Creating Individualistic Memorandums to Mitigate Academic Dishonesty in Online Assessments – A Case Study

Abstract

Student academic dishonesty has risen significantly around the globe, and especially so during the recent global pandemic which has forced institutions to offer courses online with little or no control over the quality of their assessments. The purpose of this article is to explain the process of how to design and implement individualistic memorandums that are tailored to each student attempting an online assessment that may help mitigate academic dishonesty. A case study is used focusing on a module in Electrical Engineering that focuses primarily on mathematical calculations. Four objectives are discussed with regard to the process, including the objective of adding credibility to the assessment process by effecting a unique set of answers for each assessee, thus hampering the sharing/copying of answers between assessees. It is recommended that academics continue to use educational technologies in their assessment of student learning, but doing so in a way that mitigates academic dishonesty, simplifies the marking of the assessment, and enables timely feedback to all students.