Perception of Tertiary Institution Students Towards Mobile Assisted e-Cheating and Nigerian Examination Quality: Focus on Lagos State Tertiary Institutions

Students use mobile-phones to store lecture-materials, e-books, tutorials, videos, communicate with their classmates and browse the internet for exceedingly different intentions. These projected-advantages, however, would have potential undesirable effects if mobile phones are utilised in restricted premises, such as examination venues. Noncompliant students (to general tertiary institutions exam regulations) do use mobile phones to cheat in examinations. Several studies have emerged on examination misconduct in Nigeria, but “e-cheating‟ and its effects on quality of examination as a new form of examination fraud is yet to be given adequate attention in literature. This study is provoked to address this problem as regards Lagos State tertiary institutions. From four randomly selected tertiary institutions in Ojo Local Government Area of Lagos State, three hundred students were used as samples. The study examined students perception of mobile assisted e-cheating and gender involvement in e-cheating in examinations. Data were collected from the adopted instrument of Jones, Reid and Bartllet (2006) which has a Cronbach Alpha reliability score of 0.83 tagged “Perception toward examination e-cheating”. Using a simple correlation and a student t-test to analyse the hypotheses, the study reported a significant relationship between dysfunctional effects of e-cheating on the quality of examination. It equally revealed a significant difference in e-cheating habit between male and female students. The paper also identified inadequate funding, corruption, issues bordering on morality and legality as challenges to curbing examination e-cheating in Lagos State tertiary institutions. The study recommended the involvement of all stakeholders in curbing this societal evil.

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