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Encourage Academic Integrity in your online classes
Faculty Focus Archives: cheating in online classes
This document is a compilation of posts from Faculty Focus
https://www.facultyfocus.com/ What I Learned from Students Who Cheat October 18, 2013 Melanie J. Trost We all know that feeling. That sinking, pit of your stomach feeling when you know you have seen this paper, problem, or quiz answer before. That feeling when you know you have witnessed academic dishonesty. Your first response might be anger. You may sigh because you know you have to investigate, fill out paperwork, and confront a student. Catching and acknowledging academic dishonesty can be disappointing, enraging, time-consuming, and undeniably unpleasant. It can end a student’s academic career. What’s more, academic dishonesty can make you question your ability as an educator.
The first time I caught a student plagiarizing, I was heartbroken. I took it very personally. I thought that the student cheated because I didn’t provide enough guidance or explain the assignment properly. I learned very quickly that this was the student’s choice, and that it was not a reflection on my teaching style or ability. When confronted, the explanation from the student was that it all came down to a lack of planning. The student did not allot enough time to finish the assignment over the weekend, so the paper was copied and pasted from a website. Despite warnings that each assignment was run through a plagiarism detection program, the student still chose to turn in a paper that was plagiarized. This choice had nothing to do with me. This was my first big lesson. Don’t take it personally. The student’s choice to cheat probably isn’t about you.
My next big lesson came from the same student. I took it for granted that the student learned a lesson from failing the first assignment. The second paper, as promised, was run through the plagiarism detection program, and again, the student was not the author. I was at a loss. I turned to the chair of my program, distraught and unsure how to handle the situation. My chair kindly directed me to our institution’s academic dishonesty policy. This was my second big lesson. Know where your institution stands on academic dishonesty. Unfortunately, cheating is a part of academia. That is why institutions have such policies. It is important that you are familiar with your institution’s policy, that you communicate it to your students, and, in fairness to all, enforce it consistently. In most cases your institution will back you in cases of academic dishonesty, as my chair did. The second confrontation with the student was more uncomfortable and nerve wracking than the first, because this time, the student failed the course. That was my third big lesson. These instances are teachable moments, but they also should be accompanied by disciplinary action. Just as you reflect on your teaching practice, the student must reflect on their learning experience. Students are more likely to learn from their mistakes if a disciplinary action is taken. Of course, disciplinary actions vary by institution and offense, but it is a necessary evil. By calling a student out, we acknowledge the value in upholding academic honesty. Despite the discomfort of the conversation, hopefully the student realizes that these matters are not to be taken lightly. That is not to say a student automatically fails an assignment or course, but that some acknowledgement of the dishonesty is made. The disciplinary action will not always work the first time, as with the student mentioned above, but eventually it will sink in. Most students will learn their lesson after the first offense.
The most recent lesson on cheating that I learned was not from a traditional classroom setting, but from an online course. Cutting edge technologies have made online education a positive and effective teaching and learning experience at many institutions. There is a learning curve with online education, though. It is important to know your delivery system well enough to discourage cheating where possible. I had inadvertently made it way too easy to cheat on quizzes by not enabling a “shuffle questions and answers” option in my quizzes. This small oversight resulted in students engaging in academic dishonesty. This occurrence was different, however. More than anything, I learned the importance of knowing the online platform with which I worked. A simple checkmark and toggle to another choice when creating the quiz would have likely saved me from this entire scenario.
In my years as an educator, it has never become easier to confront a cheater. It is always uncomfortable, and cheating will never be completely eradicated. However, learning not to take it personally, recognizing where your institution stands, allowing the instance to be a teachable moment, and studying your learning platforms will help in easing some of the discomfort.
Melanie Trost is a lead instructor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tiffin University. Academic Integrity: Examining Two Common Approaches September 22, 2011 Jennifer Garrett Any effort to fundamentally change a school’s approach to academic integrity requires an understanding of its current organizational response to cheating (Bertram Gallant, 2008).
Organizational approaches to student cheating form a continuum from highly decentralized to highly centralized, and most schools fall somewhere on this spectrum.
The more decentralized a school’s response to cheating is, the more haphazard and, most likely, the more unfair, opaque, and inconsistent it is. For example, on campuses with highly decentralized responses, faculty members handle cheating as they see fit. Colleges and universities with somewhat decentralized responses might require faculty to report cheating to an academic chair, who then handles it within the department. At schools that fall somewhere in the middle, faculty might report cheating to a divisional dean, such as a psychology professor, who would report it to a social science dean. A centralized response to cheating would have faculty reporting directly to a provost. On highly centralized campuses, cheating would be reported to an academic integrity office.
Rule Compliance or Integrity: Examining the Two Approaches The two dominant approaches to maintaining academic integrity on campus tend to be one of two centralized approaches. The rule compliance approach tells students what they can’t do, while the integrity approach offers guidelines for students on what they should do. The two approaches differ fundamentally in goal, method, and tone.
However, both approaches attribute the cause of the problem to the character of the individual student, who is assumed to be dysfunctional or acting in dysfunctional ways. The vernacular is morally laden and generally characterizes the student and his or her conduct as honest or dishonest, honorable or dishonorable, moral or immoral, good or bad, etc. This is true regardless of whether the cheating incident was the result of ignorance or malice.
Correspondingly, both strategies focus on resolving the problem primarily by either ridding the institution of the student, which is common in the compliance approach, or “fixing” the student, which is common in the integrity approach. The rule compliance approach has a disciplinary, as opposed to a developmental, focus. In other words, it tries to increase the cost of misconduct.
