Bicol University students built their own anti-cheating hats — and nobody was caught

In October 2022, students at Bicol University College of Engineering in Legazpi City, the Philippines, sat their mid-term exams wearing so-called 'anti-cheating hats' — headgear designed to prevent them peeking at others' papers. Their mechanical engineering professor, Mary Joy Mandane-Ortiz, told the BBC she had been looking for a 'fun way' to ensure 'integrity and honesty' in her classes, and said the idea had been 'really effective'.

The inspiration was a technique reportedly used in Thailand years earlier: a 2013 photo that went viral showing Bangkok university students taking tests wearing paper 'ear flaps' stuck to either side of the head. Mandane-Ortiz asked for a 'simple' paper design; her engineers-in-training instead built elaborate contraptions from cardboard, egg boxes and other recycled materials — some in just five minutes from junk lying around — while others wore hats, helmets or Halloween masks.

The results doubled as publicity: her Facebook posts of the creations gathered thousands of likes in days and drew coverage from Filipino media, reportedly inspiring schools and universities elsewhere in the country to run their own anti-cheating headwear rounds. Mandane-Ortiz said her tutees performed better this year, motivated by the strict conditions to study harder; many finished early, and nobody was caught cheating.

Anti-cheating measures usually read as distrust; letting students design the headgear reframed surveillance as a creative challenge they wanted to win.

Any junk-based design qualified, so the cost of compliance was roughly five minutes and whatever was in the recycling bin.

The spectacle was self-propagating: photos of the hats spread the integrity message to thousands without any ad spend.

Because the headgear actually blocks the sightlines, the mechanism works mechanically, not just ceremonially.

Turn a rule people resist into an artefact they author: participation converts enforcement into performance, and the enforcement message spreads as pictures.

The mid-terms were sat by hundreds of students in the third week of October 2022 with no cheating caught, and schools and universities in other parts of the Philippines reportedly adopted the idea. Mandane-Ortiz credited the strict examination conditions for better student performance that year.