Academic Integrity Strategies

Alternatives to Proctoring

Academic integrity and rigor are important to instructors regardless of how their course is being taught. Assessments, whether in an on-ground course or online, are important tools that help instructors and students understand how content is being mastered and where there may still be gaps in understanding. While proctoring online assessments is often a go-to strategy to maintain rigor and cut back on cheating, a proctored exam is not always the best way for students to demonstrate their knowledge (Sullivan, 2016) nor is proctoring always beneficial to student success (Daffin & Jones, 2018; Muller et al., 2019). There are a variety of ways instructors can use quality assessment design and evaluation to encourage student honesty and maintain an appropriate level of challenge. Please consider the options below:

Assessment Techniques

Randomized Questions - Create assessments that will distribute a unique set of questions to individual learners. Doing so can help reduce instances of cheating. eCourseware offers two ways to create randomized questions. Adding a Random Question Pool to a quiz adds a subset of questions from a larger question pool resulting in a different version of the quiz for each student. Question pools can be drawn from a Question Library and/or from questions that are in other quizzes within the course.

Tutorial: Create a New Quiz with A Randomized Set of Questions

Video Tutorial: Overview of Canvas Quizzes

Suggested Quiz settings

Setting completion time reduces a student’s ability to access the test, look up the answers, or re-enter a test.
Require forced completion on exams so students cannot re-enter a test.

What makes a good quiz or test?

Evaluation Techniques

Contact UM3D at um3d@memphis.edu to schedule a virtual one-on-one consultation on best practices.

Resources:

Check out these resources for more information on creating quality assessments without proctoring:

But What If They Cheat? Giving Non-Proctored Online Assessments (December 8, 2017). Retrieved from: FacultyFocus.com
Guidelines to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Classes - This document provides general guidelines to prevent and curb cheating in online learning environments, including strategies to thwart cheating on written work and high-stake assessments.
For many courses of varying format and size, across many disciplines, reasonable alternatives to traditional tests (i.e., paper-based T/F or Multiple Choice) exist. In fact, oftentimes the alternatives may even be advantageous to promote student learning and be more authentic means of students demonstrating what they have learned at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (synthesis, analysis, evaluation). To learn more, review Alternatives to Traditional Testing powered by UC Berkeley—Center for Teaching & Learning
Thwarting online exam cheating without proctor supervision - This manuscript examines the control issues related to online exams and asserts that the total cost of proctors for online exams (time and money of both students and the institution) exceed potential benefits. Cluskey, G.R., Ehlen, C., Raiborn, M.H. (YYYY). Thwarting online exam cheating without proctor supervision. Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. Pages 1-8.
For information on proctoring via Zoom communication and calls, review this guide from the Fox Business School at Temple.

Pedagogical References:

Daffin, Jr., L.W., & Jones, A.A. (2018). Comparing student performance on proctored and non proctored exams in online psychology courses. Online Learning, 22(1), 131-145. doi:10.24059/olj.v22i1.1079
Best Practice Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Education. Instructional Technology Council. (June 2009, version 2.0). Link to electronic resource
Muller, K., Gradel, K., Deane, S., Forte, M., McCabe, R., Pickett, A. M., Piorkowski, R., Scalzo, K., & Sullivan, R. (2019, October). Assessing student learning in the online modality (Occasional Paper No. 40). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). Link to electronic resource pages 10-12.
Sullivan, D. (2016). An Integrated Approach to Preempt Cheating on Asynchronous, Objective, Online Assessments in Graduate Business Classes. Online Learning, 20(3), 195 - 209. Link to electronic resources.