How can instructors prevent cheating in online tests?
The Learning Technology Solutions team recommends designing assessments and tests that promote learning while keeping in mind that cheating is sometimes unavoidable.
Below you will find the basic tips needed to prevent cheating. For a full in-depth report, learn more about UIC Assessment Guidelines.
1. RESPONDUS LOCKDOWN BROWSER & RESPONDUS MONITOR
2. BLACKBOARD LEARN
Problem | Solution | How To |
Students are emailing the entire class to join a chatting app to discuss answers. | Turn off email availability to the public but leave it so that students can still email instructors and TAs. | From the Control Panel:
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Students are taking screenshots of the correct/incorrect test answers. | Change the feedback options so that students cannot see which answers are correct. Blackboard defaults to showing the score upon finishing the test, so students can deduce if they got it correct. | Once you are ready to deploy, you will be presented with various options:
Under Show Test Results and Feedback to Students, change the setting to any of the following:
*If you want your students to be able to see their test right away, you can still disable the answers by unchecking all the options below:
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Students are working on tests together (“What did you get for #2?”) | Use the Randomize Questions option. | Once you are ready to deploy, you will be presented with various options:
Under Test Presentation, select Randomize Questions. |
Students are working on tests together (“What did you get for #2?”) | Use the Set Timer option. You can set a timer to limit students’ completion time. You can set the timer to auto-submit the test when the timer ends or allow students to continue working and manually submit. You can view students’ completion times in their submissions. | Once you are ready to deploy, you will be presented with various options: Select the Set Timer option and type the amount of time in the Minutes box. The maximum time you can add is 420 minutes. We recommend using Auto-Submit in conjunction with the timer. |
Students are sharing answers from previous semesters. | Create more questions and answers using the Pools Option - this will create a bigger bank of questions. Then create a Random Block, which presents a random selection of questions each time a student takes the test. This ensures that students are getting different tests. | From the Control Panel:
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