Cheater, Cheater...How safe and accurate is online learning?


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Learning at a distance has so many positives for students as well as faculty, including but certainly not limited to:
  • Convenience & Flexibility
  • Cost-savings (due to saving $ driving, parking, etc.)
  • Independence of learning approach
  • Material review--the ability to review materials as often as needed to enhance knowledge and retention of materials
Assessments of students taking courses online or through hybrid (50-99% online) range widely, sometimes including more traditional assessments such as quantitative and/or qualitative examinations, and sometimes having more project-focused, problem-based learning techniques. For quantitative and qualitative examinations, concerns arise broadly from faculty, administrators--and yes, even students!--regarding the potential for cheating. Some questions I've heard:

  • How do I know it's even my student taking the exam?
  • This is supposed to be closed book! How do I make sure the students are using outside resources?
  • What if they ask for help from other students/collaborate with one another on the exam?
  • What does our accrediting body say I am supposed to do to determine student identity in online exams? (One of my favorite questions, by the way!)

    and the most common:
  • What do I do to prevent or discourage cheating in my online exams?

I would like to take a moment to review a few of the most commonly adopted, beneficial techniques that are available to faculty for addressing the questions listed above. 

  1. Start at the beginning. Add statements to your syllabus and build into the course itself elements that discourage cheating. This includes items such as honor statements, pointing to the University's policies, etc. 
  2. Design the exam to challenge cheating. In other words, create questions, question banks, answers, and answer banks that draw from random pools & cycle questions to make it next to impossible for students to collaborate successfully. Set time limits. Randomize the answer choices ORDERS (not just the answers themselves) to discourage cheating as the answers won't match up =). 
  3. Prep prior to the assessment. Set up a reminder to alert the students one week from each quantitative/qualitative exam of the expectations, such as which resources are allowed, how they should best prepare, etc. 
  4. Consider the tools available. Each campus has their own policies and tools available, and these can differ widely. At CCU, for example, we have recently purchased a campus-wide license for Respondus Monitor, an add-on tool to Respondus LockDown Browser, that enabled web-cam monitoring of students during testing. Read more here. The LDB + Monitor tool can require a 360 degree room scan, sound & visual monitoring throughout the examination, automatic flagging if another person enters the screen, ID verification, and other features. It helps to "authenticate" or identify students as the correct student required. Our Moodle LMS also has a number of incredible features/functionality that will allow you to strengthen your online examinations themselves. 
  5. Consider alternative assignments. Yes, this suggestions gets old for us as faculty who perhaps select a more "traditional" exam for our courses because it truly is the right match for our content/topic/students/discipline/etc. Trust me, I hear you! There are the right times and the right places for assessments. Look closely at your content (or talk to one of us who are/have served in the role of Instructional Designers) and see if you can assess outside of these traditional examination methods online. If the answer is no--use the tools & techniques discussed above. 

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Quick Tips


Some innovative approaches I've seen that I wanted to share are included below for your quick reference!

  • The FIRST question on the exam is a fill-in-the-blank where a student signs the honor statement. It's set up as a 1-question-per-screen at this stage, so the student MUST sign off on the honor statement before beginning the rest of the exam. Fabulous approach!
  • Give the students the option to test remotely with monitoring (such as through LDB + Monitor) OR be proctored in person such as on campus or through a remote proctor. There are oftentimes costs involved with remote in-person proctoring, so students will many times opt for online remote proctoring such as through the Respondus tools. 
  • Design the exam to be completed open-book, open-notes (I do this myself, actually). Questions move past identification and to application-level, so students may use notes/books to refresh but must truly "get" the content to be able to answer the questions. 
  • If you use/require proctoring tech, you should include this in your required programs/materials in your syllabus. This is a compliance issue in many regional accrediting bodies. 
  • Don't forget to teach students about proper citation, rather than play "gotcha"--sometimes they simply do not know the correct way to reference citations. At CCU, we use TurnItIn (Tii) to assess submitted papers. A wonderful feature is to allow students to submit in "draft" format, and allow them to view their Originality Report to determine if any updates are needed to comply with citation standards. This is an excellent teaching technique that you can employ in all classes that allows students to submit up through due date/time with revisions to lower their % matched. 

Additional Resources on Plagiarism Prevention in Online Testing

Here are some great resources to read over if you want more information:

  1. Combating Cyber Cheating: A Resource for Teachers:  http://www.epcc.edu/vvlib/cheat.htm
  2. Preventing Plagiarism:  http://www.turnitin.com/research_site/e_preventing_p.html 
  3. Ways to handle cheating: http://tlt.suny.edu/cheating.htmhttp://tlt.suny.edu/cheating.htm
  4. Learn more about the Respondus suite of tools (we love them all!) http://www.respondus.com  



~Sherri 



Got questions, stories and best practices to share, or more? Post your comments below. 




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