Cognitive offloading, cheating and higher order skill development

2 November 2017

Recently, I attended CRADLE’s 2017 International Symposium, ‘Re-imagining Assessment in a Digital World’. Two presentations particularly caught my interest for their potential intersections with my own research around academic integrity and contract cheating.

Phillip Dawson’s presentation exploring the line between acceptable cognitive offloading and cheating certainly sparked my interest as a researcher in academic integrity. Cognitive offloading permits students to let machines perform automated tasks, whilst freeing up the student to undertake more creative or critical thinking work which is assessed. Re-imagined learning outcomes can then focus on assessing students’ abilities to demonstrate achievement of higher order skills. Phillip also argued that there is need to build into tasks the use of authentic tools and assess how well students are able to use both the tools and machines that currently pervade everyday working life.

Andrew Cain’s presentation outlining his ‘Doubtfire’ model of rethinking the structure of assessment to engage students in demonstrating mastery of skills at every level, including higher order skills, supported this notion, with results suggesting students do value and engage in authentic work-ready style assessments. Such engagement means students are less likely to outsource or cheat in these tasks. Particularly interesting was Andrew’s ‘do something awesome’ high distinction type-task supporting rethinking of the structure of assessment.

Both presentations support current research findings in the area of contract cheating which suggest that assessment re-design can play one part in reducing both fear and opportunity for students to engage in unethical conduct, particularly cheating.