Ensuring academic integrity in online assessments: A literature review and recommendations

During the recent COVID-19 outbreak, educational institutions have transitioned to online teaching for all students for most of the programs. Due to lack of in-person interactions and monitoring, assessments in online courses may be more susceptible to contract cheating, collusion, fabrication and other types of academic misconduct than the assessments in face-to-face courses. This situation has raised several research questions that need immediate attention, such as what are the best possible options for online assessments and how to administer online assessments so that academic integrity could be preserved. The authors have conducted a scoping study and carried out an extensive literature review on i) different types of assessments that are suitable for online courses, ii) strategies for ensuring academic integrity, and iii) methods, tools and technologies available for preventing academic misconduct in online assessments. It is evident from the literature review that there are a range of options available for designing assessment tasks to detect and prevent violations of academic integrity. However, no single method or design is enough to eliminate all sorts of academic integrity violations. After thorough research and analysis of existing literature, the authors have provided a comprehensive set of recommendations that could be adopted for ensuring academic integrity in online assessments.