The goal of this approach is to create a campus where students comply with the rules. The primary method used is discipline, and the tone is usually very legalistic and adversarial. There is heavy administrative involvement, which may include judicial affairs officers, student affairs professionals, and legal professionals or pre-professionals.
Alternately, the goal in the integrity approach is to create a campus where students choose to act with integrity. That is, they desire and choose to act ethically; they do not feel forced because of the possibility of discipline. Campuses that use the integrity strategy maintain that colleges are responsible for students’ ethical development; these schools use cheating as an opportunity for teaching.
The integrity approach is primarily developmental and uses discipline only as a tool. That is, discipline is used if it will help the student develop as a person and not merely to punish. The tone is generally more about forgiveness and second chances. Schools using the integrity approach rely heavily on faculty and student involvement; there is little administrative involvement. There is also significant corresponding campus talk about academic integrity and ethics. This includes any event or activity as part of a broader university initiative that brings awareness to ethics and integrity.
An example of the integrity approach can be found in part of the approach taken by the University of California San Diego (the approach at UCSD tends to be an amalgamation of rule compliance and integrity). The integrity approach is reflected in the requirement that all first-year students take an online academic integrity tutorial that aims to teach students about campus ethical standards. Academic integrity peer educators, both undergraduate and graduate students, engage in educational campaigns throughout the year in order to further reinforce the academic integrity message. And when students violate academic integrity standards, they are enrolled in an academic integrity seminar to further instill the core message that cheating, even in the smallest of acts, undermines the core purposes of the university and their own purposes for attending. This seminar also helps students learn from failure.
Reference: Bertram Gallant, T. (2008). Academic Integrity in the Twenty-First Century: A Teaching and Learning Imperative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Excerpted from Building a Culture of Academic Integrity. Learn more about this white paper » Activities that Promote Awareness of What Is and Isn’t Cheating April 11, 2018 Maryellen Weimer, PhD Although some behaviors are pretty much universally identified as cheating (copying exam answers, for example), we’re not in agreement on everything. Particularly significant are disagreements between faculty and students (for example, students don’t think cheating occurs if they look something up on their phone and can’t find it; faculty consider cheating in terms of intent). In many cases, there is the question of degree (when, for example, collaboration crosses the line and becomes cheating). The effectiveness of cheating prevention mechanisms can be increased by clarifying upfront what is and isn’t cheating. Here’s a collection of activities faculty can use to ensure that students understand the behaviors that constitute cheating.
Behavior Lists
Lists of cheating behaviors and those behaviors that could be considered cheating have been used extensively in the descriptive research on cheating. The list below includes items that appear on multiple research lists. However, what’s not included are behaviors that students consistently recognize as cheating; such as copying answers during an exam, getting answers off an electronic device during an exam, claiming the material of others as your own, buying or borrowing a term paper. The focus of this piece is on those behaviors about which faculty and students disagree and behaviors where the activity is not clearly, but possibly cheating.
Because common cheating behaviors aren’t included, the list below should not be used to document the extent of cheating occurring in a course. Rather, the purpose of this list is to clarify how cheating is being defined behaviorally in a course.
Here’s a run-down of possible ways to use the list.
Rating options: Students can simply check off or write yes beside the behaviors on the list they consider cheating. Or, you could provide some other options. Students respond yes, no, or it depends, with space left on the list for them to identify what it depends on. Another approach might be having the students identify the three most serious cheating offenses and the three least serious offenses. Compare Results: Both teacher and students review the list. After students (individually, in pairs, or in groups) have identified behaviors on the list they consider cheating, share your results, discussing those behaviors where there’s disagreement.
The Friend Factor: Research consistently finds that when friends are involved, students find it find it difficult not to “help” the friend. So, if it’s a friend who wants to know what’s on the exam or a friend asks for some answers on an assignment, students are more likely to comply with the request. The items on the list with an asterisk (*) describe cheating where collusion is involved. Have students discuss how the friend factor influences decisions about cheating—why it’s harder to say no to a friend, and if you want to say no, what are some constructive ways of responding to the request.
Is It Cheating?
Behavior Yes/No/Depends
Turning in an assignment previously submitted for another class
Paraphrasing ideas without documenting the source
Using information considered common knowledge without citation
*Having someone check over a paper before turning it in
*Working with others on a project to be completed individually
*Asking someone who’s already taken the exam what’s on it
*Making suggestions about what to study to someone who hasn’t yet taken the exam
Including references on a bibliography that were not used in the paper
Taking credit for participation in a group without doing a fair share of the work
Making up an excuse for missing an exam or assignment due date
Using your phone to look up an answer during an exam but not finding it
Knowing that someone is cheating but not reporting it
*Being in a study group that divvies up homework problems and then shares and discusses the problem solutions
Falsifying data from experiments, surveys, or other research activities Discussion Questions for Students Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of discussion for raising issues related to cheating. Although most faculty do go over the academic integrity policy at the beginning of course, once is probably not enough. The conversation about cheating ought to be ongoing, and good discussion questions can keep raising the issues and challenging students to consider all that’s involved in cheating. The discussions don’t need to be lengthy to be effective.
Do bear in mind that those who have cheated and/or currently do would rather not talk about it, especially with the teacher present. But those are the students that most need to hear and be part of the discussion. You can provide space in the conversation for those who cheat with a comment something like this: “I know that students cheat, but for the sake of this conversation, I’m going to assume that nobody present today does. So, when you talk about cheating behaviors, you will be referring to hypothetical students who engage in certain behaviors. We will not assume that you are talking about yourself.”
Here are some ways to structure these discussions.
