Avoid Cheating Online Exams
Online exams provide a convenient means of testing students’ knowledge. Unfortunately, however, they also present the potential risk of cheating.
Students often turn to friends, family members and expert tutors for assistance when taking online exams. Text messaging and video chatting services also prove helpful.
Make it difficult for cheating by including open-ended questions and randomizing question order, while answer shuffling can help prevent copied answers from being copied into the exam.
1. Prevent Backtracking
Online education is a fast-paced environment. To meet deadlines more effectively, students may be tempted to use methods of cheating such as taking screenshots with technology or sharing screens during exams with fellow students – as well as looking up answers during examination.
These online testing methods can be difficult to oversee. Students can easily hide behind masks, move away from the screen, and make gestures that suggest they need assistance in cheating. Furthermore, some students use cell phones or devices like smartwatches and earbuds during exams in order to transmit data outside the classroom and outwit administrators.
Instructors can develop online tests in ways that make them less susceptible to cheating, using remote proctoring software such as that offered by universities as one way to monitor student behavior during exams; but even this kind of device may be compromised by creative students willing to bend the rules.
2. Require the Use of Save & Resume
Even with online proctoring systems that record video and audio of test takers, students continue to devise creative means of cheating exams. Old-school methods like writing math formulas on their palms remain effective; newer ways include sharing questions from online tests via social media and braindump websites.
One solution would be requiring save and resume on online exams, enabling students to keep their answers saved even if their connection breaks down or their computer crashes during an exam. Furthermore, exams will automatically submit at the end of their availability window or when time limits run out – whichever comes first.
Eschew cheating during online exams by restricting unauthorised distribution of exam content using document security software. By restricting forwarding, downloading, screenshotting and allowing screenshots during an exam you can reduce cheating rates significantly. It is also wise to remind students about academic integrity policies by having them review and sign a contract on the first page of an online exam; you could do this using either your LMS’ free tool or by asking students to upload it as file assignments prior to beginning their exams.
3. Limit Access to Other Sites
Cheating can often occur when students enlist the assistance of friends to take online tests on their behalf while the candidate goes off to work. Students then photograph their screen using phones or other more easily concealible devices and send the photos off to friends outside the classroom, who then view and answer the exam questions for them.
Students can cheat online exams by consulting unapproved materials during the test, such as searching the internet for answers, using electronic textbooks or consulting personal notes on discreet pieces of paper.
Browser lockdown software is an effective way to combat cheating during online tests. By restricting access to other sites and disabling shortcut keys and keyboard functions, it limits any possibility for cheating during examinations.
One way to combat cheating on online exams is to enlist the aid of a proctor during test-taking process, whether that be from school teachers, college administrators or testing companies. They’ll monitor via video feed the test-taker using any unapproved material during their examination; as well as require them to verify their identity by either speaking aloud or showing ID card; finally they may ask the student sign a statement agreeing with academic integrity policy as well as potential repercussions of cheating.
4. Make the Scores Visible After the Test
Online exam software often contains features designed to prevent cheating; however, students still find ways around these systems by sharing screenshots with friends or using cameras to record themselves taking an exam. Some even hire tutors to take the exam on their behalf.
Smartphones and electronic textbooks provide another option, while students can write notes directly onto their hands or palms to share them with fellow students. Many of these methods can be prevented with some extra work, including ID verification or psychometric forensics, disallowing additional hardware like smart watches, Google glasses and laptops as well as disallowing additional access points such as smart watches or laptops for students during exams.
Eliminate student dishonesty by disallowing students from returning to past questions during an online test. This feature, left over from when tests were administered on paper, does not contribute to fair evaluation of students’ abilities and could make it easier for one student to see the scores of others and steal information from them. Instead, create questions which require analysis, synthesis and evaluation rather than multiple-choice or true/false answers.
5. Require the Use of Voice Detection Software
Voice recognition technology during online exams is an effective way to deter cheating and detect suspicious activities that might indicate cheating, such as searching the web for answers during an exam or talking with classmates while taking an assessment. Voice recognition enables instructors to monitor students in real-time using webcams, microphones and access to screens – enabling instructors to monitor students more easily than before! Detect suspicious activities which could indicate cheating such as looking up answers during an examination or conferring with classmates while taking assessments.
Utilizing secure Internet browsers, remote proctoring, candidate authentication and data encryption tools when it comes to online assessment can also help prevent cheating. This will make it more challenging for students to share their screen, open new tabs or use virtual machines when taking an exam online. Another method for combatting cheating would be replacing multiple choice questions with open-ended ones that require analysis, synthesization and evaluation responses – these types of questions make copy-and-pasting from friends or Google more difficult while forcing students to provide specific details that demonstrate mastery of their chosen subject area.
Before taking an online assessment, it’s wise to remind students about your institution’s academic integrity policy and any possible repercussions for violating it. Some students can feel pressure to maintain high GPAs or keep scholarships or avoid academic probation; taking this precautionary measure could prevent them from violating academic honesty rules.
6. Use Browser Lockdown Software
Browser lockdown software is used to monitor an examinee’s onscreen activity and restrict desktop features, web searches and apps that could encourage cheating. Due to its susceptibility to hacker attacks and potential crashes caused by the software itself, it should only be installed and used on systems with full updates installed and secure firewall protection in place.
Students’ computers will run a browser lockdown program as part of a separate window on their computers. As part of its initial startup sequence (ID verification, webcam check), students can speak into live chat and report any technical problems they are having with their system. Once an exam is over, students may log out from this browser lockdown program.
Respondus Monitor, an extension of Lockdown Browser software, allows remote proctored tests at our university. Respondus combines webcam technology and analytics with automated reports that assess whether each student may have been cheating during tests; instructors can view results within their Canvas courses as they appear within Respondus reports – including students with high review priorities or thumbnails showing footage that might suggest suspicious activity.
Instructors looking to use this feature must first enable it for each exam they administer; to do this, use the dropdown menu next to an exam name and select Settings before clicking “Require Respondus Monitor for this Exam.
7. Use Mobile Phone Monitoring
Students often use smartphones, smart watches, and other electronic devices to look up answers on the Internet or communicate with helpers during an online exam. While traditional proctoring methods may struggle to prevent this behavior from taking place, AI-based proctoring software and live remote proctoring platforms offer various solutions – these programs can detect suspicious noises, devices or suspicious body language to spot possible instances of cheating attempts and flag them for human verification.
Students often try to share answers through chat apps, making mobile phone monitoring programs an effective solution to this practice. They connect directly to a student’s device for 360-degree room scanning and diagonal views of their workspace – making it almost impossible for them to text or check their phones during online assessments.
Cheating during online assessments can also be reduced by requiring students to sign an academic integrity contract prior to beginning. This can be accomplished by creating a short video detailing an institution’s academic integrity policy and asking students to sign it via their examination platform of choice. Failure to sign can result in lower grades, suspension or expulsion from school.