Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Best Practices for Preventing Cheating on On-line Exams

Best Practices for Preventing Cheating on On-line Exams
eLearn 2005 presentation by David Eplion and Thomas Keefe, Indiana University
Southeast, USA

Are some strategies that we can use to address cheating (we will probably never completely eliminate all cheating, however)
– we teach traditional face to face courses to mainly undergraduate juniors and seniors
– taught in traditional sense, but are using online exams

Wanted to address important topics that in the past, there was not time to cover
– always found there was more material than time to cover it

Wanted to find best practices to prevent cheating:
1- Course Design Best Practices
2- Test Design Best Practices
3- Statistical measures

Course design best practices
1- clearly communicate expectations from the beginning
2- provide an explicit testing protocol, make it clear what you are going to expect and that deviations from this are not acceptable (no grade on the exam, and have to make up those points later)

What should the testing protocol be? Ours:
– explicit list of allowed and forbidden materials
– specific time limit and deadline for completion
– taken online in one sitting
– no assistance from others
– statement that violation of the protocol will lead to grade invalidation with no exceptions

Students usually have about 45 min to complete an exam, they have just about 60 seconds per question
– we have found that if you give an indefinite amount of time, there is a greater temptation for cheating
– having a specific deadline also helps

Some students found a workaround to go offline and finish it, because the courseware counter stopped
– they had to track this and let students know this

Instead of charging students with cheating, that can be hard to establish when you are not physically available to observe them
– rather than accusing students of “cheating,” we simply “document violations of the testing protocol.”
– that leads to invalidation of test score grade
– this puts onus less on legal ramifications of “cheating” and leads to a less charged environment
– this has helped tremendously
– students are less defensive when accused of violating testing protocol

Other course practices
– providing multiple formative and summative online exams throughout the semester
– administer a heavily-weighted, cumulative final exam face to face at the end of the semester (helps validate student performance, also gives students an incentive to do the work themselves)
— this exam is heavily weighted so if students fail this, they are in real danger of failing the entire course
— serves as a tangible disincentive for cheating
– include a formal honor code in the class syllabus
— benefits of this outweigh the costs
— students don’t report this helps them not cheat, but it does give students reassurance that rampant cheating is not taking place

If you have 25 different assessments during the term, it is harder for a student to find someone else to take all those exams for them

TEST DESIGN BEST PRACTICES
– we use “on course” system administered by Indiana University (similar to WebCT and Blackboard)
– this is important because it manages the process
– has password access
– helps limit access to these exams
– password is tied to all student information, so it is not something the person should hand out or share haphazardly
– courseware also sets time limits
– logs violations for instructors (example: people who exceeded time limits)
– tracking software does not stop

Tell students they can’t take the course in physical proximity to another student
– the IP address is tracked by the courseware
– gives indication of collaboration, sort by IP addresses

Other test design best practices
– application based-questions are better than fact-based questions that are easier to cheat on
— these require students to not just know the facts, but explain how to apply them
– have a database from which to draw a subset of questions
– scramble the order of the test questions
– this makes it more difficult for students to cheat

We let students have access to all the questions
– courseware puts a block on printing, students can print screenshots, but that is 60 different screenshots (45 seconds allowed per question)

STATISTICAL MEASURES
– good book on this: Gregory Sizak “Cheating on Exams”
– analyze how closely student answers match
– pay particular attention to how closely incorrect answers match
– compare scores from final exam to scores from the online exams

Having this check in place helps us validate student honesty to a degree

Conclusion: cheating does exist and will continue to, but there ARE best practices that can address and help limiit it

Why does this matter?
– student scores on final exams are highly correlated with online exam performance (cheating is not widespread)
– students report high satisfaction with the use of online exams (immediate feedback)
– frees up time for other in-class activities and more topics are covered
– grading timeliness and accuracy is improved (errors have basically been completely eliminated)

Do make an exception if student is kicked offline- have to send an email immediately or make a phone call immediately to the instructor’s phone
– in that instance ONLY do the instructors let students make up the exam

Toughest question is how to stop someone from doing the exam for the student
– final face to face exam addresses this, and the frequency of quizzes

Technorati Tags:

Technorati Tags:

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..


Posted

in

, , ,

by

Tags: