2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As the landscape of higher education evolves in a post-pandemic era, the use of hybrid and online forms of instruction and assessment continue to proliferate. In the midst of this ever-changing landscape, educators are challenged to maintain the integrity of educational systems and assessments. This work presents a novel tool for the discovery of prohibited collaboration during online examinations by comparing activity logs for student work during examination periods. The tool was developed during the COVID-19 shutdowns of spring semester 2020 and was successful in detecting significant incidents of academic misconduct in an undergraduate biomedical engineering class. The background, context, use, mechanisms, functionality, and potential impact of the tool are explored with the hope that the approach may be expanded and applied to enhance the integrity of various areas of higher education in the future.