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According to a report carried out by Universities UK, the Higher education institutions should stop rounding up borderline marks and avoid discounting core or final-year modules. This comes in response to a warning from the Universities Minister that too many institutions felt pressured to lower their admission standards. The report sets out six measures to ensure transparency in the calculation of final grades and calls for a single algorithm to be used to calculate the final grade that the students receive.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) reports that the pandemic has demonstrated how innovative and adaptable essay mills marketing could be” by advertising discounts and “suggesting they could fill a gap resulting from a lack of supervision, or even offering essay writing to help students stay safe”. According to QAA, universities must look at how to prevent or catch cheating in the physically distanced assessment.

During online tests, the Ghent University received a warning that cheating had occurred and that students shared correct answers using online channels. After further examination of the evidence, the university declared all four tests invalid including those students who did not cheat. The students responsible for organizing the fraud will be sanctioned, scored zero out of 20, and excluded from any resits.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, the HEC business school has introduced an online monitoring system for exams that detects the slightest move and tracks down suspected cheaters. The National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties, seized by students from several higher education institutions, will ensure the legality of these virtual monitors.

To guarantee the academic integrity and legitimacy of the evaluations and exams during the health crisis of COVID-19, Madrid Complutense University was able to take advantage of their existing remote digital media. To avoid fraud, the identity of students during oral exams is verified using video-conferencing tools, and access codes are personal and non-transferable. This is done under the oversight of the Computer Services department. For handwritten tests, students send a scanned handwritten text to the University Virtual Campus.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, most universities have decided to implement remote mid-term exams, but this is causing great difficulties for educational bodies that are unable to neutralize the great number of cheaters. From Google use to classmates who publish half of the answers on Facebook, students all over France are publicly bragging about cheating during exams.

In Russia and Ukraine, discussion of sexual abuse is not welcomed. Nevertheless, faculty and staff are involved in exploiting and abusing students in many different ways like offering positive grades in examinations in exchange for sex. It is not only students who suffer from sexual harassment but also faculty and staff recruitment. Promotion is influenced by bribes or sexual favours as well.

A report revealed that hundreds of university students had been disciplined or expelled for making sexually explicit, homophobic or racist comments on social media. In order to improve online safety for staff and students, Universities UK has published guidance for its members on how to tackle harassment including cyberstalking, trolling and sexting.

Academics say the use of the electronic device is difficult to police in crowded exam halls. There has been an increased number of breaches of exam regulations, up from 56 last year to 83. Trinity College recorded 42 breaches of exam regulations this year, along with 10 incidents of cheating. This has prompted a number of UK colleges introduced blanket bans on wristwatches of any kind.