Academic Honesty in Online Assessments

Academic Honesty in Online Assessments TERESA POTTERURSULINE COLLEGE SPRING 2014

Reasons to use online assessments

1. Organization

2. Data

3. Record Keeping

4. Faster grading

5. Possibility of automatic grading

6. Students can take assessments on their own time so you can use class time for other activities

What is Academic Honesty?

Ursuline Academic Integrity “Learning requires collaboration with others, whether through the incorporation of another’s work or intellectual property into one’s own product, or through dialogue, discussion, and cooperative learning activities. Ultimately, however, a fundamental goal of education is for students to develop their own autonomous thinking so that they may contribute substantively to the knowledge of the greater community.”

Student Handbook 2013-2014 p.32

Ways to encourage academic honesty 1. Quizzes: use question banks and randomized sections2. Quizzes: limit time given 3. Discussions: require a post before they can see other

discussions 4. Dropboxes: utilize previous stored assignments

1. The number one way to prevent cheating on quizzes:

Large question banks and randomized questions

How to create random sections 1. Create questions in question library

◦ Import from a quiz into the library◦ Import directly into question library ◦ Create quizzes in the library

2. Create a new Quiz

3. Create a Random Section in the Quiz

4. Import questions into the random section

5. Set how many questions will be chosen

2. Give only as much time as is needed

You can edit the time allotted for a quiz on the Restrictions Tab

Based on the activity:

How much time do students really need for definition- and remembering- type questions?

The default in D2L is 120 minutes.

3. Require an initial post in Discussions

More information about creating discussions

Student View

Another important note about discussions

Once students have created a post they are not able to edit it. Please make your students aware of this so they can make sure they are submitting their best work the first time.

Dropboxes Unfortunately, there is no magic wand for essays.

You can use dropboxes to: Access previous class assignments if something looks familiar Copy and paste possibly plagiarized text into Google Record of submission dates, feedback dates, and when student accessed feedback

Encouraging Academic Honesty

What is one idea we talked about today that applies to your class?

Conclusion We will never stop all cheating, but if we make it too time consuming

that defeats the point.