Some Repercussions of Social Media on Online Assessments

While social media is one of the fastest ways to disseminate information, it has some downsides as well. This piece intends to talk mostly on the down-sides of social media and online studying services with regards to online  assessments.

I believe social media has been quite instrumental in facilitating the activities carried out in the class online. However, I must point out the fact that it is also a double edged sword when it comes to assessments. While there are various proctoring packages in-built in our Learning management systems, I think it is still at its infant stage.

The upsides of social media in terms of learning are impressive and when it comes to delivery or dissemination of materials, I believe it may be one of the best choice. But when it comes to online assessments, true capability of the students are not well captured unless there is an oral examination (conducted via zoom/skype etc).

I must say that nowadays, there is so much resources available in the internet that helps learners to learn and even so, cheat in the online exams. There are various sites that give a walk-through on how to bypass proctoring tools and cheat undetected. Even some sites are now providing premium services on this basis. Not only that, there are other strategies deployed by the online learners, these includes:
- using ghost writing services
- use of online studying service (most famous is Chegg.com)
- circulation of exam solutions in the chat groups or share programming files in platforms like google Drive/Dropbox/Telegram/Viber/Whatsapp .etc
- group calls during exams to discuss solutions

While there are more innovative points to add on the list my take on the use of social media is that it is important and well suited for information dissemination/learning however, there are serious repercussions when it comes to assessments.

Take a look at the following articles that reports on how students got caught cheating in the online examinations/assignments:

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