Towards Fair Assessments: A Machine Learning-based Approach for Detecting Cheating in Online Assessments

Academic cheating poses a significant challenge to conducting fair online assessments. One common way is collusion, where students unethically share answers during the assessment. While several researchers proposed solutions, there is lack of clarity regarding the specific types they target among the different types of collusion. Researchers have used statistical techniques to analyze basic attributes collected by the platforms, for collusion detection. Only few works have used machine learning, considering two or three attributes only; the use of limited features leading to reduced accuracy and increased risk of false accusations.