Pick a Question: It could be one of the questions listed in the section below or one of your own making. Begin or end the in-class exam review session with a short discussion of the question. Make the discussion topic timely. For example, use a question about plagiarism shortly before a written assignment is due. Students can write some thoughts before the discussion starts or they can talk with someone nearby before the whole class discussion begins. Or, you share a question and ask students to anonymously write some thoughts, which a student can collect and pass on to you. Students’ comments can then be used in a subsequent discussion. Conversations about cheating can occur in class, online, or both. Feed the Discussion with Facts: Use the fact sheet resource. For example, when talking about whether students should report cheaters, note the study where only 4% of the students did. An analysis of 298 open- ended responses of undergraduates who had been reported for cheated revealed four themes related to why the students cheated; 1) they didn’t know they were cheating; 2) they blamed the professor for doing or not doing something; 3) they didn’t have enough time, resources, or skills; or 4) they didn’t have the time, resources, or skills and they accepted responsibility for what caused them to cheat (Beasley, 2014). Are these good reasons to cheat? When should students accept the responsibility for cheating behavior? A number of studies report that students who cheat say they’re just doing it on occasion to get through school and plan to stop when they graduate. Lots of research says that they don’t. There’s more examples and references to these on the fact sheet. Discussion Questions
What if you attempt to cheat but are unsuccessful? You text a friend asking for an answer, but the friend doesn’t reply. Have you cheated? When does cheating occur? When you attempt it or when you execute it successfully? What about those who enable cheating? (Examples: make it easy to copy their answers, provide information on test questions, cover for a friend who has skipped class and wants to make up a quiz). Are enablers cheating? Why? Why not? If they are, should they be punished? Should they be punished the same way the cheater is punished?
What about when the playing field in a course isn’t level? Some students in the class have access to old exams; others to do not. Should those with the exams make them available to everyone? That way everyone is equally guilty of cheating?
Should students who don’t cheat report those who do? Does failing to report cheating make you an accessory to the crime?
How does cheating hurt those who don’t do it?
Do your professors overlook cheating? How often? If they do, how does that make you feel? Are there ways you could share those feelings with the instructor?
What are your feelings about ethics in the workplace? Are those who cheat in college likely to continue dishonest practices in the workplace?
The Academic Integrity Policy Quiz
Most institutions rely on policies to prevent cheating. They appear in student handbooks and at many institutions faculty are required to include the policy in the course syllabus. Do students read the policy? At a large Australian university, students are sent a copy of the academic dishonesty policy. Fifty percent of more than 3000 surveyed reported that they hadn’t read the policy. Is familiarity with the academic integrity policy something that prevents cheating?
The details of the policy can be reinforced in your course by giving students a quiz on it. Generate a set of true and false statements regarding the institution’s or instructor’s academic integrity policy and give them to students as a quiz (make it worth a few points so it carries some weight).
Here are some incomplete, sample statements about policies. The missing information can be filled-in based on the policy. The policy defines cheating as ______The most severe penalties that can occur if cheating is confirmed are ______The policy says that students who enable cheating ______Instructors can refer instances of cheating to ______Instructors can handle cheating cases on their own if ______Instructors should have the following kinds of evidence to prove that a student has cheated ______Decisions as to guilt or innocence are decided by ______Due process insures that the student has the right to ______Students may appeal a cheating decision by ______Access additional resources on cheating:
Fact Sheet on Cheating in College Students as a Forgotten Ally in Preventing Cheating A Memo to Students on Cheating Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, advocates an instructional design/community-building approach to academic integrity rather than an adversarial approach. Her stint as a police officer informs this stance. As radar gun companies introduced improved speed enforcement tools, the latest radar detectors (often produced by the same companies) rendered such improvements ineffective. “I learned that you can’t out-tech people, and you don’t want to get into that situation. You don’t want to have that arms race. Certainly some security measures are going to be necessary, but don’t get into the habit of relying on technology to establish a climate of integrity, because it can have adverse effects. Nobody wants to feel like they’re being watched all the time,” she says.
Here are Fishman’s recommendations for promoting academic integrity in the online classroom:
Set expectations. Let your students know you care about academic integrity. If your institution has an honor code, refer to it throughout the course. “If you don’t have conversations that reference the honor code, if students don’t buy into the honor code, it’s going to be a lot less effective,” Fishman says.
In addition, remind students of the importance of academic integrity to you personally. For example, Fishman mentions her role in the International Center for Academic Integrity and talks about academic integrity throughout the course. “You want to mention before the major assignments that integrity is important. You want to mention [academic integrity] while they’re working on their papers. That can make a difference, but I think it’s much less effective without interaction to reinforce that that is one of the mores of the community,” she says. Build relationships with your students. When students have a relationship with their instructor, they are less likely to cheat. This is why Fishman recommends making a strong effort to get to know students. She recommends entering the learning space early to chat with students during synchronous sessions, asking questions such as “How are you doing?” and “What did you do this weekend?” She also recommends using gestures. “I type into the online classroom ‘smiles’ and ‘waves’ and ‘say hello to so-and-so’ so that they understand it as a place that is like their face-to-face classroom, and I think that can help establish that rapport.”
By having these social conversations students might be less inclined to cheat for fear of disappointing someone—the instructor—with whom they have established a relationship. “You want the teacher and the student to feel responsible to each other. You want them to feel that they are engaged in the mutual process of understanding—the teacher and students are helping the student learn, and if things go really well, the teacher learns too,” Fishman says.
For instructors who do not have the option to use synchronous communication, Fishman recommends establishing relatively informal spaces to interact “so that students know that not everything is going to be a graded assignment.” She asks students to include a photo, picture, or symbol that appears alongside their name in discussions and blog posts. This helps establish relationships even if students don’t use photos of themselves. “You get familiar with that person. You might not ever know the person’s real name, but you know his or her Internet moniker and picture, and you feel over time that you know that person,” Fishman says.
