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Ask Slashdot: How To Allow Test Takers Internet Access, But Minimize Cheating?
New submitter linjaaho writes "I work as lecturer in a polytechnic. I think traditional exams are not measuring the problem-solving skills of engineering students, because in normal job you can access the internet and literature when solving problems. And it is frustrating to make equation collections and things like that. It would be much easier and more practical to just let the students use the internet to find information for solving problems. The problem: how can I let the students access the internet and at same time make sure that it is hard enough to cheat, e.g. ask for ready solution for a problem from a site like Openstudy, or help via IRC or similar tool from another student taking the exam? Of course, it is impossible to make it impossible to cheat, but how to make cheating as hard as in traditional exams?"
I remember being allowed to bring notes with me to class. Would just making this open book/open notes accomplish the same thing?
Ok, I give up, why you?
They don't need the whole internet; only a handful of sites. Set up a proxy that permits only GET requests to a few domains like Wikipedia, disable Javascript for good measure, and you're done.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Make sure the questions are unique, change them between each exam, and carefully watch from the back of the room. You could also ask for a log of all the traffic through the WiFi point, and search for know chat domains.
In "real life" students will have access to all those things. Perhaps it isn't cheating but rather utilizing tools that they would have access to in "real life".
Assume they'll use every tool at their disposal- and write the tests in such a way that they can't copy the question into a search bar and google the answer.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Teaching means showing the way to solve problems. Nobody cares about correct solutions to school problems. It's all about the process of solving the problem, a scheme of thinking.
Block all traffic except port 80 http. (They don't need https, do they? They aren't checking bills online or using email, or some other security oriented task...)
Block all udp connections.
Dns filter a blacklist of known cheating sites.
Block bullshit sites like facebook, myspace and pals too. That's just good sense.
"And it is frustrating to make equation collections and things like that."
(A) Suck it up and do the work once.
(B) Use a textbook that comes with a premade formula card for use on tests.
(C) Find a premade formula card online and distribute that for tests.
Personally, I use option (B) for my math classes. Trying to make the internet non-communicable is like making water not wet.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
When I was in grad school, in many classes we were allowed to use the internet on tests, as well as our notes, any spreadsheets/programs/scripts we had pre-made, etc. The caveat was that the tests were structured in a way that if you didn't already know what to do, you wouldn't have enough time to look it up and still finish the test. Googling things takes time. And the test really only provided enough time to actually do what you already knew.
You can also use random variables for each test, or groupings of tests, to prevent direct copying of answers. With a time limit, cheaters would have to wait for someone else taking the test to find the correct answer, send it out, and then modify it to match their own variables. If they can do all of that in a crunch, chances are they understand it pretty well on their own, even if they are lazy.
So what happens when all the "original content" makers die off? If we just search the web, we'll only get old information. Let people figure out how to create their own OC by searching within and solving/exploring on their own, so that the future internet will have new information. In the meantime, grade on the curve just to keep the education process moving.
If you're going to allow them unlimited research, then why not let them collaborate too? Give the whole class a set of problems big enough that they need to organize and split them up to get them all done in time. And if they can find the solution already completed elsewhere, so be it, that's what a good engineer is supposed to do. The whole point of working in the real world is that your performance depends on those around you, so the only way to measure the performance of students individually is to put them in an artificial problem solving situation like a traditional exam. That's why we still have paper, closed-book exams in theory classes, and why there are an increasing number of "project classes" where the entire class grade depends on the success of a hands-on group project.
So does the whole group get an A, if they have some rock star who knows the material cold while 4 of the other students contribute absolutely nothing, and should have normally failed the exam?
That's no different than one person doing their homework and letting their friends copy it.
Many of my engineering classes allowed "formula sheets" or a "formula card", usually a single sheet of paper or a 4x6 index card, that the student was responsible for formulating themselves.
I used this to completely ace the exam in several of my EE classes where I otherwise would have had great difficulty. (Analog just wasn't my thing while becoming a CompE; I rocked my digital and computer classes.)
My tactic: Virtually all professors provide sets of review problems, and the answers to the review problems (along with all homework questions and mid-terms) were on file with the library. I'd go the library and make copies of those materials. I would then go back to my room and pass-through every single homework assignment, mid-term, and review question, and solve every problem to the point where the remainder of the solution was "busy-work." If, after much staring, I simply could not figure out how the professor got from point A to point B, I simply copied the entire solution to that problem (writing very small with a very sharp pencil if I was confined to a card, or just about 3 rounds of reducing on the copy machine if I wasn't) onto my formula sheet/card.
90% of the time, the problems where I had to copy the solutions wholesale onto the card ended up on the exam (with some trivial parts changed), and I was invariably one of the few people in the class to get it right, despite the fact that I had utterly no idea how the solution worked.
This problem is not amenable to technical solution. Trying to stop attackers from cheating via the Internet, by using some a filter or other form of limited access -- is as futile as trying to solve the halting problem, and enumerate the irrationals, at the same time.
The halting problem fails because it's too easy to craft countermeasures aimed deliberately at the scanner. Enumerating the irrationals fails because there is so much complexity, it's literally impossible to go throgh it all.
But just because you can't solve this problem technically doesn't mean it can't be solved. It's difficult, but I believe it might be possible. Don't bother beyond the basics. Get a computer lab set up with computers you control. Don't allow the students to bring in any USB sticks or CDs.
Then simply install tracking software on every PC. (You can also use a network sniffer to back this up.) The idea isn't that to prevent cheating technically; rather, you want to preserve the ability to tell that people have cheated, and simply punishing them under the existing rules.
You tell everyone in the class that you'll be monitoring their internet usage during the exam. Then tell everyone what you consider cheating. Have your grad students go through the logs manually; the difference should be fairly obvious.