Online Ap Exam Cheating
Students prepare for Advanced Placement exams with considerable dedication and cost, knowing college credits could be at stake.
What happens if students choose to cheat? Despite efforts at prevention, cheating remains a significant problem as AP exams move online; specifically, students using private messaging and group chat apps to coordinate during an exam session.
What are the Benefits?
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, students are taking their Advanced Placement exams at home instead. In an effort to reduce cheating while still permitting students who want to take them access, The College Board has implemented an online testing system which keeps an eye on students as part of its attempt at minimization.
Instead of being administered in a classroom setting, this online testing system will keep a record of each student’s keystrokes and block specific websites during tests to prevent cheating by students using phones to Google answers or brainstorm with tutors during exams. Anyone caught cheating will have their scores cancelled by College Board and any colleges where they have applied may receive notification that this individual may be an attempt at cheating.
This year’s AP exams may help combat cheating as their shorter length could reduce opportunities to cheat; each exam will now last 45 minutes instead of three. Not only may this shortening force students to manage their time more efficiently but it could even discourage opportunities to cheat: one minute might seem harmless during an exam – yet in an AP test lasting 12-11% more time, even one five-minute lapse can prove costly.
Another effective strategy for combatting cheating is making questions more challenging, which requires students to use some creativity when writing answers. Questions will no longer be “Googleable” trivia but instead require thought and reasoning to solve; this prevents students from simply googling or Redditing for answers.
Other tools will be employed to combat cheating, including digital security and plagiarism software. A human element will also play an integral role: each AP teacher will receive copies of student submissions to identify any discrepancies between their submissions and previous work – this allows teachers to spot potential instances of cheating students more quickly for punishment by teachers. Furthermore, this year’s exams feature various structural modifications designed to eliminate opportunities for cheating while the College Board provides extra assistance for students needing it in taking exams.
What are the Drawbacks?
The online nature of AP exams makes them especially susceptible to cheating. Students may be tempted to communicate during an exam with fellow students or use video chat to communicate directly with their teacher or tutor about questions on an exam, and there is also the risk that students could share answers on social media or even through posting questions and solutions directly on these platforms. Although the College Board claims they are taking measures against cheating on these exams, exactly what these measures entail remains unknown.
Due to coronavirus-caused online testing of Advanced Placement tests this year, students now have greater opportunities for cheating during exams than before. Some students have created the subreddit APTests2020 where students discuss AP exams and share resources, while also downloading formula sheets required for some math and science AP exams – though this might provide helpful support for students without printers; it could also enable cheating by giving test takers access to Google Search during tests in order to quickly look up answers during an exam session.
One problem facing students today is their ability to access an AP exam from multiple devices at once. While this makes taking an exam more convenient, detecting violations becomes harder as different browser histories vary across each device used for taking it. Furthermore, using multiple devices increases the possibility of technical glitches during exams which could indicate cheating attempts.
The College Board must also balance the need to ensure AP exams are secure with providing high-achieving students a chance at earning college credit through these exams. This is a complex issue and the College Board has yet to address how they plan to tackle it; though likely violators of security could be asked to retake exams and earn credits later – especially if colleges discontinue accepting AP scores altogether; when they do accept them further restrictions may need to be put in place so students abide by these strict and unenforceable rules.
How Can I Avoid Cheating?
Cheating during an exam can be prevented in several ways. One such approach is using an online proctoring service like Honorlock that records students as they take their test and prevents them from accessing the internet during this period of testing. Limiting how long students are given to complete tests can help keep students from becoming fixated on questions they’re struggling with and resorting to cheating. Remind students that cheating is a serious offense that could damage both their test scores and reputation as students. Students may need to make sacrifices such as cutting back on extracurricular activities or studying more after school in order to protect themselves from falling prey to temptation.
Teaching students that looking at other people’s answers during tests is forbidden is also essential, which teachers can do by monitoring the testing room for suspicious behavior and watching for any instances where someone may look over another student’s paper without permission. If a student is caught doing this they should immediately be removed from testing room and reexamined by their teacher.
Another way to prevent cheating during an exam is to vary the types of questions asked during testing, making it harder for students to Google answers as they won’t know exactly which questions have been posed. It is also crucial that students are made aware of the dangers associated with cheating before sitting the AP exam; this may give them confidence not to succumb to temptation and cheat.
AP exam cheaters should make an effort to understand what led them to cheat and create a plan to avoid future incidents. Whether this involves being stumped by subject material, overcommitting themselves with after school activities or feeling pressure from parents for high marks; finding out why you cheated should allow students to develop strategies to prevent future instances.
What Can the College Board Do?
Technical glitches can quickly derail AP Exams for students taking them for college credits, which is why the College Board must make its online exams as safe and provide ample warnings against cheating as possible.
The 2020 Advanced Placement exams were the inaugural online-only AP tests, and brought more changes than most people anticipated. For instance, their 45-minute time limit, no multiple choice questions and all free-response questions differ considerably from traditional classroom testing experiences; thus presenting numerous new opportunities for cheating due to remote testing environments.
As part of its efforts to prevent cheating during AP Exams, the College Board is employing various digital security tools and methods. Teachers are being encouraged to communicate with students about questions or responses as a means of monitoring potential irregularities between questions or responses. Students attempting to gain an unfair advantage by sharing or receiving questions/answers will be barred from testing as well as possibly having their scores cancelled; any attempted sharing may also lead to reported cases being brought before schools/colleges for possible disciplinary actions being taken against them.
Monitoring a large group of test-takers simultaneously would be impossible and cost prohibitive; so instead, the College Board is using detection software and flagged videos to spot suspicious behavior among test takers.
Altering form codes for each exam provides another layer of security, enabling students to access different prompts which reduces any attempts at hacking.
The College Board must continue strengthening security measures for 2020 AP Exams and beyond, given its ambitions of moving SAT exams online as well. Although this won’t be easy, its worth making the effort so AP exams remain safe options for high school students; having them can ease college coursework burdens while potentially cutting tuition costs.