My search related news stems from a podcast that I came across by accident a couple of weeks ago. The Score Podcast is a short series that explores some important insights into academic integrity in colleges and universities. There are three episodes so far, each of which involving academics and researchers whose work specializes in all forms of academic misconduct. The podcast shares some intriguing--though alarming--insights into the ways that students can cheat (whether it be by contract cheating or by paying an outside web service to do an assignment for them) and which students, according to national surveys, are most likely to engage in cheating (nursing and engineering students were brought up many times). This podcast doesn't suggest that every student cheats, but it helps to highlight the academic pressures which convince students that in order to make it in their educational journey, they have no other choice but to cheat. 
The first article discusses recent findings in the realm of academic dishonesty and how these rates have been impacted by the pandemic. Online learning has made it easier for students to find ways to cheat during assessments, even if these assessments are virtually proctored by an AI system. Contract cheating, which is the commissioning of a former student's saved test results for use of current students, has been nearly impossible for institutions to control. The article also expresses that some academic institutions were underprepared to handle the sudden shift to fully remote learning and thus had trouble finding ways to effectively assess the students' work. 
Last, the blog post called Cheat Sheet shows current statistics on the rates of academic dishonesty in the United States. The blog's author, Derek Newton, who was featured on the aforementioned podcast, has been researching trends related to  academic integrity for several years. In his latest blog post (which was posted just yesterday) explains survey results from September of this year, with a sample size of 2,500 students, that approximately 60% of students confessed to cheating in some way. 31% of students admitted to cheating more than once. 
I wanted to explore these topics because, in a time when remote learning is becoming a standard due to outside forces, it is crucial that we take into consideration new ways in assessing students. I think that assessment is crucial to anyone's academic success, but the way our current educational system pressures students to this level, causing so many to resort to cheating just to maintain a grade, shows that something isn't working within the system. The value of education for education's sake has dwindled, which should raise some concerns. 
Samantha Locklear (530:90)

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