Help students transfer face-to-face classroom norms to the online environment. Some online learners struggle with understanding appropriate behavior in the online classroom and mistakenly transfer to the online classroom the norms from other online venues, such as gaming spaces and Facebook, rather than behave according to the norms of the face-to-face classroom. To address this issue, Fishman recommends using analogues of the face-to-face learning environment in the online classroom. For example, using a tool that is analogous to a chalkboard helps establish familiar norms in a new setting. Similarly, having students respond to questions synchronously helps establish a classroom environment. “It feels like the kind of discussion they might have in a classroom. If you do everything in an asynchronous environment, then it doesn’t feel like a classroom. I want them to see what happens in the online classroom as an interactive exchange, just like a face-to- face classroom would be. It’s not like everything should be the same [as the face-to-face classroom], but I do think there should be special attention paid to making sure that students have that feeling of interactivity by talking with each other and not just getting assignments out of nowhere and submitting them into a black hole. There have to be people attached to those actions, personalities, and interactions in order for you to establish that kind of rapport.”
Keep groups small. One of the obstacles to promoting academic integrity is class size. If students don’t have the opportunity to establish relationships with classmates and the instructor, they may be more inclined to cheat. “In small classes where the teacher and the students have lots of interaction, there’s a sense of responsibility to one another,” Fishman says.
Financial necessity often dictates large online classes. In order to build rapport, Fishman recommends subdividing large classes into discussion groups of five to 10. “If you’re able to schedule it so that those groups aren’t all meeting at the same time, then it’s possible to still take advantage of the way you teach best,” Fishman says. For example, an instructor might do part of a lecture synchronously and have students do an assignment and then view a prerecorded lecture. Use frequent and varied assignments. Scaffolded assignments with interim deadlines and pieces that can be assessed throughout the course can make cheating less likely. However, having many assignments can create extra work for the instructor. Fishman recommends providing simple feedback on some of these assignments, such as a checkmark for those who complete an assignment correctly and more substantive feedback for those who need it.
In addition to reducing the likelihood of cheating, having a series of assignments that builds toward a larger project tends to means that the final project is usually higher quality and requires less feedback than had the students submitted just the final project, Fishman says. Although having assignments like this can reduce cheating, it won’t eliminate it, because students can pay others to create all the pieces of the assignment. Use technology judiciously. Fishman is not opposed to the use of technology to detect academic dishonesty, and the International Center for Academic Integrity works with companies that provide these tools, “but I do think than an overreliance [on technology] can be detrimental to the relationship between the teacher and the students. You want to be able to detect plagiarism. … What you don’t want to do is feel like it’s an arms race, where you’re trying to put in so many mechanisms [so] that students can’t possibly cheat, and they’re trying to find ways of getting around all the mechanisms you have in place,” Fishman says.
Allow opportunities to play and explore. When students are supported, are engaged, and have opportunities to explore their interests, they are less likely to cheat. “The trick is to design the course so that everything essential is there, and yet when somebody gets excited about a topic and wants to explore, there’s room for students to pursue that,” Fishman says.
Unlike in the face-to-face classroom, there can be technical barriers in the online classroom. “You don’t want [students] to barely master the technology so that they can barely get the assignments done. You want there to be room for them to expand, grow, play. If you get the students [to] where they’re playing with the technology, the technology is no longer a barrier. …
“If all students were engaged and actually excited about learning, then my job would be over because there would be no reason to cheat. … There’s no reason for students to cheat in an environment where they feel safe, competent, and excited about what they’re doing.”
Reprinted from Promoting Academic Integrity in the Online Classroom, Online Classroom, 13.6 (2013): 5,8. © Magna Publications. All Rights Reserved. Plagiarism vs. Originality: Why I [heart] Melania Trump September 2, 2016 Diane Rubino When I first I started teaching, I knew what plagiarism meant and how it related to schoolwork. But student “cheaters” challenged my beliefs. I also assumed graduate students would submit original work. So it took me by surprise when I noticed a mysterious improvement in one student’s writing capacity, well beyond the skill level he’d demonstrated earlier. When a Google search proved more than 20 percent of his paper was copied, he explained it as a computer error—he’d accidentally dropped the footnote when cutting and pasting. I lowered his course grade, but assumed it really was a snafu—not subterfuge. The (now) obvious question went unasked: Why was so much of his assignment based on other people’s insights?
To avoid similar calamities, students now submit homework via Turnitin, a product that cheerily refers to its service as an “originality check.” The software instantly generates a “match score” meaning the percentage of text that’s been copied. It allows those with a high score to try again. But few seem to review the data.
When I asked a student why he turned in a paper with a 50 percent match score, he responded with a surprised, “I thought I changed it enough.” I knew him and was certain he was truly confused. In fact, rather than seeing his action as deception, I experienced it as a revelation. I dropped his final mark, but realized he and I were approaching this subject in completely different ways.
His response suggested a belief that paraphrasing not only avoids plagiarism, but also constitutes originality. I had a different perspective about these ideas, especially that of originality, which I define as reaching inward to access intellect and experience to spark novel thinking. Perhaps that software program is aptly named after all.
Over time I saw that this way of thinking was more prevalent than just an isolated case. Other than believing that inadequate writing and critical thinking preparation is the root cause, I wasn’t sure what to do. I sought advice from and shared my observations with experienced instructors. It’s clear that improving writing and thinking requires a multi-pronged solution. But using the plagiarism software seemed like it could be a helpful start, if only to spark discussions about originality. But I failed to gin up much interest. The conversation often bounced back to, “I know when they’re cheating.” The “international student as plagiarist” theme came up a lot, too. Although I’ve seen many articles on that subject, my own experience is different. My 50-percent paraphraser, for example, grew up on the West Coast.
Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech put plagiarism in the spotlight and generated a great deal of attention. The study in contrasts she presents reminds me of my students. In her speech Ms. Trump described herself as traveling “the world while working hard in in the incredible arena of fashion.” Until recently, her website highlighted her entrepreneurial pursuits, displaying the skin care collection she created and jewelry she designed.
The image of “industrious creator” clashes with “speech plagiarist.” It’s at odds with someone who says she wrote her speech with “as little help as possible” on Monday and has her speechwriter take the hit for plagiarism just two days later.
But this inconsistency is familiar. I teach an impressive lineup of activists, actors, bloggers, dancers, fashionistas, painters, poets, singers, and social media doyen. They express a desire to be part of high-profile conversations in the arts, business, and on the Internet. But in the classroom their bright plumage fades. They seek and repeat the most easily accessible tropes.
The real goal, I see now, is to help them bridge the gap within themselves and bring their intrinsic creativity into the class, rather than leaving it at the door.
I need a more nuanced definition of plagiarism and paraphrasing and originality, rather than my current syllabus boilerplate, “Originality match scores higher than 10 percent means I will lower your grade by a full letter…” Yet encouraging students to focus on a number without explaining what it stands for accomplishes little. Instead, it threatens to spark a mad scramble to change words and sentence structures, rather than taking on the task of thinking more deeply about subjects.
I made a rookie mistake by only speaking to my peers about the plagiarism issue. I need to bring students to the table. Until now, I hadn’t questioned why Johanna Blakley’s TED talk about copyright as an inhibitor to creativity is always a hit with my classes. Now I wonder if student interest in Blakeley represents a cross-generational difference in understanding. Engaging more deeply with the students on these issues provides a forum to see how easy access to information, mash ups, and sampling influences their thinking. Fortunately, Melania Trump provides a timely and nonthreatening way to broach plagiarism. She serves as a springboard to dive into the subject of originality. For that, as well as for the additional thinking she helped spark in me, I am grateful to Ms. Trump.
Diane Rubino is an activist, an adjunct instructor at New York University, an ACT-UAW union member, and an applied communications professional who seeks to make the world more healthy and humane.
Stories are real experiences, but I’ve changed the identifying details to protect student privacy. But What If They Cheat? Giving Non-Proctored Online Assessments December 8, 2017 Sheryl Cornelius, EdD As online education continues to grow, so does the potential for academic dishonesty. So how do you ensure your online students are not cheating on their tests? Bottom line, you don’t. But there are ways to stack the deck in your favor.
The good news is it’s not as bad as you think. A 2002 study by Grijalva, Kerkvliet, and Nowell it found that “academic dishonesty in a single online class is no more prevalent than in traditional classrooms” (Paullet, Chawdhry, Douglas & Pinchot, 2016, pg. 46). Although the offenders have become quite creative in their endeavors, the prevention remains the best defense.
First, start by creating a culture of integrity. Many institutions have students review the school’s Honor Code and sign a “pledge.” The first question on every exam I give is True/False, “I will follow the Honor Code while taking this assessment.” It follows the similar rule that locked doors are for honest people, but it also serves as a good reminder of the possible consequences, which often is enough to keep many students from breaking the rules.
Second, do not set rules that you have no way to enforce, e.g. forbidding the use of books, notes, or other resources. Instead ask questions that will not be evident in the resources, such as items where students have to analyze, evaluate, and think critically about the content. Essay questions, case study analysis, fill in the blanks, sequencing questions, and hot spot questions are difficult to look up. It also helps to set a time limit for the test so that Googling answers becomes impossible.
Third, make every assessment different. No, I am not saying create 25 exams, but you can scramble questions and create multiple versions of the same test. If everyone finishes the exam with an essay question, you can create three different questions and have one randomly assigned to each exam. If you have deep enough test banks, you can have several different test versions with no question being repeated. Anything you can do to mix up the versions can detour efforts of deceitful activity.
Many instructors withhold feedback until the exam has closed. In this way no one can pass on answers to others. Some will have the exam synchronous for this very reason. However, making the exam synchronous takes away the flexibility for online students that work unusual shifts. If you have the added budget, your school may want to invest in software that does not allow the student to travel off the page of the test. The downside of this is that students often have multiple devices so there is nothing preventing them from taking the assessment on their laptop and looking things up on their smartphone.
If you are really tech savvy, you can check time stamps for test takers and compare them to the IP address. If multiple students log on to the exam from the same IP address in a relatively short timeframe then it’s probably safe to conclude they are having a test-taking party where they sit together in one location and ask each other for help.
In the end, we must balance the fact that we are teaching adults who deserve a level of trust. And for those students who have a licensure exam waiting for them at the conclusion of their studies, they’re only hurting themselves.
References
Paullet, K., Chawdhry, A., Douglas, D., & Pinchot, J. (2016). Assessing Faculty Perceptions and techniques to Combat Academic Dishonesty in Online Courses. Information Systems and Computing Academic Professionals. 14 (4), 45-53.
Sullivan, D. (2016). An Integrated Approach to Preempt Cheating on Asynchronous, Objective Online Assessments in Graduate Business Classes. Online Learning, 20 (3) 195-209.
