Academic Partnerships 2012

Academic Honesty and Cheating on Online Course Exams

General Recommendations

1. Implement several processes and tools to discourage and prevent cheating as a joint effort in

the areas of: Institutional Context and Commitment, Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty

Support, Student Support, and Assessment and Evaluation.

2. Do not rely on automated assessments. If you must use them, be sure to:

a. Pool assessment items.

b. Use different assessment pools each time the course runs (or every other time for

courses that run every five weeks).

c. Give students a time limit for assessments.

d. Set the assessment to automatically save student work and submit answers at the end

of the time limit.

e. Have the assessment accessible only for a specific amount of time (for example, opens

on a Thursday, and closes on a Sunday).

f. Routinely review start and end times for exams to identify anyone who takes an

unusually short period of time to complete an exam.

g. Assume all online exams will be “open book.” As such, develop exam questions that

require students to a) either know the material thoroughly, or b) look in several places

in the text to construct the answer.

h. Only use automated assessments for progress monitors/content checks that are a small

percentage of their grade. That way, the majority of the grade and course is made up of

assignments addressing the higher levels of Bloom’s such as Analyzing, Evaluating, and

Synthesizing. If instructors rely on automated assessments, they are most likely only

addressing the lower levels of Bloom’s such as Remembering and Understanding.

Making this change may be the best change to make. It will not only help prevent

cheating, but will also make the course much richer and more dynamic.

3. California State University, Sacramento provides a list of helpful strategies (displayed below) in

their article titled, Online Exams Strategies to Minimize Cheating (2010) for making online exams

more secure:

a. Randomize the answer choices for each question.

b. Randomize the questions on the test.

c. Use question sets. Randomly choose which questions from the set are displayed to

each student.

d. Create a large bank of test questions.

e. Display one question at a time.

f. Set a time limit for the test. Students need to know the material to answer questions

correctly, with little time to look up answers.

g. Prohibit answer submission if time has expired.

Academic Partnerships 2012

h. Do not release the student's test score until the availability time has ended.

i. Do not release results to the students or at least not the answers to the assessment.

j. Do not review the test in a group setting with your students. Test results can be

reviewed online with an individual student via the faculty office hours.

k. Calculated questions, typically used in math and science courses, include variables in the

question wording. Variable values are randomly generated, so students given the same

question must give unique answers.

l. Allow students to take a proctored exam.

http://onlinecampus.uwf.edu/class/proc_exams.cfm

m. Have students sign an academic honesty statement that summarizes the expectations

and requirements.

n. Combine objective tests with other methods of assessment, such as group projects and

writing assignments. Essay questions also make it difficult for students to cheat on a

traditional assessment (students know that the instructor may recognize an answer that

has been copied).

4. Technology solutions such as Turnitin.com can be used in creative ways to be sure students are

not cheating on essay exams.

a. Faculty members can create an assessment with a limited time release for essay

questions and then request students turn them into Turnitin.com. The amount of time

should allow for some flexibility but limit the time students have to turn in the

assignment. For example, have a two day window to take the exam with the expectation

that they submit their answers within 3 hours of opening the essay questions.

b. Include multiple questions in the essay set that rotate randomly to limit cheating on the

essay exam.

c. It is important to look closely at the Turnitin.com report when evaluating whether or not

students cheated on essay questions rather than relying on the number itself. You can

expect a higher level of overlap in the report because students will often use word for

word definitions of concepts from the course materials. Specifically asking students to

provide quotes around those materials with a quick reference can help clarify this issue.

Sample Policies and Tips

California State University, Sacramento. Online Exams Strategies to Minimize Cheating.

http://www.csus.edu/webct/faculty/online-exams-best-practices.pdf

Oklahoma State University. Tips to Prevent Cheating. http://academicintegrity.okstate.edu/doc/aistopcheatingtips.pdf

University of Texas at Arlington. Office of Student Conduct Faculty Page. http://www.uta.edu/studentaffairs/conduct/faculty.html

Academic Partnerships 2012

Online Learning and Academic Dishonesty in Academic Peer-reviewed

Publications

Black, E. W., Greaser, J., & Dawson, K. (2008). Academic dishonesty in traditional and online classrooms: Does the “media equation” hold true? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 12, 23-30. Retrieved from http://jaln.sloanconsortium.org/index.php/jaln/index

Chiesel, N. (2007). Pragmatic methods to reduce dishonesty in web-based courses. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 8, 203-2011. Retrieved from http://www.infoagepub.com/index.php?id=89&i=58

Englander, F., Fask, A., & Wang, Z. (2011). Comment on “The impact of online assessment on grades in

community college distance education mathematics courses” by Ronald W. Yates and Brian

Beaudrie. The American Journal of Distance Education, 25, 114-120. DOI:

10.1080/08923647.2011.565243.

Galbraith, M. W., & Jones, M. S. (2010). Understanding incivility in online teaching. Journal of Adult

Education, 39, 1-10. Retrieved from https://www.mpaea.org/?page=publications

Harmon, O. R., & Lambrinos, J. (2008). Are online exams an invitation to cheat? Journal of Economic

Education, 39, 116-125. DOI:10.3200/JECE.39.2.116-125.

Hatcher, M., Henson, J. M., LaRosa, P. (2010). Learning information systems concepts: A comparison of student perceptions in a web-based setting versus a traditional classroom setting. The International Journal of Learning, 17, 399-406. Retrieved from http://ijl.cgpublisher.com/

Jocoy, C., & DiBiase, D. (2006). Plagiarism by adult learners online: A case study in detection and remediation. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7, 1-15. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl

Khare, A., & Lam, H. (2008). Assessing student achievement and progress with online examinations: Some pedagogical and technical issues. International Journal of E-Learning, 7, 383-402. Retrieved from http://editlib.org/j/IJEL/

Klein, D. (2011). Why learners choose plagiarism: A review of literature. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, 7, 97-110. Retrieved from http://www.informingscience.us/icarus/journals/ijello/publications

Schmidt, S. M. P., Ralph, D. L., Buskirk, B. (2009). Utilizing online exams: A case study. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 6, 1-8. Retrieved from http://journals.cluteonline.com/index.php/TLC

Spaulding, M. (2009). Perceptions of academic honesty in online vs. face-to-face classrooms. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 8, 183-198. Retrieved from http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/

Styron, J., & Styron, Jr., R. A. (2010). Student cheating and alternative web-based assessment. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 7, 37-42. Retrieved from http://journals.cluteonline.com/index.php/TLC

Academic Partnerships 2012

WCET, UT TeleCampus, and Instructional Technology Council. (2009) Best Practice Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Education. WICHE Website. Retrieved from http://wcet.wiche.edu/wcet/docs/cigs/studentauthentication/BestPractices.pdf

Underwood, J., & Szabo, A. (2003). Academic offense and e-learning: Individual propensities in cheating. British Journal of Educational Technology, 34, 467-477. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8535.00343.

Yates, R. W., & Beaudrie B. (2009). The impact of online assessment on grades in community college distance education mathematics courses. The American Journal of Distance Education, 23, 62-70. DOI: 10.1080/08923640902850601.

Academic Partnerships 2012 Exam Security Tools Features Description from their literature Customers

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Academic Partnerships 2012

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Academic Partnerships 2012

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