NUS exam scandal: Covid-19 remote exam cheating incident

University students have reportedly been found to have cheated on an NUS exam, a take-home version that was given as a remote exam due to Covid-19.

According to a recent article by The New Paper, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the National University of Singapore gave students the privilege of taking home an exam.

Though students were informed that should they be found to have violated the rules of academic integrity, they would be reprimanded accordingly, a significant percentage of them allegedly copied each other’s answers and plagiarised,  a clear case of NUS cheating.

On Tuesday (March 17), a post addressing this incident was put up on NUSWhispers, an online forum for NUS students. The NUS School of Computing confronted the alleged academic dishonesty incident in its message posted by the Facebook page’s administration. “CS1010E Programming Methodology is a compulsory module offered by the NUS Department of Computer Science for Engineering students,” the post read. “This module introduces the fundamental concepts of problem solving by computing and programming using Python as the programming language.”

It then went on to explain that though the practical exam is usually administered in the classroom, given the unexpected Covid-19 pandemic, students were allowed to take the exam home. “All students were required log-in at the same time to work independently on three tasks which were divided into seven questions, and submit their answers online,” the post explained. It also noted that on March 10, the instructor who gave the students the exam stressed that he would check the exams for plagiarism.

The post also emphasized NUS’s utmost adherence to academic integrity, stating, “Any student found to have committed or aided and abetted the offence of plagiarism may be subject to disciplinary action.” On the list of possible consequences for plagiarism were a deduction on the requirement and even receiving a failing grade for the entire module.

Furthermore, the post stated that the University was privy to the students’ opinions regarding the NUS cheating issue. “The instructors will be reaching out to students to address their concerns, and they are also planning to conduct optional remedial sessions to help students who encounter difficulties with the module,” the post read.

The course requirement central to the NUS cheating issue comprises 15 percent of the students’ final grade.