| By Mark Muhumuza,
:: 11-04-2011
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A student walks into the examination room. She sits and waits for the signal to start. And as soon as the invigilator gives the go ahead, she looks subtly about her, making sure no one is noticing; then reaching into her bra, she pulls out a sheet with a summary of answers she hopes will help her cheat her way into passing the exam. The student then begins to scribble on the answer booklet.
This is one of the ways students have improvised to cheat in exams. Techniques of cheating in exams are fast evolving.
One classical form of cheating is the syndicate method. This method is done rings. A group of students will read different topics and during the exam they will share answers. During the exam the students will position themselves in a way that each can peep into the other’s answer book.
The more daring ones will risk exchanging answer sheets during the exams. As soon as the exam starts a student who knows some of the answers will scribble them down on an answer books.
After 30 minutes, the student will walk out and pick a second answer sheet from the invigilator to seemingly keep her table busy. The paper with all the good answers will then move around the cheating ring; each taking turns to copy.
The “old school” cheating technique involves smuggling answers into the examination room. This is the most common method since it has taken on various forms.
Three weeks to the exams, a student goes on a summary mission of almost all the topics, with a focus on those they suspect mightbe set. All methods after will be employed to try and smuggle the answers in; body tatoos, scarfs , pockets, mouth, name it. However, with a thorough body check, these can be netted by the invigilator.
“Students can roll answers in a shirt collar because an invigilator rarely checks in those areas,” Stanely Wareba, a lecturer in development studies tells The Standard.
A body check might recover these summaries but students have advanced to writing answers on a handkerchief or on body parts rarely checked.
“For instance, girls can write the answers on their thighs where a lecturer will not dare look even if it were confirmed,” says Emmanuel Wabwire a DVS second-year student.
It is referred to as the “tattoo” method. Cheats will not only write on their thighs but will scribble answers on parts of the body easy to look at while in the exam room. In an article published in The Observer, a student at Makerere University had scribbled notes on her breasts.
When she was caught peeping at the answers, the lecturer, in anger, slapped the very spot. While this to other students could be categorised as sexual harassment, to others it served her right. This perhaps is the most challenging for invigilators, because of the uneasiness it involves.
Another student will walk into an examination room after a cleanbody check. However there are the little accessories that in most cases go little noticed like a handkerchief.
Most times these are well folded to hide the contents. Minutes into the paper, the student develops a chronic called whose evidence is constant sneezing.
After several sneezes to convice whoever might be watching og the genuiness of the condition, the student in the piece of cloth blows hard with eyes open; in reality reading through the points.
Fred Maleza is a second year project planning and entrepreneurship student. He muses at how students under the pretence of going to ease themselves only go to read through summaries.
“A student goes into the toilet only to read through answers to questions then back. And immediately begin to scribble themonto paper,” says Maleza.
A keen invigilator however can tell by the frequent permissions to go ease oneself. Some invigilators have resorted to denying students permission to get out until after the paper.
The highest level of cheating which UCU is yet to register is that of lecturers leaking exams to students.
The Standard talked to students on how they would react if they noticed a student cheating and most of them said it was the responsibility of invigilators to catch the cheats. Now the pressure is on the invigilators.
Lecturers say they will maintain the rule of proper spacing in the examination room and will do comprehensive checkings.
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Life & Style 
:: Uganda Christian University 2008