On line testing and cheating

By

Richard E. Yinger, Ph.D.

I have developed a complete online testing procedure for my Webct courses that does not require any special equipment, passwords, or any involvement from the testing center. Students take all tests online through the Webct Testing tool. They can take the test wherever they are most comfortable. They can take the tests at any time that is convenient for them within the deadlines established for each test. The testing is asynchronous within the deadline parameters. Students get immediate feedback on the multiple choice tests.

Testing is a simple procedure for me to administer through the Webct testing tool. It has required a lot of time and work for me to develop it, but I think it serves the best interests of the students and allows me to make the most effective use of the tests as learning tools. I believe that my testing procedure maximizes the opportunities for student learning, and that it provides me with a reliable and valid method for assessing student performance.

The most immediate questions about my online testing procedure regard cheating. If students are allowed to do all work on line from the location of their choice, at times of their choosing, how can I be sure they are actually doing the work? How do I know someone else is not doing the work for them? How do I know they are not cheating?

The immediate answer to these questions is that I make it too expensive in terms of the work required for the course for students to cheat. The reason I know this is because students have told me there is a lot of work, and because I have a very high attrition rate. I believe that any student who tries to cheat will fail at the effort and will not be able to complete the course. This does not mean that all students who fail to complete the course are cheating, but I do believe that all students who try to cheat will fail to successfully complete the course for several reasons.

The first problem for the prospective cheater is who will he get to do this much work for him? Who would do it? Why would they do it? There are only two reasons I can see for someone to assist a cheater –love or money. I think that if a student asks a loved one to do this the loved one would have serious problems. If you truly care about someone you are not going to be a co-conspirator in cheating. The reason is that the person who is doing the work is hurting the person they are doing the work for. If anyone truly cares about another person they would not do this for them. I would not do this for anyone I truly cared about.

There is a cheater paradox here. The paradox is that the cheater must select a person who cares enough about him to help him cheat. But, the person must not care enough to do what is in the cheaters best interest, which would be to not do it. How does a cheater find such a person? I suspect that cheaters will have a hard time maintaining they type of relationships they need to successfully complete the cheating process. I suspect that the long term impact of collaboration in cheating will be to ruin the relationship. Who would want to maintain a relationship with someone who is this untrustworthy?

But, let’s assume that a person would do this. Let’s assume that a wife would do it for her husband, or a mother would do it for her son. They might be willing to do a few tests, and maybe a few papers. But I think that after a few weeks there would be such a strain on the relationship that it could not continue. The cost would extend beyond the course and damage the relationship. At some point, the person doing the work is going to feel exploited, they are going to realize that they are being used by someone they care about, who they thought cared about them. They will have to examine what kind of person they are dealing with here. The cost will be very high.

Another problem is trust. If a person is a cheater, who can he trust? How can he know for sure that the person doing the work is going to be doing it right? I suspect that cheaters will not have many people they can trust to do this amount of work for them.

Let us assume the cheater is smart enough to not risk ruining a relationship with one of the few people he can trust and who might care about him enough to do this work- but not enough to not do it. The only other way the cheater is going to get someone to do this work is to pay them. How much should they be paid? How much is enough? How does someone work out this pay rate? Again we have the problem of trust. How can the person who wants to cheat know for sure that the collaborator will actually deliver the materials? How does he know the collaborator will stay with him for the whole term? How does he know the collaborator can do good work – and will do it?

Another question is “How much is a fare rate of payment for this work the collaborator is going to do?” How do you establish a fare rate between a cheater and person who would help a cheater? How do you pay for this? Do you pay up front at the beginning of the course? Do you pay in installments each time a piece of cheating is completed? Do you only pay if the grade is passing? Do you wait until the end of the term to pay the whole amount? Do you have to pay if you don’t pass the course? What happens if the collaborator gets sick or changes her mind? What happens if the collaborator gets mad at the cheater and starts to get revenge by doing bad work?

