Opportunity Makes a Cheat? - The Effect of Invigilation on the Results of a Mathematics Basic Skills Test

The main objective of this article is to examine how non-invigilated and invigilated testing conditions affect the results of a basic mathematics skills test of first-year engineering students in the Finnish education system. We also examine which subject areas of invigilated testing particularly affect the results. The data used in the study consists of tests organised at two Finnish universities in 2023 and 2024. The mean test result is significantly higher in the non-invigilated test than in the invigilated test, both done electronically. The difference in points between the tests was statistically significant in all other questions except for the tasks related to differentiation, and the conceptual understanding of inverse and reciprocal. The most significant decrease in invigilated test points was in the most difficult but easily cheatable tasks related to solving equations, especially trigonometric and exponential equations, and in a task that required calculating a definite integral.