Online proctored assessment during COVID-19: Has cheating increased?

The author of this article uses two empirical approaches to compare online to face-to-face proctored assessment. Using data from a Dutch economics program, he shows that the relationship between grades and human capital variables remains highly significant for courses with online proctored examinations. Additionally, a search for suspicious grade patterns does not indicate an increase in cheating. Overall, the findings do not provide convincing evidence that online proctored assessment is more conducive to cheating than assessment using face-to-face proctoring. In view of the increasing evidence that unproctored online assessment may suffer from high levels of cheating, this suggests that educational institutions can reduce the risk of cheating by using online proctoring.