Groupme during exams

[centurion]

I am teaching an online class, and I learned that the students started a Groupme group. That is fine, but I am afraid that they will use it during exams to communicate with each other, which is of course, strictly forbidden.

I know the name of the group.

Suppose after the exam  I contact Groupme and tell them I am the instructor of this course. Wiill they tell me whether there was any communication during the exam?

Thank you.

[RatGuy]

No. Focus your energies on crafting an exam that demonstrates students' mastery of material, rather than simple answers.

[the_geneticist]

Have your students sign/agree to follow your campus honor statement as the first question on the exam.

If you can, write exam questions that include short answer responses, "choose and explain", drawing diagrams, or calculate/predict style questions.  But that assumes you've been giving students those sorts of questions already.  If you have to stick to classic multiple-choice, choose all correct, fill-in-multiple-blanks type questions, write a large pool of questions and give each student a subset.  It is possible, although challenging, to write higher level questions using these formats.

[Caracal]

I am teaching an online class, and I learned that the students started a Groupme group. That is fine, but I am afraid that they will use it during exams to communicate with each other, which is of course, strictly forbidden.

I know the name of the group.

Suppose after the exam  I contact Groupme and tell them I am the instructor of this course. Wiill they tell me whether there was any communication during the exam?

Thank you.

I don't really see the point in worrying about the group when students could obviously be communicating with each other through in all kinds of other ways during the exam. Focus on creating an exam which would make this kind of communication not particularly useful to students.

[clean]

Respondus Lock Down Browser.  (It will lock out their ability to use the computer to chat).

Respondus Monitor  (adds that they will be recorded, so IF they decide to use their phones, you will have them on tape.  the monitor will flag when they are looking away from the computer.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Respondus Lock Down Browser.  (It will lock out their ability to use the computer to chat).

Respondus Monitor  (adds that they will be recorded, so IF they decide to use their phones, you will have them on tape.  the monitor will flag when they are looking away from the computer.

Yep. We are required to use both of these for all exams.

[Cheerful]

Respondus Lock Down Browser.  (It will lock out their ability to use the computer to chat).

Respondus Monitor  (adds that they will be recorded, so IF they decide to use their phones, you will have them on tape.  the monitor will flag when they are looking away from the computer.

Yep. We are required to use both of these for all exams.

Not everyone supports use of Respondus.  I have zero interest in monitoring whether a student diverts his or her eyes from the monitor, recording, mandating intrusive software use on one's home computer, etc.  Not the type of class I run or the type of world I want to live in.

[downer]

There's always some balance to aim for. Your job is not to be a cop, but you can't let them just cheat whole scale.
Determined cheaters will cheat for online tests and there's not much you can do to stop it : https://jakebinstein.com/blog/on-knuckle-scanners-and-cheating-how-to-bypass-proctortrack/
But cheating well takes a lot of work (or money) -- and if they were ready to do a lot of work they would not need to cheat.
I'd aim for an approach which discourages cheating and makes it possible to detect most cheating easily, but does not go overboard in suspecting them.

[Charlotte]

Respondus Lock Down Browser.  (It will lock out their ability to use the computer to chat).

Respondus Monitor  (adds that they will be recorded, so IF they decide to use their phones, you will have them on tape.  the monitor will flag when they are looking away from the computer.

The issue with the first is that students are likely to use their phones.

I've known professors to have success with the second option. But they had to decide what to do with all the ones caught cheating. It was a lot of work!

Setting a shorter timer for the exam questions helps. Randomizing the order in which they appear also helps.

I'm imagining how coherent a group chat would be if you have 25+ students talking about questions that they are seeing in a different order. I'm not sure how helpful even the most determined cheater would find that! Group chats are very difficult to follow. Much less if they are trying to get an answer or help someone else while everyone else in the chat is trying to do the same. Especially if they only have 30-60 seconds per question to figure it out!

[clean]

You either have to put in the work up front or after.  IF you want even the semblance of honesty, remember "people do what you Inspect, not what you EXpect".  If you make it look like you monitor, then they will act like they are monitored. 

One way I have handled such situations is to spend a lot of time creating the tests.  I use MC tests for the lower level undergraduate classes, but I set up multiple questions into pools.  As I want to be sure that all students have the same kind of questions, especially for specific topics, I will create a pool of 3 or 4 questions that use different numbers or slightly different versions of the questions.  Then the computer will randomly pick 1 of those 4.  THEN  the last thing that I may do is to randomize the questions. So that pool I just mentioned may be question 3 for some and questions 23 for others.

As I have discussed before in other places on these boards, My graduate and senior undergraduate final exams are all customized for each student.  Each one has the same sort of questions, but each one has a different set of numbers.  It was hard to create the first time, but not too hard to implement now.  (as a reminder, I found that students had posted their exams on Chegg and as each as different numbers, I was able to identify the specific guilty party who failed the class, and one was suspended as well!)

So my advice is to set it up so that you at least LOOK like you are monitoring (using the Respondus Monitor) for lower valued exams and EXAMITY, which charges a fee, for major exams. 

[Caracal]

Respondus Lock Down Browser.  (It will lock out their ability to use the computer to chat).

Respondus Monitor  (adds that they will be recorded, so IF they decide to use their phones, you will have them on tape.  the monitor will flag when they are looking away from the computer.

Can you really use that as proof of cheating? When I watch students take exams in my classroom, its pretty normal for someone to be staring into the middle distance for a minute or two. Some people can think more clearly if they aren't looking at the test. Others might find it helpful to take a minute to calm down. If someone keeps looking past the screen, how do you know they aren't keeping an eye on a kid, or their cat isn't on their desk knocking stuff over?