In a modern world where anything is possible and all of the information that you need is at the tip of your fingers, there is a lot of ways that students can choose to cheat on an online exam.
Though some students remained to be honest with themselves, most of the students that took an online exam always have an urge to cheat to save themselves from failing certain tests.
In most cases, it’s difficult to detect whether a person is cheating on an online exam. However, you can find out with plagiarism checkers, make them record a video of taking the test or prevent them from cheating with specific online exam software.
Keep on reading to learn more.
Actions You Can Take to Detect and Prevent Cheating in Online Exams
The easiest way to identify if certain groups of students are cheating in an online exam is by submitting the answers provided by the students to the plagiarism detection tool to locate the source where they might get the information from.
Just in case the answers provided by the students and a particular website fully matched and if the percentage of plagiarism detected is more than 20%, then that student may or may not cheat during the exam.
Keep in mind the fact that this is not the ultimate result and the final should not be made solely based on this percentage. This is because students might be memorizing the facts from a certain website and writing them manually during the test and as a result, the answer provided by the students and the answer found on a certain website match with each other.
Other factors such as the students’ browsing history should also be taken into consideration when determining whether or not a certain student cheated during an exam. This type of data should be retrieved immediately after the students have completed the test to prevent them from manipulating the data by removing their browser history.
One of the most effective ways to combat cheating is by reaching the hearts of your students.
The first way that can be highly effective in solving this type of problem is if it’s done right. A week before the online examination starts, you should construct a powerful speech that can potentially bring tears to your students and make them think that cheating is not the way to achieve success.
A powerful speech should mention things that are close to the students’ hearts and you may include phrases like:
“You can cheat if you want to but know that it’s wrong for you to do so as this exam is not the only challenge that you will face in life so if you cheat, you’re teaching yourself to be a cheater at that’s what you will ever be good at so it’s up to you now to choose who you want to be!”
No kind of technology can be more powerful than an inspiring speech made uniquely by humans and history has successfully proven that speech that is written the right way may affect the emotions of the people that are listening to it.
Apart from that, you may also try to request your students to record the screen of their computer throughout the entire time they are taking the exam for them to get their exam score to be validated by you.
If you would like to take it to the next level, you may also add another condition by making it compulsory for your students to record the view of the entire room so that you will be able to see and observe everything that is happening on their computer as well as in their room.
This is done to prevent students from sticking any kind of sticky notes on the walls of their room that could help them to cheat easily in a test.
Only by submitting these two videos will the students’ results be considered to be marked and you will need to check carefully each of these videos before you approve the result of each student to be valid.
However, this may cause the process of validating the students’ online paper to be much slower than you would usually do as you will need to spend more time on all of these videos.
Examples of Tools that You Can Utilize
One of the best tools that you can utilize to help you to manage your student’s test well is by using the “Intract Institutes” app. You may download it on the Google Play Store to get full access to all of its features.
This tool would surely help you to provide an online test to your students that is free of any sort of cheating.
Some of the best features that are available on this app are the automatic evaluation functionality where the app will evaluate the score of each student using a complex set of algorithms so you don’t have to waste hours of your time just to determine the score of your students and enjoy doing the things that matter the most to you instead.
Apart from that, the app also provides cheating detection and anti-cheating features that would allow you to identify which one of your students decided to cheat on the test so that you would be able to give them the appropriate punishments as a consequence of their actions.
The anti-cheating feature, on the other hand, enables you to prevent any sort of cheating activities from taking place during the exam that you conduct.
Moving on to the next point, this app also allows you to provide a flexible marking system for your students so that you will be able to provide the score that each student deserved according to their performance in the test. Just in case you would like to have a slight variation of the structure of the questions that you want to provide in the test then you may do so by using the Subjective and Objective questions functionality which will let you structure the questions in the test according to your needs.
Next, you will also be able to export the question papers along with the scores of each student and the list of cheaters found in the exam to a secure PDF file.
Besides that, a detailed answer analysis for each student is also provided to know for certain which of your students cheated in the exam.
This means that the probability of not getting caught cheating in an exam is slim to none and even if they did successfully cheat, their name should be displayed for you to see.
Examples of Context Where Someone Might Be Cheating
Some examples of the context where someone might be cheating on an online test include referring to the facts on the textbook throughout the whole period of an online test.
As discussed earlier in the article, to prevent this thing from happening, you should always make it compulsory for your students to record a video of them taking the test so that you will be able to know exactly what is going on during the test.
Apart from that, you may also manually observe the eye movement of any suspicious students that you think have a higher tendency to cheat. The facial expression of each student also needs to be taken into consideration to get a result with a higher level of accuracy.
However, you should also keep in mind the fact that the students should only be punished for cheating in a particular exam when there is a piece of clear graphic evidence that can be used to support your suspicion of a particular student.
Next, students might also attempt to search for answers on other smart devices that they may have in their homes such as a smartphone and a pair of earbuds. This should also be considered as an act of cheating during a particular examination is carried out however it would be quite easy for you to know which students are cheating at a specific point in time if you decide to make it compulsory for them to record a video of them taking the test.
Any suspicious body movements especially the ones that involve the head and hand of the students should be paid enough attention to prevent any act of cheating from taking place.
If you are not conducting any listening test then it’s also a good idea to ban any use of ear devices that could potentially help someone to cheat smoothly without any traces left behind.
Apart from cheating during the test, you need to know that students may also tend to cheat outside of the test.
Buying a leaked examination paper from unethical hackers should also be considered cheating however it’s quite difficult to distinguish between the students that studied and answered well for the exam and the students that already know the questions and answers to the questions of the test.
The only way to ensure that the questions do not leak is by increasing the level of protection of the machine where these questions are being stored.
However, most unethical hackers have improved their skills greatly by now so it’s wise for educational institutions to hire teams of professional cybersecurity personnel to protect all of these data from falling into the wrong hands.
Katie Holmes is a senior author at everyday-courtesy.com with over 15 years of experience in marketing and psychology. As a freelance consultant, she also supports companies and executives in overcoming communication challenges. Katie is a passionate digital nomad working on her first book on the art of communication.