Sheryl Cornelius is a registered nurse who has been teaching for the last 15+ years in universities and community colleges. For the past three years, she has been teaching online in a nurse educator program in Charlotte, N.C. Do Online Students Cheat More on Tests? November 6, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD A lot of faculty worry that they do. Given the cheating epidemic in college courses, why wouldn’t students be even more inclined to cheat in an unmonitored exam situation? Add to that how tech-savvy most college students are. Many know their way around computers and software better than their professors. Several studies report that the belief that students cheat more on online tests is most strongly held by faculty who’ve never taught an online course. Those who have taught online are less likely to report discernible differences in cheating between online and face- to-face courses. But those are faculty perceptions, not hard, empirical evidence.
Study author Beck correctly notes that research on cheating abounds, and it addresses a wide range of different questions and issues. Faculty have been asked how often they think cheating occurs and what they do about it when it happens. Students have been asked whether they or their colleagues would cheat, given a certain set of circumstances. Student have been asked how often they cheat, how often they think their colleagues do, and whether they report cheating. The problem with much of this descriptive research is that it summarizes perceptions, what faculty and students think and have experienced with respect to cheating. And this in part explains why the results vary widely (studies report cheating rates anywhere between 9 and 95 percent) and are sometimes contradictory and therefore inconclusive.
Beck opted to take a different approach in her study of cheating in online and face-to-face classes. She used a statistical model to predict academic dishonesty in testing. It uses measures of “human capital” (GPA and class rank, for example) to predict exam scores. “This model proposes that the more human capital variables explain variation in examination scores, the more likely the examination scores reflect students’ abilities and the less likely academic dishonesty was involved in testing.” (p. 65) So if a student has a high GPA and is taking a major course, the assumption is that the student studied, cares about the course, and therefore earned the grade. But if a student has a low GPA and doesn’t care about the course and ends up with a high exam score, chances are the student cheated. It’s an interesting method with a good deal more complexity than described here. The article includes full details of the assumptions and how the model was developed and used. The study looked at exam scores (midterms and finals, all containing the same questions) of students in three sections of the same course. One section contained an online unmonitored exam, another was an online hybrid section with a monitored exam (students took this exam in a testing center facility), and the third was a face-to-face section with the test monitored by the instructor. In the online unmonitored section, questions were randomized so that each student received a unique test. Online students could not exit or restart an exam once they began taking it. The exam was presented to them one question at a time, they could not move backward through the questions, and the exam was automatically submitted after 70 minutes, the time allowed in the other two formats. Students in all sections were warned not to engage in cheating.
“Based on the results in this study, students in online courses, with unmonitored testing, are no more likely to cheat on an examination than students in hybrid and F2F courses using monitored testing, nor are students with low GPAs more likely to enroll in online courses.” (p. 72) Some had suggested that because students who had not taken an online course reported that they thought it would be easier to cheat in online courses, students with lower GPAs might be motivated to take online courses. There were only 19 students in the online course in this study, but across these three sections, GPA did not differ significantly.
Using this interesting model to predict cheating, there was no evidence that it occurred to a greater degree in the unmonitored tests given in the online course. That’s the good news. The bad news: “There is ample opportunity for cheating across all types of course delivery modes, which has been demonstrated through decades of research.” (p. 73) In other words, we still have a problem, it just isn’t more serious in online courses, based on these results.
Reference: Beck, V. (2014). Testing a model to predict online cheating—Much ado about nothing. Active Learning in Higher Education 15 (1), 65–75.
Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 28.6 (2014): 5. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. Fourteen Simple Strategies to Reduce Cheating on Online Examinations May 11, 2020 Stephanie Smith Budhai, PhD The end of the academic term often brings final examinations and cumulative assessments to test students’ knowledge of course materials. With 30% of college students taking online courses (Allen & Segman, 2017), and that number expeditiously increasing, so will the need for administering exams within the online learning environment. Many instructors are hesitant to include exams within their online courses because of the potential of compromising academic integrity. Virtual live proctoring technologies but may be too expensive and not part of the instructor’s institution’s distance education infrastructure. Additionally, having students take exams under the eye of an online proctor may negatively impact student success on the exam (Lieberman, 2018). Even without expensive virtual proctoring tools, there are many ways that instructors can leverage the inherent features within their institution’s Learning Management System (LMS) to decrease cheating during online examinations. Here are 14 ways to do so: 1. Create questions that require higher order thinking. Instead of having students respond to questions that can be answered by a simple web search or even by finding the answers in their textbooks, create questions that are on the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels (Bloom, 1956). It will be more challenging to ask a friend or “Google” the answer when the questions require students to explain, analyze, infer, create, compose, evaluate, and authentically demonstrate their mastery of course content. 2. Use varied question types. Refrain from having an exam with all multiple choice or true and false questions and include open-ended questions. It is more difficult for students to give the same response as their friends verbatim for open-ended questions, and students would be forced to explain their responses using specific details and supporting narratives that are unique to their own understanding of the course materials. 3. Creatively remind students of academic integrity policies. Create and post a video explaining the guidelines for the online exam and review the institution’s academic integrity policy and consequences that are listed in the course syllabus. There may be some psychological impact on students after seeing and hearing their instructor discuss academic integrity right before an exam begins, which may deter students who were thinking about cheating. 4. Require students to sign an academic integrity contract. After reviewing the academic integrity reminder video, have students electronically sign a contract that lists what the university considers cheating. Include a link to the university website that houses the academic integrity policy and require a signed contract prior to beginning the exam. Use a free tool within the LMS, such as a polling or survey feature, to execute the contract, or you can have the students sign, scan, and upload the contract as an assignment prior to the exam.
