Online timed test are we wasting our time?

[hamburger]

Each online quiz requires a password. Even I told my students not to send the password to those who are not in the classroom, they continue to do that. Last time I told them that if they were not in the class, even they got 100%, I would give them a zero. A guy who got a perfect score came to me asking me to give him a second chance. I asked the same two simple questions and he could not answer. If he did not cheat, how did he get 100% when he did the test outside the classroom.

[HigherEd7]

Each online quiz requires a password. Even I told my students not to send the password to those who are not in the classroom, they continue to do that. Last time I told them that if they were not in the class, even they got 100%, I would give them a zero. A guy who got a perfect score came to me asking me to give him a second chance. I asked the same two simple questions and he could not answer. If he did not cheat, how did he get 100% when he did the test outside the classroom.

Question how is giving students a password going to prevent cheating? Also, this could become a headache if you have a large class and you have to issue a password to each student.

[hamburger]

Each online quiz requires a password. Even I told my students not to send the password to those who are not in the classroom, they continue to do that. Last time I told them that if they were not in the class, even they got 100%, I would give them a zero. A guy who got a perfect score came to me asking me to give him a second chance. I asked the same two simple questions and he could not answer. If he did not cheat, how did he get 100% when he did the test outside the classroom.

Question how is giving students a password going to prevent cheating? Also, this could become a headache if you have a large class and you have to issue a password to each student.

It is just a function that allows the professors to limit access to the questions before the test. With online learning and testing, my students can cheat in whatever way they like.

[kiana]

Each online quiz requires a password. Even I told my students not to send the password to those who are not in the classroom, they continue to do that. Last time I told them that if they were not in the class, even they got 100%, I would give them a zero. A guy who got a perfect score came to me asking me to give him a second chance. I asked the same two simple questions and he could not answer. If he did not cheat, how did he get 100% when he did the test outside the classroom.

Question how is giving students a password going to prevent cheating? Also, this could become a headache if you have a large class and you have to issue a password to each student.

It is just a function that allows the professors to limit access to the questions before the test. With online learning and testing, my students can cheat in whatever way they like.

We used to do this and we had two people who took the test while not in the room. We were able to have the test software publisher pull IP logs for us so we could verify that and assign zeros.

After that, we found out that we could lock the test down by IP so that only computers in that room (and one other, but we didn't tell the students that ... the chances they'd find the other classroom accidentally and be able to login during the test were virtually nil) could access the test. See if you can do that.

[HigherEd7]

Each online quiz requires a password. Even I told my students not to send the password to those who are not in the classroom, they continue to do that. Last time I told them that if they were not in the class, even they got 100%, I would give them a zero. A guy who got a perfect score came to me asking me to give him a second chance. I asked the same two simple questions and he could not answer. If he did not cheat, how did he get 100% when he did the test outside the classroom.

Question how is giving students a password going to prevent cheating? Also, this could become a headache if you have a large class and you have to issue a password to each student.

It is just a function that allows the professors to limit access to the questions before the test. With online learning and testing, my students can cheat in whatever way they like.

We used to do this and we had two people who took the test while not in the room. We were able to have the test software publisher pull IP logs for us so we could verify that and assign zeros.

After that, we found out that we could lock the test down by IP so that only computers in that room (and one other, but we didn't tell the students that ... the chances they'd find the other classroom accidentally and be able to login during the test were virtually nil) could access the test. See if you can do that.

How does this help if they are at home in an online course?

[the_geneticist]

Well, given how many of us are now teaching/developing/planning online courses, the answer is "we are going to be doing online tests.  Now to figure out how to make this work best"

[Blackadder]

My online grad course in a healthcare field has been using online tests for about 10 years. We developed the questions on our own from the material to resemble national boards. It takes 2-3 semesters to "test" a new question. Right now I have a test back of about 1000 questions. The exam randomly picks from the topics in the test bank and even if students are sitting together taking the test, they are unlikely to receive all the same questions. It's about 40 questions and they have 2 hours - some questions are fairly hard so that's why the long time frame.

They can use all the sources but the questions are pretty much all application of complex concepts. If they have not read the material and studied well beforehand, they are not going to pass. Some learn the hard way the first time and don't heed my advice about that. Live and learn I guess.

