How To Avoid Cheating On Online Exams
Online assessment can be challenging to administer securely. Cheating during online exams compromises an evaluation’s integrity and may render its assessment inaccurate of a student’s learning progress.
High-tech devices such as invisible earbuds and smartwatches can aid students in cheating during online tests proctored via video. Luckily, higher education can take numerous measures to prevent cheating during quizzes and exams administered online.
1. Use a Randomized Question Order
Online assessment platforms are an effective tool for teachers to combat cheating by including features that make it more challenging for students to locate answers quickly. One such feature is question randomization, which randomly arranges test questions so no two students receive the same version of an exam.
Limiting students’ assessment times can also help deter cheating by ensuring they don’t have enough time to resort to Google for answers. Variation in types of questions you ask also plays an important role; multiple-choice, true or false and fill-in-the-blanks tend to be particularly susceptible to cheating since these require memory of simple facts while only testing limited understanding of course material. Instead, include more challenging problems or fictional scenarios for testing purposes that require deeper thought or analysis from students.
Combining several of these strategies can dramatically decrease the chance of cheating during online assessments. But it should be remembered that nothing can entirely eliminate cheating; some students will always try to gain an unfair advantage against their classmates at any cost. To combat this problem, educators must continue educating students about the dangers of cheating and make clear that academic misconduct constitutes grounds for failure.
Brightspace and TopHat online proctoring services offer another effective strategy, blocking certain websites and apps during an exam or assessment. Although this cannot fully prevent cheating tactics like screenshotting from occurring, such as making cheating more difficult. Doing this will help protect the integrity of assessments while simultaneously maintaining integrity of assessments.
2. Use a Per-Question Timer
As students take online exams, it can be easy for them to lose track of time or become distracted – leading them to miss answering all questions by the end of their test and lose points as a result.
A per question timer can help prevent exam malpractice online by ensuring students complete all questions within their allotted timeframe, thus encouraging accuracy over rushing through and making careless mistakes.
One of the key reasons students cheat during online exams is because they can access test banks and answers online. Therefore, it’s crucial that test questions remain secure from leakage by hiding them from third parties and protecting your exams from leakage.
To do this, use a separate copy of your browser or tab and disable your pop-up blocker before taking an exam to ensure you won’t be distracted by other windows and applications. Furthermore, close any programs running before beginning the test to prevent your computer from freezing up during it and ensure your answers are correctly submitted.
One way to prevent cheating on online tests is to use a randomized question order. This makes it harder for students to share answers as each student will get different questions. Furthermore, essay questions or open-ended queries require students to demonstrate knowledge rather than just selecting from a list.
Before administering an exam, it is crucial that students receive clear instructions on how to use it properly and submit their answers correctly. You can do this through video demonstration or assigning an academic integrity reminder prior to testing.
3. Use Open-Book Exams
At its heart, open-book exams enable students to draw upon whatever resources they wish during testing – both making it less stressful for students but potentially leading to cheating. Educational institutions can use various proctoring tools such as quizzing formats where each question appears at random each time in order to minimize cheating, making it harder for students to copy each other’s work or cheat on an exam.
Open-book tests can be an excellent way to assess student understanding of course materials, provided they are designed carefully. An ideal open-book exam should focus on measuring higher order thinking skills like analyzing and comparing rather than factual recall – this will not only discourage cheating but will also enable deeper comprehension on the subject matter.
At an open-book exam, students should only bring what is necessary. Cramming too many books and notes into their bags won’t improve performance and may become distracting and messy; sticky notes should instead be used to divide chapters of textbooks quickly into manageable chunks so they’re quickly accessible during an exam; for example tabbing data-packed charts or case studies they know will appear.
While preparing for an open-book exam, students should practice with model questions and quizzes. Quizzing helps identify areas for improvement while encouraging critical analysis of information provided. Furthermore, anticipatory questions can be prepared by marking with sticky notes, highlighting, or color coding sections of their textbook or notes that might provide answers to anticipated queries.
4. Use a Remote Proctor
Online proctoring services provide an effective framework to prevent cheating during online exams. These services ensure students cannot search the Internet during an exam, disable keystrokes and detect unwelcome activity using voice recognition; additionally they record each student’s exam on cloud storage for review later – rendering cheating impossible for your students!
Your students can help prevent cheating during online exams by using personal computers with recommended specifications in a quiet place without distractions, and signing a document stating they won’t access external resources during an exam. Some digital proctoring software also uses face-tracking technology to detect students attempting to look away from the screen during an exam – although this requires additional paid software that may be difficult to verify as evidence in court.
Another way to prevent cheating during an online exam is requiring your students to use a secure browser with remote proctoring features. These browsers allow students to self-check in and connect to a live proctor who will conduct ID, system, and environmental checks as well as require that any prohibited items (like notes, tissue box holders or drinks ) are cleared from their desk before starting an exam session.
Your students can make it more difficult for themselves to cheat on online exams by asking questions that require higher-level thinking rather than memorization alone. Moving beyond Bloom’s Taxonomy into application (analyzing, evaluating) levels makes it much harder to Google answers or turn to other students for assistance.
5. Use a Mobile Phone Monitoring Option
Though cheating may be hard to prevent, educators online have ways of making it more challenging. Remote invigilation via cameras as well as using digital methods in assessments can make it harder for students to cheat during an exam.
Mobile phone monitoring options prevent learners from cheating during online exams by blocking them from using smartphones to access test bank questions and answers on test banks. By disallowing learners from texting friends or searching the Internet during proctored online tests, the learners cannot cheat as easily.
Students attempting to cheat in online exams often resort to taking photos or screenshots of exam content and sharing them among themselves. This can easily be avoided by including various question types in your examination – matching exercises, fill-in-the-blanks and data table questions can all help to discourage cheating attempts on tests.
Students may also attempt to cheat by asking a trusted individual such as a family member or friend to assist during an online proctored exam. These helpers usually sit in the same room with them and write or whisper answers back directly into their ears, something which would be difficult for a camera to detect but which can still occur even without one being present.
To mitigate this problem, voice detection software that listens for keywords like “Hey Siri” or “OK Google” during online exams can identify students attempting to gain an unfair advantage and alert a live remote proctor immediately to step into the session and redirect them. You could also utilize browser lockdown technology that restricts access to other websites while disabling keyboard shortcuts for added protection; additionally, some proctoring solutions require candidates connect their mobile phone for 360-degree room scans with diagonal views while taking exams online.