Want to Stop Cheating Online Quizzes? Let Them Cheat!
How to Prevent Cheating During Online Tests
Below are some preventative measures faculty can implement to maintain academic honesty in online courses.
Course Design Advice
Introduce Students to the Campus Academic Integrity Policy
- Ensure that your syllabus clearly outlines the UMass Dartmouth Student Academic Integrity Policy.
- Promote academic integrity by making clear in your syllabus your expectations regarding assignments, student group work, tests, and research papers.
- Have students sign an academic integrity pledge.
- Provide LinkedIn Learning’s Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement video to students.
Assessment Design
- Design open-ended questions and qualitative assessments.
- Use different test questions for different semesters.
- Randomize questions and questions sets to help to ensure that each student receives a different set of questions.
- Limit the time students have to complete the test or quiz.
- Present one question at a time versus enabling the “all at once” full view display of the exam. This will also help deter students from printing out the entire exam.
- Release the test grades only after the test deadline has expired.
- Limit the use of high stakes online tests.
- Consider using alternative forms of assessment such as group projects, discussion-based assignments, reflective papers, and journals.
- Configure these myCourses Test Options and more to maintain academic integrity.
Engagement Strategies
- Require students to publish introduction videos at the start of the course, to establish a baseline for future assignments.
- Integrate a course activity or discussion about academic dishonesty and plagiarism.
- Meet virtually with students via video conference by encouraging online office hours.
Technologies for Integrity
Plagiarism Detection
SafeAssign is a plagiarism detection service available in the myCourses Assignment Tool. Students’ submissions are evaluated and compared to electronic documents, online sources, and the SafeAssign databases for originality. An originality report is produced and indicates if any text in a student’s document is copy/pasted or taken from an internet source.
Additional Authentication Methods
Additional methods of student authentication must be clearly stated in the course syllabus and may include the following:
- In-person proctored exams with photo ID check.
- Remote online proctored exams using a third party proctoring service (includes ID check and identity verification through questions drawn from publically available data).
- Field or clinical experiences using an approved photo ID.
- Synchronous or asynchronous video activities using an approved photo ID.
- Other technologies or procedures specified by faculty in their course syllabus and approved by departments/programs.