Harvard Tells Professors to Trust That Students Won’t Cheat When Taking Online Tests

Harvard Tells Professors to Trust That Students Won’t Cheat When Taking Online Tests
The statue of John Harvard sits in Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Aug. 13, 2019. AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Bill Pan
Bill Pan
Reporter
|Updated:

As nearly every school in the United State has converted all academic activities online, Harvard University is telling professors that they should trust that their students won’t cheat on their exams when in-person proctoring is no longer available.

Although Harvard’s Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE) has developed a proctoring protocol, it does not recommend professors host proctored exams. Instead, the OUE encourages the instructors to modify exam formats so that students may take those exams without having to set up a web camera or install third-party anti-cheating software on their devices.