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 are gaps in understanding. As you think through the design of your course, consider how you might ask students to show their mastery of learning objectives and course goals. 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). Try these strategies to boost academic integrity.
Try these strategies
Assessment Technique: Offer a practice test/quiz.
- Why this works:
- ensures students don’t do badly just because they don’t know the technology;
- lowers test anxiety; gives students some control.
Assessment Technique: Create open book/ open resource assessments, and allow students multiple attempts.
- Why this works:
- multiple attempts can help students stay on track,
- encourage extra studying,
- raise the quality of assignments.
Assessment Technique: Divide written assignments or large projects into “deliverables,” instead of asking for just a final project.
- Why this works:
- encourages students to work on the project consistently over time,
- allows time for instructor and peer feedback, and
- discourages last minute, poor quality work and plagiarizing.
Assessment technique: Allow students to drop the lowest quiz or assignment grade.
- Why this works:
- lessens the impact of a poor score,
- reduces test anxiety, gives students control.
Assessment Technique: Incorporate higher order thinking questions or prompts that ask students to synthesize, create, evaluate, or apply concepts and skills.
- Why this works:
- Unlikely a textbook, classmate, or Google search would provide the unique answer.
Assessment Technique: Vary types of assessment (e.g. quizzes, short and long papers, video presentation submissions, test question types) rather than just a mid-term and a final.
- Why this works:
- helps students assess their own understanding,
- reaches all types of learners.
Assessment Technique: Emphasize assignments that require written work and problem solving (e.g. essays, papers, online discussions, show your work), allow students choice in format, and use TurnItIn.
- Why this works:
- these types of answers aren’t likely to be found on the internet,
- allowing students choose their helps all learners succeed,
- rely on TurnItIn to find plagiarism.
Assessment Technique: Add new test items and assignment topics each semester to grow your bank of questions. Use eCourseware to randomly serve up questions.
- Why this works:
- No two tests, or retests, will be the same,
- lessens the chance students can find all the questions online.
Assessment Technique: Use multi select, multiple correct answer questions instead of the basic 4 choice multi choice question.
- Why this works:
- reduces the chances of students guessing correctly.
Assessment Technique: Allow students to do test corrections where they have to explain why they got a question wrong and their thought process that led them to the incorrect choice.
- Why this works:
- students show a higher order of understanding when they perform rigorous test corrections.
Assessment Technique: Include an Academic Honesty Statement in every assessment
- Why this works:
- studies show this simple tweak cuts down on cheating.
