Online Teaching

[HigherEd7]

How are other faculty members preventing or reducing cheating in online courses? And is the discussion board in online courses worth the headache? I am thinking about just having my students answer an initial question between me and them. It seems like when students respond to other classmates you are reading the same thing over and over again.

[Hegemony]

I prevent cheating by having the tests be open-book (but time-limited), and consisting of questions that require sophisticated thinking and analysis, rather than just producing an answer that can be looked up.  I also have a large question bank, so that each student will get a different selection of questions.  So they can't just tell each other the answers in any way that will be useful.

The discussion boards are the best part of the course, in my view!  If you are getting repeating answers, I'd suggest that the questions need to be altered.  They might be something like, "Pick one example of [whatever] from the reading, and analyze why how it fulfills the [thing that has been discussed in the course]."  For instance, "Pick one example of lawbreaking from the reading, and discuss whether you feel it should count as a 'violation of purity' or 'violation of community.'"  And then require substantive responses from other students to the first posts, so the other students might say, "I can see why you say this is a violation of purity, but it would actually be mixed, wouldn't it?  Because..." and a third student might say, "No, I see community here, because..." and a fourth student might say "This is like my example, because at first it seems like this but then there is this complicating factor..." 

The key is to find questions that allow for actual analysis and examination of detail, rather than just finding a "right answer."  So questions for which there is no single right answer are most helpful.  I always start off with something that they can use personal experience for, to help them feel confident enough to post, and also to hear their experience on things.  So you might start with a question like, "Take an example from your own experience in which someone broke the rules for what they thought was a 'good reason.'  It could have been your own experience, or a friend's experience, or someone you observed in school.  Discuss why they..."  etc.

Hope that helps!  My students say that the online discussions are their favorite part of the course.  In addition to letting them feel heard, it really helps remove the isolation they can feel when they're taking a class in which they never see the other participants in person.

[downer]

I take an attitude similar to that of retail stores to shoplifting. It is going to happen, and it is impossible to stop completely. But you come down hard on it when you discover it.

When a passage reads like it was pasted from elsewhere, I may make some effort to do a search. Even if I can't find it, I will point out the problems to the student.

If a student seems to be using a using an online paraphrase resource, I say so.

If students repeatedly have similar issues week after week despite me warning them, I cut down their grade a lot.

[Aster]

I do not return any online assessments so that students can view/copy/distribute/sell them.

That's just asking for your assessments to end up on the internet. I've seen too many of my fellow faculty's assessments turn up on simple internet searches than I can easily count.

After I started finding some of my assessments on the internet, I stopped releasing them.

I only give back assessment scores now. If students want to see their actual assessments, they will need to either come by my physical office, or set up an online chat.

At first, I thought that students would balk at this. But no, hardly anyone asks to review old assessments. After I started observing this for a few years, I stopped returning most all of my assessments also in my conventional classes. Only recently have I realized that this was how my own college experience was in the 1990's, where I got almost nothing back except for maybe some written assignments. So there is great precedent in Higher Ed for not returning assessments.

For ongoing assessments, I reduce cheating by...
- randomizing question orders
- randomizing answer choices
- only allowing one assessment question to appear on the screen at a time
- allow only one attempt on an assessment
- no extensions or late submissions are allowed
- all assessments are timed
- removed most simple regurgitation questions. Most questions are process/comprehension based to reduce using Google to take your exam for you

[writingprof]

I prevent cheating by having the tests be open-book (but time-limited), and consisting of questions that require sophisticated thinking and analysis, rather than just producing an answer that can be looked up.  I also have a large question bank, so that each student will get a different selection of questions.  So they can't just tell each other the answers in any way that will be useful.

The discussion boards are the best part of the course, in my view!  If you are getting repeating answers, I'd suggest that the questions need to be altered.  They might be something like, "Pick one example of [whatever] from the reading, and analyze why how it fulfills the [thing that has been discussed in the course]."  For instance, "Pick one example of lawbreaking from the reading, and discuss whether you feel it should count as a 'violation of purity' or 'violation of community.'"  And then require substantive responses from other students to the first posts, so the other students might say, "I can see why you say this is a violation of purity, but it would actually be mixed, wouldn't it?  Because..." and a third student might say, "No, I see community here, because..." and a fourth student might say "This is like my example, because at first it seems like this but then there is this complicating factor..." 

The key is to find questions that allow for actual analysis and examination of detail, rather than just finding a "right answer."  So questions for which there is no single right answer are most helpful.  I always start off with something that they can use personal experience for, to help them feel confident enough to post, and also to hear their experience on things.  So you might start with a question like, "Take an example from your own experience in which someone broke the rules for what they thought was a 'good reason.'  It could have been your own experience, or a friend's experience, or someone you observed in school.  Discuss why they..."  etc.

Hope that helps!  My students say that the online discussions are their favorite part of the course.  In addition to letting them feel heard, it really helps remove the isolation they can feel when they're taking a class in which they never see the other participants in person.

This is a terrific answer, and I'm going to steal some of these ideas myself.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for your responses and help, I am going to use some of these ideas. Sometimes, I will use the test bank that comes with the textbook, but after doing a search I found my test bank on the internet in quizlet!! I called the publisher and they knew it was out there.

[downer]

Thank you for your responses and help, I am going to use some of these ideas. Sometimes, I will use the test bank that comes with the textbook, but after doing a search I found my test bank on the internet in quizlet!! I called the publisher and they knew it was out there.

Often only the early question in a set are available -- students have to pay to get access to the full answers. This has led me to assigning the later questions.

I have also found that sometimes the answers to textbook exercises available on the internet are wrong.

Sometimes all you need to do is make a very minor change to the test bank questions to make it much harder for the cheating students.

[HigherEd7]

Thank you for your response.

[HigherEd7]

Has anyone tried online presentations for their online courses? I have tried them and sometimes you can tell students are reading right from the screen and looking in the camera at the same time.

[downer]

Has anyone tried online presentations for their online courses? I have tried them and sometimes you can tell students are reading right from the screen and looking in the camera at the same time.

Then give those students a lower grade.

[Hegemony]

Ugh, those sound dreary to listen to.  I wouldn't see what the advantage would be.  Online presentations would probably mean that some students will have technical troubles, which you'll then have to cope with, advise on, decide whether to excuse, etc etc., plus they will be slow to grade.  No "SpeedGrader" (a Canvas feature) for those!  And they probably have had little training in making them, and training them how is not your job — you have enough to do just teaching them the subject matter of the course.  I would avoid.

[Phydeaux]

Ugh, those sound dreary to listen to.  I wouldn't see what the advantage would be.  Online presentations would probably mean that some students will have technical troubles, which you'll then have to cope with, advise on, decide whether to excuse, etc etc., plus they will be slow to grade.  No "SpeedGrader" (a Canvas feature) for those!  And they probably have had little training in making them, and training them how is not your job — you have enough to do just teaching them the subject matter of the course.  I would avoid.

I require my online students to submit their slides and a fully-written-out script. For precisely the reasons Hegemony mentions, I do not require a recording of their delivery.

[HigherEd7]

Great point! And thanks for the tip I will never do it again and it is a headache.....