5. Restrict testing window. Similar to how on-campus final exams have a designated testing slot for each course, create the same online. Have every student start the exam around the same time and limit how long each student will have to take the exam. If you have students in different time zones, consider offering three sets of tests, at three different start times. Even though the online exam will be “open book” by default— since there is no one watching the students take the exam—it is important to provide just enough time that a student who knows the information would have the appropriate amount of time to be successful on the exam, and not too much time for students who have not prepared for the exam to search for the answers. Be sure to create individual, extended timing settings for students who are approved for testing accommodations. 6. Set-up the exam to show one question at a time. To avoid students quickly looking over all of the test questions and having multiple tabs open to research answers to questions, or even having family and friends responsible for a certain set of questions, choose the test setting that only allows one question to appear on the screen at a time. 7. Prohibit backtracking. Require students to focus solely on one question at a time, answer it with a final answer, and then move to the next question. Prohibiting backtracking can reduce students from using extra time at the end of the test to try to locate the correct answer and force them to answer the question to the best of their already learned knowledge. 8. Change test question sequence. In the test settings, have the order of test questions be different for each exam along with the order of answer choices for each test question.Students are tech savvy and may attempt to employ screen sharing technologies in an effort to take the exam at the same time as their classmates and share answers. 9. Offer different versions of the same test. This was mentioned above in using different sets of tests for students in different time zones, but in general, it is recommended to have many different versions of the same test so that in the event that students are taking the test in the same physical space, it will be less likely for them to have all of the same questions. 10. Allow for only taking the test once. There is typically not a chance to retake an on-campus final exam, and the same practice should be followed for exams that are taken online. 11. Plan for “technical issues.” Offer a practice exam with a few questions, not pertaining to the actual test, that would provide students with the chance to become familiar with the online testing features. This will also avoid future issues with students who are not familiar with the online exam technology. Also, engage the test settings to automatically end the exam when the student exits or if the time runs out. This way, if a student says their computer crashed, you can go into the exam and see the questions they already answered, and if you choose to allow them to complete the exam, they can begin where they stopped and continue with the amount of time they had remaining. 12. Delay score availability. Set a later date after the testing window ends for students to see their score and feedback and do not make the score available for immediate view after test completion. This way, one student who finishes early cannot see their score and then advise students who have not completed the test yet. Depending on your LMS, you may have to hide a column in the grade center for students not to see their scores and test questions.
13. Refrain from using publisher test banks verbatim. It is convenient to have access to complementary test banks that come with course textbooks; however, students may be able to get access to those textbooks when they are housed online, including the answer keys. Think about using the questions as inspiration and changing them up enough that the students would not realize it was the same question asked in a different way. You can also change how the answer choices are worded. 14. Protect test question answers. If students request to review their exam, only show them the questions they answered incorrectly. This will limit students from being able to copy and download all of the exam questions for the next group of students who take your course.
The ways in which instructors have to go about designing online assessments may be different than they would be in the traditional bricks and mortar classroom (Fontanillas, Carbonell, & Catasús, 2016), regardless, instructors can use some of the ideas above to better safeguard their online exams and maintain academic integrity, while also being able to appropriately assess their students’ overall course learning.
. Stephanie Smith Budhai, PhD, is an associate professor of education at Neumann University with over a decade of experience teaching online. She is co-author of Best Practices in Engaging Online Learners through Active and Experiential Learning Strategies and has written for Faculty Focus on Designing Effective Team Projects in Online Courses and Moving Student Presentations Online
References
Bloom, B. S. (ed.). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Vol. 1: Cognitive Domain. New York: McKay, 1956.
Lieberman, M. (2018, October 10 ). Exam Proctoring for Online Students Hasn’t Yet Transformed. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital- learning/article/2018/10/10/online-students-experience-wide-range-proctoring-situations-tech
Fontanillas, R. T., Carbonell, R.M., & Catasús, G. M. (2016). E-assessment process: giving a voice to online learners. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 13(1), 1-14. doi:10.1186/s41239-016-0019-9 Why Open-book Tests Deserve a Place in Your Courses April 5, 2019 Matt Farrell and Shannon Maheu With the proliferation of learning management systems (LMS), many instructors now incorporate web-based technologies into their courses. While posting slides and readings online are common practices, the LMS can also be leveraged for testing. Purely online courses typically employ some form of web-based testing tool, but they are also useful for hybrid and face-to-face (F2F) offerings. Some instructors, however, are reluctant to embrace online testing. Their concerns can be wide ranging, but chief among them is cheating.
Of the many obstacles that web-based technologies present, combating academic dishonesty is among the most challenging. For many it is hard to envision a scenario where a student completes an online quiz (or test) without using their smartphone, tablet, or other device to look up the answers, or ‘share’ those answers with other students. Those of us who use online quizzes have experimented with lockdown browsers, randomized questions, and anything else we can find to try to ‘defeat’ the students in their quest to cheat. One potential solution is worth exploring: open- book testing.
