Policing vs. Pedagogy: How "Cheating Anxiety" Reshaped Post-Pandemic Assessment

The shift to Emergency Remote Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic destabilized traditional assessment practices in higher education, intensifying concerns about academic integrity and cheating. This qualitative pilot study examines how “cheating anxiety” reshaped faculty approaches to assessment design in the post-pandemic context. Using a phenomenological framework, the study analyzes open-ended survey responses from a purposive sample of five university professors across Southern Europe. Thematic analysis reveals three distinct strategies. Some faculty adopted a policing approach, reinforcing surveillance through proctoring technologies to preserve traditional closed-book exams. Others pursued a pedagogical pivot, redesigning assessments toward authentic, process-oriented tasks that emphasize application, critical thinking, and originality, thereby reducing incentives to cheat. A third group rejected digital assessment altogether, reverting to oral or in-person examinations to ensure validity. The findings suggest that academic integrity concerns functioned as a catalyst for pedagogical differentiation rather than uniform adaptation. Interpreted through theories of authentic assessment and constructive alignment, the study argues that sustainable post-pandemic assessment depends less on technological enforcement and more on pedagogical redesign. While exploratory, the results highlight a critical tension between surveillance and learning-centered assessment that warrants further large-scale investigation.