (p = .052), while in the other twenty cases the same difference score of + 5 resulted in a significance level of p = .015.
7 Differences between the studies necessitated the use of the homoscedastic two-sample t-test (based on the results of Levine’s test, it was determined that each of the two studies had equal variance).
8 Each quiz consisted of fifteen questions randomly drawn from three (easy, medium, & hard) question pools.
9 We considered the possibility that the differences recorded in Study 2 might be attributable to confusion or other difficulties related to the integrity tool itself but rejected this as unlikely because the students had been exposed to the technology on at least ten assignments prior to the administration of the quiz.
10 It is ironic to note that when searching for the price of the test bank used in this study, the offering website was prominently advertising the solution manual for an ethics textbook adjacent to it.