Essay Exams Online

[Caracal]

I give all essay exams for my courses. The last two semesters I've been teaching online. I basically kept the exams the same format, but obviously allowed students to use their notes and let students take the exam anytime during a 5 day period. My question is about the timed component. The last two semesters I've had an hour long time limit, just like I did in person.

I kept the time limit because I don't want students to spend too much time writing their answers, and I don't want to spend too much time reading really long answers. However, obviously, there's really no way for me to keep students from sending the questions to each other. That isn't that big a deal, because the questions don't come out of left field and are pretty easy to anticipate.

However, I don't really like the idea of having an artificial limitation that is so easy to evade. However, I'm worried that if I just take away the time limit, some students might spend way too long writing it and that might increase the time it takes me to grade these things. I guess I could either have a strict upper word limit and tell students they shouldn't actually spend more than x amount of time writing the thing? Any thoughts?

[Puget]

I can think of two approaches:

1. Give them a list of possible questions in advance, then have your LMS randomly pull one/some of them for each student. The really ambitious students could prep responses to all of them in advance, but is that a bad thing? If the goal is learning rather than just evaluating, that would seem to be a good incentive, and it puts everyone on an equal footing (i.e., early testers sharing the questions with some later ones becomes a non-issue). 

2. Just make it a take-home they can spend as much time on as they like within however many days you give them, but with a strict word limit (points off for going over). Some students will spend a lot longer on it, but again is this necessarily a bad thing?

[RatGuy]

I rarely have students write "too much" on an exam.

My experiences for Fall 2020 have me reevaluating my take-home philosophy. Last term, the exam went live, say, Monday 8am. They had until Thursday at 3:30pm (our exam time in a normal semester). Everyone had the same questions, and were allowed/expected to use their own class notes and textbooks. For example, I'd ask them to find specific passages to illustrate certain concepts -- I figured students who knew the material would find that easy, students who hadn't read would find "open book" was a terrible burden.

Turns out, the students for one class all shared a same bank of notes. Some of these were provided by an attentive student, others culled from CourseHero and the like. That meant I had a lot of same/similar wrong answers. Technically that qualifies as academic misconduct -- indeed, some of the students even completed the exam in the same room sharing the same bank of notes. The Dean has ways of making students talk.

This term, I'll be doing timed assessments for the final exams in those classes. The questions are designed to allow students to demonstrate knowledge, and the 2.5-hour window should be enough for the essay answers.

[Parasaurolophus]

I'd echo Puget's two suggestions. I randomize the questions on all my online exams, especially short-answer and essayist questions.

They still cheat, but it's harder for them to do so when theirs is one of five or six different questions.

[Morden]

I second Puget's suggestion about a take-home exam with strict word limits. I also indicate how much time I expect it would take them and how many sources (if any) I expect (those sources count in their overall word limit). It worked pretty well.

[mleok]

I would just impose a word limit, and say that anything beyond that word limit gets ignored in the grading process. Also, just let them know that the response should not take longer than X amount of time.

[Caracal]

I would just impose a word limit, and say that anything beyond that word limit gets ignored in the grading process. Also, just let them know that the response should not take longer than X amount of time.

That's probably the easiest solution. Randomizing the questions is an interesting idea. My main concern would be that it can be hard to standardize grading with that many different questions. Some essay questions always end up being harder than others for students and I never know which ones are going to be more difficult till I see the answers. I take that into account in my grading, but if I have six different questions that gets complicated.

[Hibush]

I kept the time limit because I don't want students to spend too much time writing their answers, and I don't want to spend too much time reading really long answers.

Are these the kind of students who would spend the whole five days on the test because they figure that some other kids will do that and consequently get all the As?

If there are, then there is the additional question of how much stress that puts them under when trying to balance time with their other classes.

[Caracal]

I kept the time limit because I don't want students to spend too much time writing their answers, and I don't want to spend too much time reading really long answers.

Are these the kind of students who would spend the whole five days on the test because they figure that some other kids will do that and consequently get all the As?

If there are, then there is the additional question of how much stress that puts them under when trying to balance time with their other classes.

Most of them are decidedly not, but there are a always a few who might.

[the_geneticist]

I also think the choice of topics with a word count limit sounds reasonable.  Maybe like the GRE exam where the student is given 2 prompts & gets to pick one to answer?
I might also add in telling students that you will be checking their work with TurnitIn to avoid the temptation to "collaborate".
And give them a time limit.  They would have one if they were writing in person.  Their choice of when in a 24/48/etc hour period to spend 2 hours on the exam, knowing that once they start the timer starts & will automatically submit when the 2 hours are up.