How To Prevent Students From Cheating On Online Exams
Cheating can be tempting for students in online exams for many reasons – lack of motivation, low self-respect or simply tiredness are among them. Cheating can become tempting to students in these circumstances.
Cheating on exams undermines its fair evaluation and can produce inaccurate test results for your students. Luckily, there are ways you can prevent students from cheating during your exams.
1. Require Students to Sign an Academic Integrity Contract
Academic integrity is a multifaceted issue that encompasses cheating on exams, plagiarism and even copying homework. To prevent cheating on exams, educators should educate students on academic dishonesty as defined by your university and its policies on academic integrity. One effective method is requiring them to sign an Academic Integrity Contract before taking an online exam; this can either be implemented within your LMS via electronic signature tools or uploaded separately as an assignment prior to starting an exam session.
Recent research indicates that over 60% of students surveyed admitted to some form of cheating during exams; most commonly this includes using unapproved aids, looking at another student’s answers or submitting content that isn’t their own work. Online exams present unique opportunities for cheating such as copying someone else’s work directly into an exam, downloading or using test banks illegally and accessing prohibited calculators – among others.
Some students also turn to illegal services offering test cheating assistance, promising answers or the entire test itself. Not only is this practice against academic integrity but can have serious legal repercussions as well.
As part of an attempt to minimize cheating during online exams, you can restrict Internet access during tests and implement other measures. For instance, only one question at a time appears on screen, thus discouraging students from looking up questions or opening multiple tabs during testing. Furthermore, backtracking prohibition will prevent students from switching back and forth between their research and answering exam questions.
2. Create Multiple Versions of Exams
Proctoring services such as remote proctoring have helped reduce cheating in test-taking situations, but test-takers continue to find new ways of cheating the system. They can try hiding paper notes under their desk or writing formulae on an erasable marker placed on their monitor; or simply turn off their camera to prevent an exam proctor from witnessing what’s going on during an exam.
Test-takers utilize a range of hardware and software devices during exams to assist them, including smart watches, Google glasses, laptops with notes or cheat sheets stored, or earpieces that provide remote voice support. It is vital that online students do not utilize any additional devices during an exam – signing an academic integrity contract outlining your institution’s academic integrity policy and penalties beforehand may help deter cheating as well as help deter others.
Instructors can expand on this practice by creating multiple versions of online exams with different question pools that are randomly distributed among their students. Doing this increases question variation in Pages and Tests and makes it harder for students to share answers via screen capture or Google searches or pass information between classes; also asking application-level questions makes cheating less likely by forcing memorisation over creative use of information for answering exam questions.
Instructors looking to create multiple versions of an online exam should duplicate the assignment template PDF (your outline will remain intact) and then choose which question types should be included in each version of the test. Once students have taken all versions, instructors can organize them into an Exam Version Set on their Assignments page.
3. Restrict Access to Other Sites
Online education offers many students a convenient alternative, enabling them to take courses from any location. Unfortunately, this flexibility opens up potential avenues of cheating. Students can quickly access popular third-party resources like Quizlet or Chegg during exams to cheat. Furthermore, keyboard shortcuts may allow students to copy/paste and switch windows during a test session.
Although academic dishonesty can’t always be avoided, teachers can minimize cheating on online exams through various measures that minimize academic dishonesty. These methods could include having students sign academic integrity contracts or creating multiple versions of tests.
One way to prevent students from cheating online exams is requiring them to use a secure exam browser. This browser creates a private environment and makes it more difficult to leave, return to or manipulate test pages; additionally, it restricts access to search engines, social media platforms and file sharing services.
Additionally, it’s vital that students limit the length of time spent taking an exam. Students could become more inclined to cheat if they feel that they’re not progressing at an adequate rate during testing; to counter this threat, use software programs capable of conducting data forensics analyses on response times from exam takers in order to detect anomalies that suggest potential cheating activity.
Final Tip: To prevent cheating during online exams, it’s a smart idea to structure exams so that only one question appears at a time on the screen. This prevents students from rapidly scanning all questions before answering them all at once or having multiple tabs open for questions they don’t know the answers to; in addition, this prevents backtracking, another common form of cheating online exams.
4. Use Voice Detection Software
Due to the COVD-19 pandemic, many educational institutions shifted away from pen and paper exams towards online proctored tests. Since then, students have utilized various means to cheat on these exams; such as sharing answers in WhatsApp groups or searching the Internet remotely from separate devices; some even asked friends or acquaintances to take an exam for them remotely.
Students frequently utilize an effective strategy for taking online exams: using unapproved materials such as smartphones, textbooks or notes during an exam to gain access to unauthorized material such as smartphones, textbooks or notes without detection during test. They may either hide these resources within reach or utilize discrete means to consult them during the exam itself. Furthermore, students can employ various gadgets like invisible smartwatches and micro earbuds in their cheating endeavors on online exams.
Schools are using software such as Respondus Monitor and Honorlock that allow a remote proctor to observe student computers during exams, providing proctored exams. Installing these tools requires students to agree to be monitored by third parties during an examination; however, they aren’t foolproof as an SDSU study revealed students could bypass these systems by simply taking screenshots.
Problems associated with using these technologies to combat cheating on online exams also include the risk of disclosing a student’s disability status, for instance by video recording them being helped by personal care attendants or living in close quarters with others.
Although no universal solution exists for preventing cheating on online exams, the above techniques should help minimize some of the most commonly employed strategies by students. If possible, combine these deterrents with additional measures such as signing academic integrity contracts or installing browser lockdown software to further mitigate cheating practices.
5. Install Browser Lockdown Software
Cheating has become an increasing threat with online testing on the rise, yet no absolute solutions exist to curb cheating on these exams. There are steps that can be taken to deter students from cheating in exams given through computer networks, however.
One such step is using browser lockdown software, which restricts students’ ability to access other applications and websites during an exam, disables shortcuts and other keyboard functions, detects screen sharing, multiple monitors and can block study materials during testing sessions.
Lockdown browsers cannot do everything; for instance, they won’t prevent students from looking at another person’s test paper in the room or using an iPad to take pictures of their screen; nor can they prevent family or friends from helping during exams or using mobile apps to look up answers; nor can it verify the identity of students since it doesn’t require webcams for operation.
As such, it’s critical that educators employ multiple techniques in order to prevent students from cheating during an online exam. Implementing techniques like having them sign an academic integrity contract or setting an exam up so that only one question appears at a time can help to prevent cheating by students. Furthermore, forcing them to think carefully before answering each question will prevent guessing the correct response and save time by forcing them to answer each one systematically rather than guessing the right answer without deliberation.