One way that I make it expensive for the cheater is by having timed and dated assignments. The assignments can only be done at the assigned times. This is why I do not allow students to work ahead. The would be cheater has to maintain the relationship for the whole 12 weeks of the course. They can not just do the whole course in a few days and be done with it.

Another way to cheat would be to simply copy or plagiarize material already posted to the Bulletin Board. A student might decide that he only needs to wait until a posting made and then simply rewrite it and add a few comments to make it look like he did it himself. This won’t work. I do not allow students to use concepts that have already been posted. It must be an original concept. This actually is a tool that I use to insure that students are reading other student’s postings. They must read them to make sure they are not posting any duplicates by accident.

As I see it, there is a bigger issue here than cheating. My online courses create an intense student centered outcome oriented educational experience that puts tremendous responsibility on the student for his or her educational experience. The tests and other assignments are designed to be essential tools in the learning process. The tests and other graded assignments are part of a teleological process in which the student is drawn toward desired outcomes and goals for the course. The paradigm shift in the educational process involves the shift from a teacher centered experience to a student centered experience. Students must take the initiative to find the knowledge and apply it. The grade for the course is determined largely by the ability of the students to apply Sociological concepts and to demonstrate to me and other students in the class that they can do the applications in their Bulletin Board assignments.

The tests are an essential part of the learning process and act as guides to help the students understand the desired outcomes for the course. I put all of the test questions into a set of review questions and make all of these questions available to the students from the first day of class. Students must study the review questions in order to be able to pass the tests on line. They can not simply look up the answers to the test questions as they do the test. They must have a good understanding of the material before they attempt to do the test. The reason they must learn the material in advance of taking the test is that the tests are timed. Each test allows 5 minutes for completion. The average time required for students who have studied the material in advance is about two minutes. But, if a student has not studied the material in advance, he can not complete it in 5 minutes.

Student are given two opportunities on each test. They do not get the same questions on the second chance. The grades for each try are averaged. If a student tries to cheat by opening the test just to see what the questions are on the test, he will not have enough time to answer the questions and will get a low grade. The next attempt will have different questions and will be averaged with the first attempt. There are 20 of these tests, one on each chapter in the book. The tests open and close according to assigned dates. If a test is not taken within the open window it can not be taken at all. There are no make ups.

The attrition process begins when student start to fall behind on the tests. I suspect that in some cases, a student may have thought they could rely on someone to help them with the tests and then found out that the person was no more trustworthy than they themselves. In some cases, I suspect the student is simply overwhelmed by the amount of work and can not keep up with it.

Almost all of the students are very busy, with many demands on their time. They are taking DL classes because they don’t have time to attend a regular class. Unfortunately, these students often are not able to find enough time to keep up with the course load. In some cases UI suspect that the very reason a person wants to take a DL is the very reason he should not take it. If you are too busy to got a regular class, you are probably too busy to keep up with the work load in this class.

At first students think it is to their advantage to not have to go to a class as an assigned time in an assigned place. And for some students this is a blessing. Unfortunately, for some students, this is a curse. The lack of a required class meeting allows some students to slide into a pattern of not “paying the bills.” It is sort of like having to pay the bills and not having enough money for all of them. You first tend to pay the one’s that have deadline due date with a harsh penalty. If there is no due date and no immediate penalty for not paying it, the bill tends to slide until next month and may never get paid. This is what I think happens with some DL students. This is why I have a due date with a harsh penalty. The bill has to be paid each week. If you miss two payments, you are out.

I have very strict requirements for my course. I am very demanding. I require a lot of work and it has to be done right if a student wants to pass the course. This is not a course for students who are seeking the easy grade, the grade that is given freely. I think that is reflected in the attrition rate for my classes.

By having all assignments online, I think I have created an environment that is less conducive to cheating than a regular classroom. I am no longer playing the role of the policeman. I no longer have to lock the door to keep tardy students from disrupting my class while a test is being taken. I no longer have to send make up tests to the testing center for students who miss a test.I no longer have to worry about the reliability of the Testing Center. I no longer have to wonder what new method students have devised to get around my efforts to stop them from cheating in classroom tests. I no longer have to worry about test anxiety. My online tests allow for maximum accommodations for all types of student needs.

