Student cheating
It seems difficult to monitor student cheating today. The students have come up with new ways of cheating all the time. I guess its due to new technology.
Hi Tom,
I concur! We have to be a lot smarter with catching cheating students in today's time. Technology has made cheating a lot easier.
Patricia
The most managable way i have found is to have students put away all electronic devises and switch seats for the exam. I have smaller classes so that makes it easier.
I agree Korin. I also have students switch seats to an arrangement I make. One way to accumulate evidence that cheating may have occurred is to check test scores. I had a couple of students who sat together in every class and when I was recording test scores, they both had the same score. I looked more closely at the answer sheets and realized they missed all but one of the same answers. That is when each student was brought in and confronted with the conspicuous evidence!
I have made my exams open book and I mix questions up and give students next to each other different exams. Same questions different order.
Hi Pamela,
What is your rationale for having open book exams. I certainly like the idea of scrambling the questions.
Patricia
I try to give take-home tests/quizzes when possible. I let them use whatever resources are available - as long as they provide citations.
I ask questions that require higher-order thinking, so that merely reporting what they've read does not suffice.
Open book exams, if well-written, permit students to demonstrate the ability to synthesize, evaluate and analyze information. They also support some of the skills we teach in Information Literacy (access information efficiently and effectively) by using indices, tables of contents, and other access points.
