Online timed test are we wasting our time?

[hamburger]

After interacting with my students in the first onlne class, I had a big headache the rest of the day and I feel disguisted.

My students had two online quizzes. 2 MC questions/quiz. What else can they ask for? If they listened and studied, they could have answered all questions in less than a minute. I gave them 15 minutes. Unlike previous quizzes, I shortened the time and also randomized the questions. Moreover, only one question was shown on the screen at any time. Many students failed. While they took the quizzes, I observed their behavior. Similar to last time when they did it in class, only a few individuals took the quiz first. The rest were just waiting for the answers.

After the quizzes, two students (A & B) told me that they could not take the quizzes due to "IT problem". Student A told me that he knew the answers. He asked me if he could submit his answers by email. Interestingly, he said he could not access the quizzes due to IT issues but he knew the answers! Also, the record showed that both of them got 0 in the first quiz and did not answer any question in the 2nd quiz.

After the quizzes, I gave them a review for the upcoming test. Only a few students joined the online class. A few of them joined for a minute or so as a way to have a record that they "attended" the class. This included the jer* who told me that he paid for my salary. The first thing they asked was whether or not I would tell them the questions and answers of what would be on the test. I said no. Then, I asked them if they had read the learning materials I posted for them to study last week. A few said no and the other remained silent. I asked them if they had completed the assignment to be due in two days. Again, a few said no and the other remained silent. I used chat to ask those remained silent but no answer. So they just logged in and went somewhere else to pretend that they were there.

In the class, I gave a full review of things important to the course. They assigned one student (Student A) as a representative to interact with me. I asked him over 10 questions. Even with the answers right in front of him, he could not answer my questions.  I guided him to find the answers himself. Obviously this guy did not study nor has a brain. For example, after guiding him to answer a question, he got the answer right. Three seconds later, I asked him the same question and he got it wrong. This happened many times.

This group of students is the worst academically. They are not stupid as humans but they are stupid academically. They don't have the will nor ability to learn. As many colleagues said, students in my school are there not to learn but for a certificate. There are some students who use the internet to badmouth their professors if the professors do not do everything they want. They gave poor evaluations and wrote bad things about their professors in RMP but we can't do the same. There are students who put all the blames on the professors when they did not get the marks they deserved.

I could make easy MC questions for the remaining of the course to make it easy for them to cheat and get high marks. I could make questions to fail the entire class. What would you do?

[downer]

Hamburger. See what efforts are being made to monitor your online class. Probably none. So you can relax.

Probably the students will be allowed to do a Pass/Fail option. Tell them to do that.

Give the students a couple of easy tests and pass them all.

Then go do something you enjoy.

One might suspect you enjoy complaining. But try something different from that.

[hamburger]

Hamburger. See what efforts are being made to monitor your online class. Probably none. So you can relax.

Probably the students will be allowed to do a Pass/Fail option. Tell them to do that.

Give the students a couple of easy tests and pass them all.

Then go do something you enjoy.

One might suspect you enjoy complaining. But try something different from that.

Thanks for the suggestion. Some bad students not only want to pass but also want high marks. They did not study and failed the tests. Two students decided not to take the second test after they got zero in the first test. Then, they claimed that they could not take both tests due to IT issue. Now one of them is making all sorts of accusations and sending me lots of emails. Better not to check work email account.

In my school, there is a tendency that students, professors and staff dislike each other. Some students even complained on the school's SNS that the school only cares about money.

[downer]

You obviously work in a cesspool yet you are constantly remarking that you are surrounded by shit.

[HigherEd7]

45 second per question, for ten questions, is 7 1/2 minutes.  5 minutes for 10 questions would be 30 seconds per question.

In my experience, 1-2 minutes is the right amount of time per question, if the questions are fairly analytical. You can also check Canvas and see the average amount of time used per test, and adjust accordingly.  If they all finish it very early, reduce the time. If they mostly take all the time, allow more time.

How are you figuring 45 seconds per question, 7 1/2 minutes? Unless I am doing something wrong 45 x 10 = right around 4 minutes and 50 seconds.

[arcturus]

45 second per question, for ten questions, is 7 1/2 minutes.  5 minutes for 10 questions would be 30 seconds per question.

In my experience, 1-2 minutes is the right amount of time per question, if the questions are fairly analytical. You can also check Canvas and see the average amount of time used per test, and adjust accordingly.  If they all finish it very early, reduce the time. If they mostly take all the time, allow more time.

How are you figuring 45 seconds per question, 7 1/2 minutes? Unless I am doing something wrong 45 x 10 = right around 4 minutes and 50 seconds.

Yes, you are doing something wrong. Seconds and minutes are in base 60. 45x10=450 seconds. Divide result by 60 seconds/minute. That results in 7.5 minutes.

