Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: Electronic Cheating Exposes the Gap in Knowledge and Technology

The growing wave of exam leaks and electronic cheating, which has led to the postponement of some exams at a critical time, has become a worry that troubles the State, especially given the Ministry of Education's inability to solve the problem, and as parents and their children in the General Secondary Certificate (Thanaweya Amma) express general anger at the loss of the efforts and savings they devoted to getting their children through the secondary certificate and fulfilling their dreams of entering university. Leaking exams and cheating, and the announcement that some officials at the Ministry of Education and some officials at the secret printing press were involved in leaking the exams, are not only moral crimes against society; they also reveal the extent of the rigidity and of the gap in knowledge and technology between students, who use social media and deal with information technology, and the officials responsible for the educational process in Egypt. The Minister of Education called for some illegal solutions to confront leaks and electronic cheating, such as «jamming or cutting off the internet and shutting down social media pages», and also called for importing electronic wands to search students before they enter the exam halls, while some called for handing responsibility for the exams to the security forces. Unfortunately, these are all security means and solutions whose substance is escaping from facing the truth and trying to shift responsibility, without tackling the problem with innovative solutions. These solutions belong to the ideas of the ages before the information technology revolution, the enormous development of means of communication and the internet, and the formation of a virtual world and an information space that lies beyond national borders, which means there is a real gap between the hoped-for development of education and what is happening on the ground. The reality reveals that the Ministry of Education lacks the forward-looking and cultural vision and the digital knowledge that any ministry of education in any other country in the world has. It also reveals the need for a specialized information technology department in every ministry or institution to keep up with developments and protect against cybercrime or electronic terrorism, in order to lighten the burden placed on the Ministry of Interior. It is also clear that the government pays no attention until the problem has worsened, and that civil society organizations have withdrawn from their responsibility and role in this matter and its repercussions, as if it concerned no one but the Ministry of Education. It is a gap in thought, culture, concepts and daily usage between our children, the students, who deal with the information network and technology around the clock, and the rigid thinking of officials and their failure to grasp the concept of cyberspace and the scenarios for dealing with the risks to society or the nation arising from the misuse of social media and smart communication tools. We believe electronic cheating can be confronted by many means, such as: changing exam systems and methods, for example by adopting several versions of the same exam (a different version for each student) and answering on a sheet as in the (TOEFL) exam; part of the exam could be (oral/listening) inside the exam hall, answered with yes or no or by choosing among several answers on the same sheet; and a third exam or part could be added to measure aptitude for admission to a given faculty (set by specialists at each faculty). A new type of secure exam could also be prepared, taken on personal computers periodically during the year after good training of teachers and students alike, with the result appearing on the computer screen as soon as the answers are finished, and saved and collected electronically through an internal information network (internet) not connected to the World Wide Web. We also propose a competition for students, starting from the preparatory stage, to suggest electronic solutions to cheating, and we will discover many solutions and Egyptian talents in information and communication technology and all the sciences.