Online Exam Cheating Prevention
Online exam cheating has become an epidemic within the education industry. Students find creative ways to circumvent exams – they use Google searches, ask friends for assistance, use smart devices or more – in order to bypass examinations.
Understanding how students attempt to cheat can help avoid academic dishonesty. Here are five strategies for stopping online exam cheating:
Randomization
Examinees have various motivations for cheating in an online examination. These motivations could be divided into before- and during-exam categories to better understand how we can prevent various forms of cheating behavior during such examinations.
Before-exam cheating refers to actions examinees take prior to beginning an online examination. Methods for pre-exam cheating may include using prohibited materials, impersonating another student and purchasing additional time for taking exams online. Another popular form of pre-exam cheating involves submitting corrupted answer files.
Use of an online test-taking platform that offers the option to randomly order questions can help combat pre-exam cheating. Teachers can enable this feature when creating exams online; furthermore, certain platforms even enable teachers to switch around the order of questions when building tests – this removes any possibility that students might find another student’s test with similar questions and answers, giving them an edge in taking their exams without copying from it.
Students attempting to cheat during an online examination often employ multiple devices in their attempt. For instance, they might utilize a laptop or other device to record notes and formulas for later reference or utilize tablets or mobile phones as storage space for digital dictionaries. Some even employ hidden microphones for remote voice assistance services.
When it comes to combatting cheating in exams, an exam design that employs multiple strategies to address it is the ideal solution. Such “cheat-resistant” designs prevent certain forms of cheating from taking place – whether through parameterization (Manoharan 2019), data banks with large pools of questions containing variable assumption values, or AI methods of exam creation.
An important component of exam design involves employing proctoring techniques that detect and deter cheating. One such method includes monitoring an examinee’s head pose and mouth state to detect suspicious behavior; another technique uses machine learning to create video summaries of an exam which are then reviewed by human proctors for signs of cheating after it is over.
Hiding Questions
Students might think online exams are less secure than in-person ones, but that’s far from true. With proper authentication measures and web monitoring services in place, cheating becomes nearly impossible during online examinations.
One of the primary ways students cheat on online tests is by searching for answers. They might open another tab or use search engines to look up answers; or share their question with friends or peers so that they can answer for them. They might also take photos with their smartphones and text them back as questions for other test takers to answer themselves.
Alternative strategies of cheating could include using mobile phones to communicate during an exam and receiving unauthorised help from third parties, such as tutors. Unfortunately, such instances of cheating can be hard to spot and prevent; especially since students taking exams at different locations at different times.
Students sometimes try to impersonate others during an online exam, which can create serious difficulties and give an inaccurate evaluation of student abilities. To combat this threat effectively it’s essential that strong authentication tools be put in place and that examinationes identity be verified continuously throughout their exam experience.
As part of an effective proctoring solution against impersonation, it’s vital that students have access to a proctoring solution capable of recognizing suspicious behaviors or third-party assistance, such as virtual machines running extra operating systems that some students use to search for answers while remaining under supervision by proctoring software.
Voice detection software that listens for phrases like “Hey Siri,” “OK Google” or similar ones and alerts a live remote proctor may also help prevent students from trying to cheat during exams and using forbidden materials such as sticky notes during them. Furthermore, setting the exam so it only shows one question at a time can prevent students from scrolling through all questions at once or searching the web for answers.
Encryption
Since COVID-19 has caused more students to take tests, exams and courses online than ever before, many organizations are upgrading their fraud and cheating prevention systems accordingly. One effective solution involves encryption – encoding data so only those with access can read it – which makes secure communications such as emails and texting possible – making encryption an ideal way of keeping sensitive information private while protecting from prying eyes while simultaneously offering online exam security by eliminating many common cheating tactics that may threaten testing platforms like Moodle.
One of the primary ways students cheat in online exams is by taking early copies of test questions and posting them on social media or braindump websites for other examinees to use as study guides. To combat this practice, randomization can help – it encrypts each question on the test and randomly chooses which ones to display to each candidate, thus protecting test questions from being easily stolen and shared ahead of their actual examination date.
Cheating during exams is another popular method, involving students asking someone else to impersonate them and take their test on their behalf by logging into their account and taking the exam in their name. This practice can be monitored remotely via remote surveillance of where it takes place – for instance in a school library or computer lab instead of their home – or by installing software which blocks certain websites during an exam, such as cheating websites.
Students with advanced coding and programming abilities may employ various forms of cheating during multiple-choice exams by running them through software that interprets code to identify correct answers. While this form of cheating may be hard to stop, advanced software that detects on-screen activity or remote proctoring services that verify identity (facial recognition or biometric authentication) may help.
Mobile Phone Monitoring
Due to the pandemic, online exams have become an integral part of everyday life from universities to employment agencies. Unfortunately, however, cheating remains a significant problem when taking these tests online – however there are things you can do to protect the security and integrity of these assessments.
With mobile phones becoming so ubiquitous in modern society, cheaters have an easier time using these devices to cheat at online exams. Students taking exams online may use their cell phones during an exam session to search the Internet for answers or connect with fellow exam takers who share information. Auto coding software could also aid cheaters when answering online exam questions.
Other cheating tactics involve the use of high-tech devices to aid exams, such as invisible smartwatches or augmented reality glasses that look normal from the surface. Such devices may be combined with other forms of cheating such as concealing extra equipment in a room or whispering answers among test takers.
Remote proctoring software can protect test takers against cheating by scanning their physical environment for additional assistance that might compromise them during an exam, and by checking for forbidden materials or suspicious activities like screen sharing without authorization or connecting to different computers without authorisation. This technology is especially helpful during time zone- or location-varying exams as well as recruitment assessments that take place online.
Keep this in mind when considering online exam security: it goes beyond remote invigilation of exams to ensuring accurate test results reflect each test taker’s ability. By following these tips, colleges and other higher education institutions can conduct fair evaluations of students’ knowledge and abilities.
Covid-19’s pandemic has spurred an exponential surge in online testing and education, and it is important that we implement safeguards that safeguard their integrity. The methods outlined above can be applied to any assessment to prevent cheating while improving learning experiences for students.