Academic Integrity in Online Courses

Issues

Cheating, whether on exams, assignments, or research papers, is a problem throughout higher education. Take a look at the resources below to understand the scope of the problem.

Download The New Cheating Economy.pdf

Students are able to access tutorials on YouTube sharing strategies for cheating. A few are selected as examples, below. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxnCLxiSQuc Links to an external site. How to Cheat on Some Online Multiple Choice Tests

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE9rKyD90tw Links to an external site. Free Paraphrasing Tool to Rewrite an Article Making it 100% Unique and Plagiarism Free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK9D00swr5I Links to an external site.  How to Write Essay Assignments Fast and Not Get Caught for Plagiarism

Strategies for Instructors

*Educational research has revealed the following common reasons students choose to cheat:

  • An emphasis on performance (grades) rather than learning
  • High stakes assessments
  • Extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation
  • A student's expectation that they will not be able to succeed
  • An environment that encourages cheating ("everyone's doing it")
  • A student's perception that the instructor is not treating them fairly. 

Suggestions for countering the temptation to cheat happen to be many of the same best practices recommended for increasing student learning. Some ideas for instituting these best practices are listed below:

  • Increase student engagement by introducing big life questions into your course. What is it that is fascinating about your subject matter? How does that connect to your students right now? Highlight those questions at every opportunity, right from the first day of class. 
  • Shift away from traditional grading that relies on a few large exams, and instead teach for mastery. Balance large exams with other opportunities to demonstrate student learning - papers, presentations, quizzes that must be retaken until a 100% score is reached, assignments that require critical thinking and problem solving. Students become more engaged with assignments that require them to solve problems they can imagine facing in the world outside of the classroom. 
  • When possible, allow students to choose from among multiple equivalent options and formats for completing assessments. 
  • For those interested in completely revamping a course, another suggestion is to develop a course model where students choose from a list of learning opportunities and must complete a prescribed number of them at a well-defined standard in order to pass the course.

*Adapted from the book Cheating Lessons, available in the SVCC Learning Commons Library Links to an external site..

Tools

SVCC has invested in technology tools to assist instructors in minimizing student cheating. While it may be possible to develop a course in such a way that the unique nature of each assessment precludes cheating, there may be other occasions when a standard quiz, exam, or paper is a necessary component of the course. SVCC recommends faculty consider whether the tools below may be appropriate for those occasions. 

Canvas Quiz settings

Canvas provides some settings that can help to deter some types of cheating. Select from these settings when you create a new quiz.

  • Shuffle answers
    This feature designed for multiple choice quizzes rearranges the order of options from which students choose the correct answer.
  • Time limit
    Setting a time limit helps students to budget their time during a test, but also helps to limit time available to look up answers in the textbook or online.
  • Allow multiple attempts
    Permitting multiple attempts at a quiz or exam reduces the fear of failure for many students, and can help reduce the temptation to cheat. Instructors have several choices in how the grade will be calculated for tests using this option - the highest grade, the average grade, or the latest (most recent) grade.
  • Let students see their quiz responses
    Uncheck this feature during the testing period; you can return to the settings and turn it on after all students have complete the exam, if you desire.
  • Display one question at a time
    This option is designed to prevent students from creating a screen capture or taking a photo of more than one question at a time. It can also help some students with focus.
  • Lock questions after answering
    This feature requires students to answer a question once and not retreat. It is not recommended, since many students in this era of frequent standardized tests have been trained to answer the easiest questions first and then return to more difficult questions and the locking feature will prevent this test taking method.
  • Require an access code
    An access code is basically a password that you enter to restrict access to an exam until you provide the password.

Honorlock

Honorlock is a proctoring system instructors are able to enable for exams in their online courses. Below you will find resources detailing the use of Honorlock.

Honorlock Knowledge Base Links to an external site.

 

SimCheck by Turnitin

 Statistics for Similarity and SimCheck Links to an external site.