Preventing/Reducing Cheating In Online Testing
The appeal of online testing is obvious: tests are compiled/graded automatically, feedback is immediate, etc. As online testing is growing rapidly in schools across the globe, a common concern of teachers is how to prevent students from cheating during online tests. With students now just a click away from searching the Internet for answers, we’ve compiled some helpful tips to help you control cheating during online testing:
- Offer shorter, more frequent quizzes so students keep up on their classwork. This also reduces the incentive to cheat because the value of each quiz is lower than a major, comprehensive exam.
- Randomize the order of exam questions and answer choices. Or, have questions randomly selected from a larger pool of questions. These are basic features of most assessment systems, and their implementation will deter students from sharing answers.
- If your school has an honor code, present it to students prior to each exam. Establish a culture of honesty early on - if the instructor has openly explained that cheating is unacceptable and has created an environment where cheating is difficult, students are much less likely to attempt it.
- Apply a password to the online exam and verbally provide students the password just prior to the start. This prevents students from accessing the exam outside of the presence of the teacher or proctor.
- Require students to use Respondus LockDown Browser™ for online exams. Respondus LockDown Browser™ is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within the learning management system. It prevents Internet searches, accessing notes or other applications on the computer, or copying the exam questions themselves, among other things. For more information on, click here.
- Set time limits on all quizzes/exams. By default, time limits are only added to the exams in our courses, but time limits can be also added to the quizzes with minimum effort. As you can imagine, time limits control how much time students have to 'look up' answers. We have some instructors who request a very specific total amount of time they would like to allow for each quiz and others who provide a system- i.e. 45 sec/question.
Without time limits and without a lockdown browser restriction, quizzes become a bit of an ‘open book’ effort as students can use their browser to open multiple tab and search the course content for the answer to each question. Time limits can help to reduce the time and opportunity for this type of activity to occur.
Note: To help reduce the likelihood of cheating on written assignments, you can also easily modify and customize the course written assignments.
Questions or problems?
By default, Connect For Education courses are configured to offer frequent, shorter quizzes throughout the course. Additionally, the quizzes/exams with the courses are set up to offer randomized questions from larger question pools and each question provides shuffled answers.
If you are interested in discussing any of these cheating prevention tactics further or if you are interested in taking advantage of exam passwords or Respondus LockDown Browser™, please contact the Connect For Education Support Team and we would be happy to assist with this process:
703-880-1180 x200
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