[HigherEd7]

45 second per question, for ten questions, is 7 1/2 minutes.  5 minutes for 10 questions would be 30 seconds per question.

In my experience, 1-2 minutes is the right amount of time per question, if the questions are fairly analytical. You can also check Canvas and see the average amount of time used per test, and adjust accordingly.  If they all finish it very early, reduce the time. If they mostly take all the time, allow more time.

How are you figuring 45 seconds per question, 7 1/2 minutes? Unless I am doing something wrong 45 x 10 = right around 4 minutes and 50 seconds.

Yes, you are doing something wrong. Seconds and minutes are in base 60. 45x10=450 seconds. Divide result by 60 seconds/minute. That results in 7.5 minutes.

Thank you for the response and information!! Be safe

[MarathonRunner]

Timed tests and screenshots are not accessible to some students. I hope you are working with accessibility services or the equivalent to ensure tests are accessible from home. Similarly, not allowing students to go back and review their answers impacts students with disabilities more than students who are not disabled. It's sad to see so much ableism in higher ed.

Also, IT issues disproportionately affect students who live in rural and remote areas, who live in lower SES neighbourhoods, or who are Indigenous. There are students who have taken exams in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's or other location with free wifi because they don't have reliable internet access at home. Yes, some students will cheat, but maybe I'm naive but I prefer to give my students the benefit of the doubt. I've been that disabled Indigenous student so I know the challenges that exist with online assessments.

[the_geneticist]

Timed tests and screenshots are not accessible to some students. I hope you are working with accessibility services or the equivalent to ensure tests are accessible from home. Similarly, not allowing students to go back and review their answers impacts students with disabilities more than students who are not disabled. It's sad to see so much ableism in higher ed.

Also, IT issues disproportionately affect students who live in rural and remote areas, who live in lower SES neighbourhoods, or who are Indigenous. There are students who have taken exams in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's or other location with free wifi because they don't have reliable internet access at home. Yes, some students will cheat, but maybe I'm naive but I prefer to give my students the benefit of the doubt. I've been that disabled Indigenous student so I know the challenges that exist with online assessments.

Access to reliable internet is the biggest inequity for online learning.  I know that the majority of my students are completing all of their coursework on their phones.  Why? It's the only internet-capable device that they don't have to share with parents, siblings, or room mates. 
I hope I've set up my exams so that they are a test of student understanding and not a test of their internet access speed.
My campus is offering free wifi hotspots & chrome books, but the students have to be close enough to campus to come and get them. 

[Hegemony]

There are also Xfinity wifi hotspots nationally and they have been made free for the pandemic. The map is here: https://hotspots.wifi.xfinity.com/

They're not absolutely everyplace, but they've been helpful to a number of my students.

[Kron3007]

Timed tests and screenshots are not accessible to some students. I hope you are working with accessibility services or the equivalent to ensure tests are accessible from home. Similarly, not allowing students to go back and review their answers impacts students with disabilities more than students who are not disabled. It's sad to see so much ableism in higher ed.

Also, IT issues disproportionately affect students who live in rural and remote areas, who live in lower SES neighbourhoods, or who are Indigenous. There are students who have taken exams in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's or other location with free wifi because they don't have reliable internet access at home. Yes, some students will cheat, but maybe I'm naive but I prefer to give my students the benefit of the doubt. I've been that disabled Indigenous student so I know the challenges that exist with online assessments.

You are definitely naive.  Most students will not cheat, but it in any larger group, there will be a subset that will.  Providing tests where cheating is possible/easy will disproportionately benefit this subset and reward the behaviour.  Timed tests will not eliminate this as students are smart, but it will reduce it.

As for accessibility, I believe it is better to address this directly.  We generally increase the time limit for students with disabilities (or accomodate in another more appropriate fashion), with technology this is quite simple.  Regarding internet/technology access, that can also be addressed but is obviously a challenge.  However, this goes much deeper than timed tests...

I think it is also important to realize that Covid has put everyone in tough positions.  Virtual learning and timed tests have issues, but they are the best solution available.

[Caracal]

Timed tests and screenshots are not accessible to some students. I hope you are working with accessibility services or the equivalent to ensure tests are accessible from home. Similarly, not allowing students to go back and review their answers impacts students with disabilities more than students who are not disabled. It's sad to see so much ableism in higher ed.

Also, IT issues disproportionately affect students who live in rural and remote areas, who live in lower SES neighbourhoods, or who are Indigenous. There are students who have taken exams in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's or other location with free wifi because they don't have reliable internet access at home. Yes, some students will cheat, but maybe I'm naive but I prefer to give my students the benefit of the doubt. I've been that disabled Indigenous student so I know the challenges that exist with online assessments.

