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?"

Comments

Sometime the old ways

[h2oliu]

I remember being allowed to bring notes with me to class. Would just making this open book/open notes accomplish the same thing?

Re:Sometime the old ways

[Mashiki]

Some of the toughest exams I've ever taken have been open book. Mostly because they require you to understand not only the theory, but the application of the theory and law to the problem. This usually shows that both the instructor, and the student understands the course material. And that it was being taught, and understood correctly.

Re:Sometime the old ways

[John Bresnahan]

When I had "open-book" tests, I would always forget to bring my book

When I had "take-home" tests, I would always forget where I lived.

Re:Sometime the old ways

[dcollins]

I had a student once -- Whenever we had an "in-class" test, his mother would always have a heart attack.

Re:Sometime the old ways

[thesandtiger]

Absolutely there's a question that can't be answered that way:

"Minwee, on your previous exams you struggled to even articulate the most basic concepts involved in XYZ. Yet here on your final exam you managed to put forth an elegant solution. Please, from memory, walk me through your solution and how you came up with it step-by-step."

The tricky part (and it isn't that tricky) is how to know who's done suspiciously well and who is just a really good student.

For me, when I teach courses, I handle that by giving 2 grades for each assignment. One is the letter grade, the other is a meta-grade that explains why they got that letter. I also mix up assignment types and methods - some are open book, some are spontaneous and WAY too short (2-3 minutes at most) to get any real kind of response from an IRC enabled accomplice, etc.

The meta grade thing is simple: I might have 3 students who do an assignment and get a C. One might have gotten a C because they got an answer that was incorrect BUT they derived it through a process that is sensible and correct (usually just some kind of error they didn't catch); One might have gotten a C because they got a correct answer but their process made no sense; One might have gotten a C because they got the right answer but didn't show their work at all. Over time I develop a profile for each student based on those metas and so I can spot outliers not just in the actual letter grade they got but also in the reason for the grade.

When I have a student who routinely does very well but doesn't show their work, I'll sit with them and ask them to explain their work. If they can't do it adequately I'll remind them that cheating will get them an F for the course and possibly expelled, so I expect that in the future they'll be able to explain how they got those ever-so-correct answers the next time. It's shocking how many "correct but inarticulate" students suddenly become "frequently incorrect but extremely verbose" when they realize I'm on to them.

The other thing is that by and large, cheaters are not very consistent students when it comes to those meta grades, even if their letter grades might be. When I see a student with a very inconsistent pattern, that's another sign I need to have a talk with them.

I figure if a student can both figure out and slide past my system they deserve to get away with it.

Anyway, the thing is that it requires a faculty member who is actually invested in teaching their students rather than just herding them through a course.

Whitelist it.

[Samantha Wright]

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.

What are you testing

[Oswald McWeany]

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.

You don't know what teaching is.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Use Random Variables and have a time limit.

[roeguard]

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.

Open-note = nearly guaranteed pass

[sirwired]

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.