Handout provided by Susan Martin at a Reflective Practice Meeting - Academic Integrity
Some of the strategies I use to deter cheating in my online courses include:
- The background of my tests is black with white letters so it is difficult to print.
- A script is included not to allow the document to be printed.
- I have a database with many questions that the test may be drawn from. A student receives a random set of questions from the database. No tests are the same.
- The answers are shuffled for each question. So, if the answer to a question was "a" in one student's test, the answer may be "d" for the same question in another student's test.
- I add new questions to the database each semester.
- I change discussion topics each semester. Also, the students need to give me the page number where the answer was found.
- I change arguments topics each semester. I require the author's name and page number for each answer.
- Chapter questions require the page number.