From a teaching standpoint, the most difficult part is going through the questions every year before the exams to ensure that the match the content. Sometimes healthcare info changes (rapidly!) and our content changes.

[hamburger]

I suspect that except one student, the rest of the class cheated. Now that everything is online, it is a paradise for them.

[Caracal]

I suspect that except one student, the rest of the class cheated. Now that everything is online, it is a paradise for them.

I assume they are dealing with anxiety and uncertainty like all of the rest of us. This seems like a good time to drop the bad attitude towards your students. Seriously either make exams that will be harder to cheat on online or stop obsessing over it.

[polly_mer]

If one person has taken this course at this institution multiple times, then clearly failure is an option.  I agree with Caracal that you, hamburger, have the option to stop taking student behavior personally.  I disagree with just letting the behavior go unchecked.

Start documenting .  What are students doing to cheat that can be observed?  What evidence is created that can be submitted to academic standards board beyond what you need to record the F for academic dishonesty?

One technique is to make everything an open-ended answer that requires several lines to answer. 

I used to give open-book, open-note, open-neighbor tests that were a combination of essays and problems in physics, engineering, and math.  The submitted scratch/note paper in addition to any electronic test will demonstrate uniqueness (or not).  If necessary, students can take a picture of that paper with their phone to upload/email or physically mail it to you.  That paper can also help show who is really doing the work (tend to have many more steps, a little planning on the side or erasures/crossouts) and who just wrote down some random intermediate steps to look like they were doing the work.  Asking questions that require scratch paper even for experts tends to cut down dramatically on claims of "I didn't need any scratch paper".

A computer code of more than a handful of lines tends to also look unique; consider the variations between v1, var1, varX, X1, variable1, density, Den, d, and density_input_before_unit_conversion.  The basic operations are likely to be the same for a simple program, but individuals tend to have a personal style in naming variables along with commenting style.  Always require comments as though this were a production code that someone else must maintain.  That's a way to cut down on easily observable cheating as well as a service to the broader community.

Asking open-ended questions and allowing people to consult references can be defended pedagogically as how people use their knowledge and skills gained from courses (and all the prerequisite/corequisite courses) outside the formal classroom.  These tests are an opportunity for students to really strut their stuff for those who are learning.  Being able to reproduce pre-chewed material is generally far less useful for later life than being able to consult multiple sources, consolidate/integrate/extend/interpolate/extrapolate that information, and then answer an open-ended question with a range of right enough answers.

Or, you can just rip off your students and the public by letting everyone who signs up and submits any work just pass.  Apparently, that's a thing that some faculty members encourage because it's about sustaining the system, not helping people become educated.

[Caracal]

If one person has taken this course at this institution multiple times, then clearly failure is an option.  I agree with Caracal that you, hamburger, have the option to stop taking student behavior personally.  I disagree with just letting the behavior go unchecked.

That wasn't actually what I was proposing. I specifically design my exams so that cheating is likely to be of relatively minimal benefit. I do this because I don't want students to cheat, but also because I don't want to have to create a culture of distrust in my class. If a student asks to go to the bathroom during the exam, I'm going to say yes and assume they need to do one of the things humans do in there. If, they really are going to go duck in the bathroom and try to google my essay question on their phone or ask their friend in the other section, that would be cheating and if I learned of it, I'd report it, but it also would be pretty ineffective. I'm not asking for random facts or a one sentence answer, but an argument that puts together course themes and backs them up with evidence. Three minutes scrolling on the phone and then coming back to class is going to lead to something pretty incoherent.

[hamburger]

Last year, a former student told me that they could buy solutions, hire somebody to do it, or get the answers for free from GitHub. I guess if 20-30 students share the cost of hiring one person to do the work, the cost would be low. For sure, somebody outside the class helped them as in the last lab, all of them started to panic when I told them that they read the question wrong. They started sending messages from their phone, left the room immediately or doing nothing but starring at the screen. Only one student attempted to do the work by himself. In the middle of the lab, I went to the toilet and when I returned, an unknown person was in the room helping a student. This also happened one more time in the past. In another lab, some students had their programs working perfectly but they did not even know how to enter five numbers from the keyboard. Instead of entering: 1 2 3 4 5. Two or three students typed: 12345.

