Online Examination System in the Times of COVID-19: A Case Study of Pakistan

Assessing the students after teaching themeither online or physicalhas been the favorite practice of teachers. Online and physical exams are the two most important ways to assess the students. The ideal exam reckons the student’s capabilities and problemsolving ability. The concept of the online education system came into light in the 1970s and over time, it gained more importance (Keegan, 1996). More institutions moved towards the online examination system during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 spread like havoc and all the activities of the people including educational activities are disturbed. Since people are directed to maintain social distancing all across the globe resultantly; the online examination system gained more importance during the pandemic. This article covers how the online examination was like and how cheating (which is of major concern) can be minimized. One of the benefits of the online system is that it helped students to stay in touch with the studies. Cheating has been the major concern of teachers in the examination history. Similarly, cheating is the major flaw of online exams that needs to be fixed. Suppose student A is hardworking while student B is dull who does not prepare for the exam. In physical exams, student A gains 100% while student B scores only 25% by using his abilities, but in online exams, B also scores 100% like that of student A which means that 75% of the marks he/she gains by cheating. It can be minimized with the help of some techniques. This article explains the ways how we can minimize cheating. If this system is improved using cheating minimizing techniques, this can be used further after the pandemic because even with cheating about 37% of students want online in the future. It reduces the time and cost of both the institution and the students.

unsuitable for academic assignments is called cheating. Any activity of the student regarding exams that violates the institutional law is called cheating. It can be minimized by using the g-factor technique i.e. providing students with different questions within the same period.
The study shows that the practice of cheating can be minimized by using the phenomenon of shuffling the paper. Student A is given Question-1 then at the same time, Question-2 should be provided to student B (Nizam, Gao, Li, Mohamed, & Wang, 2020). This method can minimize cheating but it cannot completely eradicate it. Various techniques can be applied to minimize cheating.
Another research proposes that online cheating can be minimized by using a fingerprint ID. Not any two persons in the world have the same fingerprint. Moreover, an eye tracker is also a very useful method to locate cheating. Tracker focuses on the eye movement whenever the examinee looks around the window (Bawarith, Basuhail, Fattouh, Gamalel-Din, & Applications, 2017). The online exam is better to minimize cheating as compared to traditional exams because there is a lot of software and apps which keep an eye on the student doing a paper and help minimize cheating.
According to Bilen, Matros, and Organization (2021), online cheating can be minimized by having a camera located on the front which will enable the administrator to watch every move of the examinee and he will also be able to see things in the room in which the examinee is conducting the paper. According to Moten Jr, Fitterer, Brazier, Leonard, and Brown (2013) cheating can be mitigated if questions are Essay-type with optimum time so that the examinee will not be able to cheat. Short time does not provide examinee the chance to search for the topic on the internet. Even if students get a chance to search for the internet, cheating can be minimized by creating a fake website. It would show wrong answers to the examinee which he/she will be looking for. After getting the wrong answers, the examinee will not dare search the internet again. Moreover, Class mode can be helpful to minimize cheating.
According to Cluskey Jr, Ehlen, Raiborn, and Ethics (2011), there are few online exam control procedures (OECP) that help to minimize cheating. Only one MCQ should be available to the student for a certain period. When he/she has dealt with that, then the next MCQ should be provided. It will help greatly to minimize cheating. The student should be allowed to take the exam only once. Reset should not be allowed by the administrator in any case except that of genuine one as the reset (second term) will enable him to answer all the questions correctly. The instructors must use software like Blackboards Responds Lockdown Browser (RLB) for taking exams. RLB indicates when a student leaves the window to search for the answer. These procedures will help to reduce cheating. These are the ways that are very effective in minimizing cheating.

Selection of the Topic
During COVID-19, an online education system has prevailed all across the globe. But along with the benefits of the online system (as the crucial year of the students is saved), there is a huge disadvantage which is cheating. Students use much more modern ways to cheat in the online exams that one cannot think of. This topic is considered to be important because it is necessary to make the online system as clear of cheating as possible. Some of the solutions have been proposed to minimize cheating which will help in the future.

Methodology
A research methodology is a specific technique or procedure used to identify, select, process, and analyze information about the topic. For that purpose, a convenience sampling technique is used to collect the responses from the students of different universities in Lahore. A total sample of 130 respondents is collected and analyzed by SPSS-23. All of the respondents were approached by using different social media apps.

Sample and data collection
The data through a Google-form (questionnaire) is collected from students belonging to a different gender, age, and education groups in Lahore. Students are posed with close-ended questions. The questionnaire is uploaded on Google forms, from where anyone with the link could open the form and give his/her response. A total of 130 students returned the response with complete answers. A Convenience sampling technique is used. Since Pakistan is facing a countrywide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so Convenience sampling method is found to be appropriate to use.