I feel more confident in the validity and reliability of my online grading procedure than I ever felt for traditional classroom grading procedures. I never felt as confident that students were not cheating as I do with this system. At the end of the fall, 2001 term I asked my online students what they thought about my theory on cheating. They all agreed with me. I asked them if they knew of anyone who was cheating. I asked them if they thought they had been disadvantaged by someone else’s cheating. Not a single student thought they had been put at a disadvantage. Not a single student thought anyone would be cheating. Several students asked me –“Why would anyone want to cheat?” Several said that a person who wanted to cheat would only be cheating himself, so why would they want to do this?

Studies have shown that upwards of 80 percent of high achieving college students admit to cheating in regular classes. I am sure that anyone who survived my course could not do so by cheating. I believe there is less chance for it. I believe the online testing creates a level playing filed in which all students have the most equal opportunity for success. The reason for this is the high level of work required and the timely nature of the work. While a person may be able to get someone to do a few tests or a few Bulletin Board assignments, they will have a very small chance of finding anyone to do this much work for 12 weeks.

When someone asks me how I know students are not cheating, I say because I make it too expensive to cheat. I would ask them –why would anyone want to cheat? How would they cheat? Who would cheat for them? Why would anyone do this for someone else? Do you think students do not cheat in a regular class? Do you think they do not find ways to cheat in the testing center no matter how many safeguards you create?

In the final analysis, I see online testing as part of a paradigm shift in educational methodology in the same sense that the Copernican world view was a shift from Aristotle’s world view. Aristotle thought the Earth did not move and was the center of the universe and that everything in the universe revolved around it. This idea was accepted as gospel for thousands of years. Copernicus said the Earth does move, it is not the center of the universe, it revolves around the sun. The educational equivalent of Aristotle’s view is the view of the teacher as the center of the universe who does not move. The Copernican model sees the teacher as a part of the educational process, but no longer the center around which the universe revolves. The teacher is now a facilitator. Knowledge is the center of the universe and we are all on a journey together developing our knowledge. The course revolves around the pursuit of knowledge and the application of knowledge rather than my ability to perform and entertain in a classroom.

The online class actually is superior to the traditional classroom in many ways. I no longer have to contend with students who are bored with lectures, who are resentful of having to come to class, who want to show their resentments through various means of acting out and disrupting the class. I no longer have to be a policeman who has to worry about students smoking, eating or drinking in class. I no longer have to deal with discipline problems, with students who sleep in class, who are reading newspapers, doing assignments from other classes while I am trying to deliver my profound thoughts in a traditional lecture. I no longer have to deal with students who want to show disrespect by arriving late, or walking out in the middle of the class, by disturbing others who want to learn.

Students now have easy access to more massive amounts of information than is contained in any one person’s mind, or in any textbook, that can be delivered in any classroom. The teacher no longer controls the access to information. Students now must know how to access information. No one can expect to long remember all the facts that are available in any course. After the course is over, what will students take with them? How will they apply it in their personal lives? These are the questions I am trying to address with my online testing procedure. I don’t expect anyone to memorize massive quantities of data, retain it and spit it out on a test. I am more concerned that students develop an understanding of concepts and an ability to apply them.

I believe the online Bulletin Board provides a more effective mechanism for students to engage in collaborative learning and to have effective interaction than is possible in a traditional classroom. Through the online collaborative interactions students have greater opportunities to develop understandings of concepts and applications of concepts than in a regular classroom. I focus on outcomes. I think the outcomes I get in my online classes are better than anything I ever got in a regular classroom.

In conclusion, I do not believe online courses are equal to regular classes. I believe they are better than regular classes. I do not believe online testing is as good as traditional in class or testing center testing, I believe it is better. I do not believe there is as much cheating in online testing, I believe there is less.