Instead of wasting valuable time to deter cheating, open-book tests shift the onus of responsibility onto the students themselves. They are the ones who must track down answers and page through online notes. That doesn’t, however, mean we should wave the white flag. Random question generation and randomized responses are still good techniques to employ. When coupled with an open-book test, they can challenge students and reduce the relative value of cheating. If you can’t beat ‘em, don’t try! Cheating becomes an appealing option when the response to a question is one that can be easily Googled. A student need not read a single chapter or attend any classes, if they know their smartphone will come to their rescue. An open-book test, with challenging application questions that relate directly to the course material, can help minimize the problem. Here are some tips:
Draw specifically on course content/lectures. Asking students a basic identification question will send them straight to Wikipedia. Instead, ask them to analyze the author’s argument on page 34, or interpret the results shown in a diagram. Keep the time tight. When time is limited students won’t be able to blindly scavenge the course notes for the answer. They will recognize the need to prepare and have some familiarity with the material or they will simply run out of time. Make the questions tough. Use distractor questions that closely resemble the correct answer. Students will need more than a passing glance at the material to locate the correct response. Use application and analysis questions that challenge students to fully understand and synthesize the concepts related to the learning outcomes. Recognize collaboration. The effect of randomized questions is that two students, sitting side by side, will receive different sets of questions. This ostensibly eliminates the benefit from working together. However, if we encourage students to complete the quiz with a classmate, they will find themselves navigating their notes together and collaborating to identify the correct answer. Well I hesitate to mention it, but that sounds a lot like studying! Tell students you know they have access to their resources. Now it’s out in the open. It is puzzling that if students know that a test is open-book, they often assume that there is no studying required. By communicating your expectation, practicing a few questions with them (online or in-class), this tells them they need to study. Anytime I can encourage my students to interact with lecture notes, videos, and textbook chapters, it’s a win for me (learning outcomes) and a win for them (they study). “But they aren’t learning anything that way!” you say. Aren’t they? It is true that they aren’t memorizing things and recalling them later. But that isn’t necessarily our ultimate goal. Our goal, when it comes to assessments, is to measure our student’s achievement of the course learning outcomes. If open book tests can help, why not give them a try?
Matt Farrell and Shannon Maheu are professors in The School of Language and Liberal Studies at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.
This article first appeared in Faculty Focus on May 18, 2015. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. A Memo to Students on Cheating January 17, 2018 Maryellen Weimer, PhD Cheating among college students remains rampant. Our institutional and/or course policies aren’t stopping much of it. There are lots of reasons why, which we could debate, but the more profitable conversation is how we get students to realize that cheating hurts them. I don’t think they consider the personal consequences, so that’s the goal of this memo, framed like others that have appeared in the blog. You are welcome to revise it, make the language your own, and share it as you see fit with students. Will it stop cheating? Not likely, but it might make some students realize the consequences go well beyond getting caught.
To: My Students From: Your Teacher Re: Cheating
You know the message on cheating: Don’t do it. Yet despite knowing that it’s wrong, many students still cheat. Why? In response to a survey about cheating a student compared it to speeding. Everybody knows you shouldn’t speed, but most of us do. And when the weather is good and the road is clear, the risk of an accident is small. There is the matter of getting caught, but that risk is also low, so, the student reasoned, cheating is like speeding.
No, it’s not! Here are seven reasons why you shouldn’t cheat, and getting caught isn’t one of them. 1. When you cheat on an exam, it looks like you know the content, which means whenever you’re confronted with that material, you’ve got to fake it. Moreover, it looks to me like you understand, so I move on, assuming you know what you got right on the exam. What you didn’t learn in one course can be required knowledge in the next course. Knowledge in most fields is cumulative. It builds on previous knowledge. If you don’t understand the prerequisite content, you can’t learn the new stuff—so later you’ll either need to do double-duty learning or what you don’t know widens from a gap to gulf. 2. When you cheat, important skillsets, those things employers assume college graduates possess, remain undeveloped or underdeveloped. You learn problem-solving skills by solving problems, not by copying answers. Your writing improves when you write, not when you recycle someone else’s paper. Your abilities to think critically, analyze arguments, and speak persuasively all develop when you do them, not when you parrot the thinking, arguments, and persuasive ploys of others. Just as standing around exercise equipment does not build muscle mass, borrowing the work of others does not build mental muscle. 3. Don’t kid yourself, a small cheating problem seldom stays that size. Think more along the lines of a malignant tumor that starts tiny and quietly grows into something big and ugly. You may start by peeking for answers in a required course that you don’t want to take. In that first course in the major, you decide to copy homework answers—you’re busy and all that content will be covered again in later courses anyway. You cheat in the special topics course because you won’t use the content in the area where you plan to work. You end up fudging data in your senior research project because it isn’t a “real” study anyway. The research is clear. Students who cheat don’t do it just one time or in just one course. 4. Cheating in college sets you up for cheating in life. Maybe you’re telling yourself you’ll stop when you graduate. The research says otherwise. Those who cheated in college are more likely to cheat their employers or employees, fudge on their taxes, and use unethical business practices. It becomes a lifetime habit right along with the lying that covers it up. 5. Cheating puts your personal integrity at risk. What kind of person do you want to be? The actions taken now are defining who you are and will likely become. How does it make you feel when someone you care about lies or cheats on you? Do you hold those who cheat in high esteem? Your personal integrity is something you wear every day of your life. You can wear it with pride or you can slink around trying to hide the holes and cover the rips.
6. You can accomplish what you need to without cheating. Some students cheat because it’s easier than working for the grades—the reasons outlined above illustrate why that’s a cavalier, short-sighted rationale with serious consequences. Then there are the students who cheat because they don’t think they have the smarts to get the good grades they need. Success in college is much more a function of your study habits than your brain size. Good study habits are so not rocket science. And don’t say they don’t make a difference unless you’ve tried them. Start with one course and see if short, regular study times alone and with a buddy, regular class attendance, and keeping up with the homework make a difference. Bottom line: most students are way smarter than they think they are. 7. Cheating prevents you from being the person you want to be. Grades that you’ve earned provide a sense of accomplishment. They’re a source of pride. They say you’re a person to be reckoned with. Grades you haven’t earned also make you a person to be reckoned with but not for the reasons you’d wish. By Request
Over the 10 weeks of Summer Base Camp training, we had many, many faculty ask us for guidance with deterring cheating online. Faculty Focus is not the only resource, but they have a TON of awesome articles about good teaching - if you want the Faculty Focus posts to come straight to your inbox, you can sign up to receive them!