Demographic profile
Tables 1, 2, and 3 provide the frequency and percentages of demographic characteristics of the respondents. There are 88 males (67.7 %) and 42 females (32.3 %) among the respondents. A total of 130 respondents recorded their responses. Among the respondents, 18-23 age group are 116 in frequency which is about 89.2 in percentage measure, which is followed by 24-29 age group with 13 frequencies and 10.0%, and 30-35 age group with 1 frequency and .8%. Those respondents which are in bachelors' level of education are 100(76.9%), followed by Masters which are 20 (15.4%), followed by M.Phil. which are 9 (6.9%). There is only 1 (0.8%) Ph.D.  Table 4 provides the results of two tests i.e. KMO and Bartlett's test. KMO test is used to check the adequacy of data for factor analysis. The findings show that the KMO test value is 0.746 which is greater than the benchmark value of 0.7, which means the sample is adequate. .000

KMO and Bartlett's test
The Bartlett test of sphericity is a statistical test used to verify the null hypothesis which states that variances are equal across groups or samples. This test is used to test if k samples are from the populations with equal variances and whether a factor analysis may be useful with the data.
The null hypothesis for the test is that the variances are equal for all samples. In statistics terms, that's: H0:σ1 2 =σ2 2 =…=σk 2 the alternate hypothesis is that the variances are not equal for at least one pair or more: H1: σ1 2 ≠ σ2 2 ≠… ≠ σk 2 The results of Bartlett's test show that the value of significance level is less than 0.05, which means there is at least one significant correlation between two of the items. So, it rejects the null hypothesis, and a factor analysis would be useful with the data.

Cronbach's alpha test
It is used to assess the reliability of test items. In other words, the reliability of any given measurement refers to the extent to which it is a consistent measure of a concept, and Cronbach's alpha is one way of measuring the strength of that consistency. This test is most commonly used there are multiple Likert questions in a questionnaire. This test is very appropriate to check the reliability of our questionnaire because our questionnaire consists of Likert-type questions. In our case, we can see that Cronbach's alpha is 0.827, which indicates a high level of internal consistency for our scale. As per the responses recorded, almost 1/4 th of students hold no strong opinion about the content of online examination; they remain unaffected with the scheme of exam being clear and organized. And almost 40 to 45% of students are giving feedback that the content of the online examination is quite appropriate for them. And 30 to 35% of students' are saying that exam content is not appropriate. Therefore, we can conclude that overall exam content during online exams is not bad but we can make it better by making exams easy, concise, and reducing the workload of the exam. As per responses recoded, it is obvious that students do more cheating in online exams as compare to traditional exams, despite that they consider it as a wrong act, and also favoring to report the cheaters to invigilators. We can observe from students' responses that cheating in online exams is a not difficult task. Students also allowed others to copy-paste their work. And the question about the online examination system whether it continues in the future or not is also asked and responses are shown by pie chart diagram. A total of 37% of respondents favoring the online format in the future, this is a good number in quantity. Therefore, we should do some work to minimize cheating in online exams to bring transparency in an online format.

Discussion
The exam should be open book. The survey result shows that 40% of the students believe that open-book exams can minimize cheating while 47% of students propose that using safe browsers like LMS can minimize cheating. The student should be given simple questions and limited time to solve them. In this way they will not waste time searching for the answer on the browsers, instead, they will use their mind to answer. If the paper set is multiple choices (MCQ) type, then each question should be inculcated with mathematical equations. Around 46% of the respondents think that it will minimize cheating. MCQ, s with equations when searched on the browser do not give desired results which will help minimize cheating. Based on the survey that has been conducted, 68% of the students believe that the online system is not as effective as the on-campus system. Students do more cheating in online exams. About 66% of the students had the opinion that students do more cheating in online exams.

A Way Forward
From these responses, it is concluded that they are several ways to minimize cheating in the online examination system. But based on observations, there are two best ways to minimize cheating Firstly, multiple-choice questions with equations for a limited time, using software like LMS, is the best way to minimize cheating because in this method students have limited time to solve the multiple-choice question, and these types of questions are not easy to tackle. LMS doesn't allow them to comminute with other fellows. Multiple choice questions with equations are also a good criterion for the assessment of the students. Moreover, this method is convenient for instructors.
Secondly, higher-order thinking short answers question, with limited time can minimize cheating. Time must be limited for higher-order thinking questions and the next short question comes after the solving of the previous question, it would not allow students to cheat during online exams.
And the question about the online examination system whether it should continue in the future or not? is also asked and responses are shown by pie chart diagram. A total of 37% of respondents favoring the online format in the future, this is a good number in quantity. Therefore, we should do some work to minimize cheating in online exams to bring transparency in an online format.

Conclusion
The online examination system has been encouraged during the COVID-19 pandemic. It helped institutes to reckon students. But there is a high risk of cheating during online exams which needs to be fixed. Software like LMS help to identify students doing cheating because when students move to the other website, this software show an alarm to the invigilator, and cheating. Moreover, an open-book exam with limited time as well as multiple-choice questions with equations is also helpful to minimize cheating. If the invigilator asks the students to share screens of the laptops or phones, it will be more beneficial. In this way, all the activities of students will be visible to the invigilator and students will avoid cheating.

Limitations
This study has few limitations. Firstly, it is based on three variables, importance, responsiveness, and attitude. Secondly, it is conducted in Lahore, Pakistan. Future researchers can conduct it in different cities with different variables.