Online Exam Time Window

[HigherEd7]

I normally give my students 7 days to take an online quiz or exam. However, I have noticed students taking these exams as soon as I open up the window, which tells me they more than likely have not read the chapter, etc... Does anyone have a good recommendation for this?

[Caracal]

You can't control whether they do the reading or not. Changing how long quizzes or exams are available isn't going to make much difference. If the issue is that students don't need to read the chapter to do well on the exam, then you should address that.

[HigherEd7]

Thanks for the response makes sense. I was also thinking about reducing the time to prevent students from cheating or discussing the exam, and that might not work either.

[wwwdotcom]

I normally give my students 7 days to take an online quiz or exam. However, I have noticed students taking these exams as soon as I open up the window, which tells me they more than likely have not read the chapter, etc... Does anyone have a good recommendation for this?

How do you know they haven't read prior to you opening the window?  If your quizzes are based on a textbook, perhaps some students read ahead. 

[Hegemony]

Do you mean seven days from start time to finish time, or seven days in which to take an exam that has a limited-time window (e.g. seven days to take a 15-minute exam)?  If they can take seven days to do it, they are almost certainly cheating, as well as passing the questions to each other.

[Parasaurolophus]

You can't control whether they do the reading or not.

Yup. Not your problem!

[HigherEd7]

I mean 7 days to take the quiz and exam. What do you recommend?

[the_geneticist]

I typically give students a full week to complete online homework assignments.  For quizzes, I'd make the item available for a few days, but limit the amount of time they can take it (e.g. 15 minutes and no backtracking on questions).  Unless it's absolutely necessary to give exams online, I'd only give them exams in person or online only at a designated testing center.  The temptation and ability to cheat is way too high if they have a full week to take an online exam. 

[Parasaurolophus]

My quizzes are every two weeks, and students get between 10-14 days to do them. If it were up to me, I think I'd rather give weekly quizzes/homework assignments. But my university controls the distribution of assessment exercises for each course, which it's standardized, so...

As long as they're given enough time to complete the assignments, I'm not sure it's worth worrying about it.

[HigherEd7]

For example, I opened the first exam in an online course today and one student already took the exam. There is no way this student could have read and studied for the exam in a few hours.

[Hegemony]

I don't understand what "seven days to take the exam" means. Does it mean that it's a time-limited exam, but they can choose when to take it in the seven-day period?  Or does it mean that it's an unlimited-time exam, and they can open it up in the first minute and wait until day seven to finish it?

If a student is taking it right away, without having done the reading, and passing, maybe the exam is easier than it should be.

[fishbrains]

A couple of possibilities:

1) Student has taken the course before (and failed or dropped), so the exams are easy at this point

2) Student is paying someone who has already taken the course to take the exam

[HigherEd7]

Could be a possibility not much you can control...............that's the bad thing about online courses they are money makers, but at what cost.

[Caracal]

For example, I opened the first exam in an online course today and one student already took the exam. There is no way this student could have read and studied for the exam in a few hours.

How did they do on it?

[the_geneticist]

For example, I opened the first exam in an online course today and one student already took the exam. There is no way this student could have read and studied for the exam in a few hours.

Do you mean that they took the exam as soon as it was available?
If the background materials were available to study already, maybe they were just super prepared.  Or repeating the course. Or they figured they'd just take it and see if they passed.

Or do you mean the student took the exam before you made it available to them?
That would be a technical issue.