An Integrated Approach to Preempt Cheating on Asynchronous, Objective, Online Assessments in Graduate Business Classes

Abstract

Cheating, left untended, erodes the validity of evaluation and, ultimately, corrupts the legitimacy of a course. We profile an approach to manage, with an eye toward preempting, cheating on asynchronous, objective, online quizzes. This approach taps various technological and social solutions to academic dishonesty, integrating them into a technology-centered, socially-sensitive pedagogy. The resulting design engages a battery of technology tools, within a social context moderated by the testing effect, to minimize the practicality, productivity, and hence, students' propensity to cheat. Operationally, we used the Canvas LMS to generate a differentiated series of objective quizzes from question banks holding several hundred potential items. We assess cross-sectional data from 178 MBA students spanning eight online-only classes. The results support the effectiveness of an integrated blend of technology tools and social methods to encourage students' consciousness of the resulting uselessness of cheating. We review the implications of the results to test anxiety, student engagement, learning effectiveness, and workflow efficiency.

A systematic review of online examinations: A pedagogical innovation for scalable authentication and integrity

“…Cheating was the most prevalent area among all the themes identified. Cheating in asynchronous, objective, and online assessments is argued by some to be at unconscionable levels ( Sullivan, 2016 ). In one survey, 73.6 percent of students felt it was easier to cheat on online examinations than regular examinations ( Aisyah et al, 2018 ).…”

“…In another, the issue for solving cheating is social as well as technological. While technology is considered the current norm for reducing cheating, these tools have been mostly ineffective ( Sullivan, 2016 ). Access to multiple question banks through effective quiz design and delivery is a mechanism to reduce the propensity to cheat, by reducing the stakes through multiple delivery attempts ( Sullivan, 2016 ).…”

Optimising Moodle quizzes for online assessments

“…Online quizzes in LMSs have been implemented for summative assignments, formative assessments and instructional design methods in diverse disciplines such as engineering, biology, medicine and the social sciences (Jaeger & Adair, 2017;Krause et al, 2017;Sullivan, 2016). Recent studies highlight the benefits of online quizzes and students' positive attitude towards them (Cohen & Sasson, 2016;Wallihan et al, 2018).…”

“…Such benefits include improving student motivation, enhancing understanding and active learning, and deterring cheating, as long as the quiz questions are not too easy (Cook & Babon, 2017). Carefully designed online quizzes can be one of many solutions to pre-empt student plagiarism by randomising questions, shuffling responses, providing timestamps and logs of multiple quiz attempts with systematic evaluation processes (Sullivan, 2016).…”

Blended learning: panorama y perspectivas

“…El uso de tests en línea ha llevado a desarrollar diferentes sistemas para limitar las conductas deshonestas, mezclando herramientas tecnológicas, mediciones psicológicas y técnicas sociales para convencer a los estudiantes de que no deben copiar (Sullivan, 2016).…”