Online Exam Vigilantes at Australian Universities: Student Academic Fraudulence and the Role of Universities to Counteract

In this research pilot, the authors are taking an elemental look at exam vigilantes and in a broader sense academic fraudulence. In the last decade, there has been an increasing number of universities offering online degrees. Along with this new method of completing degrees comes a new body of academic dishonesty and misconduct. Not only is academic dishonesty widespread, it is also often underestimated by universities. Additionally, today's technological advances have enabled students to cheat in several different ways. Nonetheless, technology can also be used to combat the issue of cheating by employing biometrics to identify students based on physiological and behavioural characteristics and by applying the use IP addresses as a tool to identify collusions. Although most of the research on this topic has focused on the United States (US), this paper the will exclusively focus on how it applies to the Australian university landscape.