Due to a lack of participation, it is not uncommon to get emails about departments inviting colleagues from other departments to attend meetings to deal with cheating. I attended such meeting as a "free service" but it did not help to get a full time job.

[the_geneticist]

Last year, a former student told me that they could buy solutions, hire somebody to do it, or get the answers for free from GitHub. I guess if 20-30 students share the cost of hiring one person to do the work, the cost would be low. For sure, somebody outside the class helped them as in the last lab, all of them started to panic when I told them that they read the question wrong. They started sending messages from their phone, left the room immediately or doing nothing but starring at the screen. Only one student attempted to do the work by himself. In the middle of the lab, I went to the toilet and when I returned, an unknown person was in the room helping a student. This also happened one more time in the past. In another lab, some students had their programs working perfectly but they did not even know how to enter five numbers from the keyboard. Instead of entering: 1 2 3 4 5. Two or three students typed: 12345.

Due to a lack of participation, it is not uncommon to get emails about departments inviting colleagues from other departments to attend meetings to deal with cheating. I attended such meeting as a "free service" but it did not help to get a full time job.

Look, you need to have clear expectations and stick with them.  Are they allowed to use outside help or not?  Can they use their phones or not? 
And it sounds like you need to write better assignments.   If I could complete your class using Google, why bother to be in the room.

[hamburger]

Last year, a former student told me that they could buy solutions, hire somebody to do it, or get the answers for free from GitHub. I guess if 20-30 students share the cost of hiring one person to do the work, the cost would be low. For sure, somebody outside the class helped them as in the last lab, all of them started to panic when I told them that they read the question wrong. They started sending messages from their phone, left the room immediately or doing nothing but starring at the screen. Only one student attempted to do the work by himself. In the middle of the lab, I went to the toilet and when I returned, an unknown person was in the room helping a student. This also happened one more time in the past. In another lab, some students had their programs working perfectly but they did not even know how to enter five numbers from the keyboard. Instead of entering: 1 2 3 4 5. Two or three students typed: 12345.

Due to a lack of participation, it is not uncommon to get emails about departments inviting colleagues from other departments to attend meetings to deal with cheating. I attended such meeting as a "free service" but it did not help to get a full time job.

Look, you need to have clear expectations and stick with them.  Are they allowed to use outside help or not?  Can they use their phones or not? 
And it sounds like you need to write better assignments.   If I could complete your class using Google, why bother to be in the room.

I clearly stated both verbally and in writing that no phone and internet access were allowed in the test. They did not listen. As for somebody showing up in the lab "to help" them to do the work, never had this happened in other places I taught.

Some students do not know how to use google to get information. Colleagues told me that some students do not have the mental capacity to do that.

[the_geneticist]

Last year, a former student told me that they could buy solutions, hire somebody to do it, or get the answers for free from GitHub. I guess if 20-30 students share the cost of hiring one person to do the work, the cost would be low. For sure, somebody outside the class helped them as in the last lab, all of them started to panic when I told them that they read the question wrong. They started sending messages from their phone, left the room immediately or doing nothing but starring at the screen. Only one student attempted to do the work by himself. In the middle of the lab, I went to the toilet and when I returned, an unknown person was in the room helping a student. This also happened one more time in the past. In another lab, some students had their programs working perfectly but they did not even know how to enter five numbers from the keyboard. Instead of entering: 1 2 3 4 5. Two or three students typed: 12345.

Due to a lack of participation, it is not uncommon to get emails about departments inviting colleagues from other departments to attend meetings to deal with cheating. I attended such meeting as a "free service" but it did not help to get a full time job.

Look, you need to have clear expectations and stick with them.  Are they allowed to use outside help or not?  Can they use their phones or not? 
And it sounds like you need to write better assignments.   If I could complete your class using Google, why bother to be in the room.

I clearly stated both verbally and in writing that no phone and internet access were allowed in the test. They did not listen. As for somebody showing up in the lab "to help" them to do the work, never had this happened in other places I taught.

Well, then that's an easy F to put in the grade book.