You are definitely naive.  Most students will not cheat, but it in any larger group, there will be a subset that will.  Providing tests where cheating is possible/easy will disproportionately benefit this subset and reward the behaviour.  Timed tests will not eliminate this as students are smart, but it will reduce it.

Well it depends on the kind of test and the sort of material. If you're talking about multiple choice, or fill in the blank exams, then, yes, probably having timed exams is the only way to try to limit cheating. However, you can go in the other direction and have longer, open note exams. That may or may not work for certain fields and it may not be feasible depending on the workload.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

I have many students like this student you`ve just described. This is a well known phenomenon and it is called developmentally underdeveloped that cause the learners to become underachievers. This is the result of environmental retardation and the lack of intellectual stimula during early years which result in these folks to become an underachievers. You may like to consider changing your approach and lowering your expectations from them, because developmentally they are at 8th or 9th grade level at best.

After interacting with my students in the first onlne class, I had a big headache the rest of the day and I feel disguisted.

My students had two online quizzes. 2 MC questions/quiz. What else can they ask for? If they listened and studied, they could have answered all questions in less than a minute. I gave them 15 minutes. Unlike previous quizzes, I shortened the time and also randomized the questions. Moreover, only one question was shown on the screen at any time. Many students failed. While they took the quizzes, I observed their behavior. Similar to last time when they did it in class, only a few individuals took the quiz first. The rest were just waiting for the answers.

After the quizzes, two students (A & B) told me that they could not take the quizzes due to "IT problem". Student A told me that he knew the answers. He asked me if he could submit his answers by email. Interestingly, he said he could not access the quizzes due to IT issues but he knew the answers! Also, the record showed that both of them got 0 in the first quiz and did not answer any question in the 2nd quiz.

After the quizzes, I gave them a review for the upcoming test. Only a few students joined the online class. A few of them joined for a minute or so as a way to have a record that they "attended" the class. This included the jer* who told me that he paid for my salary. The first thing they asked was whether or not I would tell them the questions and answers of what would be on the test. I said no. Then, I asked them if they had read the learning materials I posted for them to study last week. A few said no and the other remained silent. I asked them if they had completed the assignment to be due in two days. Again, a few said no and the other remained silent. I used chat to ask those remained silent but no answer. So they just logged in and went somewhere else to pretend that they were there.

In the class, I gave a full review of things important to the course. They assigned one student (Student A) as a representative to interact with me. I asked him over 10 questions. Even with the answers right in front of him, he could not answer my questions.  I guided him to find the answers himself. Obviously this guy did not study nor has a brain. For example, after guiding him to answer a question, he got the answer right. Three seconds later, I asked him the same question and he got it wrong. This happened many times.

This group of students is the worst academically. They are not stupid as humans but they are stupid academically. They don't have the will nor ability to learn. As many colleagues said, students in my school are there not to learn but for a certificate. There are some students who use the internet to badmouth their professors if the professors do not do everything they want. They gave poor evaluations and wrote bad things about their professors in RMP but we can't do the same. There are students who put all the blames on the professors when they did not get the marks they deserved.

I could make easy MC questions for the remaining of the course to make it easy for them to cheat and get high marks. I could make questions to fail the entire class. What would you do?

[Kron3007]

Timed tests and screenshots are not accessible to some students. I hope you are working with accessibility services or the equivalent to ensure tests are accessible from home. Similarly, not allowing students to go back and review their answers impacts students with disabilities more than students who are not disabled. It's sad to see so much ableism in higher ed.

Also, IT issues disproportionately affect students who live in rural and remote areas, who live in lower SES neighbourhoods, or who are Indigenous. There are students who have taken exams in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's or other location with free wifi because they don't have reliable internet access at home. Yes, some students will cheat, but maybe I'm naive but I prefer to give my students the benefit of the doubt. I've been that disabled Indigenous student so I know the challenges that exist with online assessments.

You are definitely naive.  Most students will not cheat, but it in any larger group, there will be a subset that will.  Providing tests where cheating is possible/easy will disproportionately benefit this subset and reward the behaviour.  Timed tests will not eliminate this as students are smart, but it will reduce it.

Well it depends on the kind of test and the sort of material. If you're talking about multiple choice, or fill in the blank exams, then, yes, probably having timed exams is the only way to try to limit cheating. However, you can go in the other direction and have longer, open note exams. That may or may not work for certain fields and it may not be feasible depending on the workload.

Yes, you can go that route.  My main concern with that is consistency in grading.  I saw a talk on testing methods and their valifity, and long answer questions did not do well for reliable and reproducible grading. This is especially problematic in larger classes where multiple people are grading.  I have done this in the past and don't doubt that the grading was not 100% consistent.  For example, I'm sure my standard drifted over time despite trying not to do so.   For this reason, and the workload, I prefer timed MC and shirt answer.  In some cases, I include images and ask questions about the image, making it difficult to google an answer.