Combating Student Cheating in Pharmacy Schools in a Post-Pandemic World

Concerns regarding academic dishonesty are a persistent problem in higher education, including health professions and pharmacy education. Students may respond to academic pressures and new policy or procedure restrictions with innovative ways to gain an unfair advantage through both technological advances and old-school methods. Recent shifts to online and hybrid modalities, as well as advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), smartphones, watches, and other technologies, continue to escalate the arms race between educational programs and those seeking to circumvent the system. This manuscript seeks to remind faculty and administrators of common cheating modalities that students may use (including high and low-technology approaches), while also calling on members of the Academy to refrain from merely discussing academic integrity issues, but rather, to actively seek to minimize and address these concerns. This requires increased awareness of various types of cheating and academic integrity matters, understanding of cheating approaches, intentional reflection on academic integrity policies, and implementation of related risk-reduction strategies. It is our responsibility as educators to prevent and address developing complications and to be aware of advances in our field. One of the best ways to address advancing concerns of cheating, plagiarism, and academic integrity is by informing ourselves of recent developments relative to academic integrity, as well as peer-reviewed testing strategies to reduce cheating and other types of academic integrity issues.