Academic Dishonesty

Debbi Smith took these notes during a workshop on academic dishonesty at the Blackboard Tour held at Southwestern College a couple of weeks ago.

Methods:

• One person takes the exam and lets others know what is on it – they then claim technical issues after viewing the whole exam. 
• Groups take the test at the same place and time, such as in a library or tech mall, so they can talk to each other during the test and give answers. They will have similar test times and answers. 
• Facebook users contact ‘friends’ who pass Word docs around with entire test banks. 
• Claim of unreal technology issues. 
• Hire someone to do their work. 
• Keep content open while testing. 
• Use cellphones to look up answers. 
• Google test questions. 
• Try to open Blackboard on two different devices. 
• Record screenshots of entire exam or capture with video and post on YouTube as private.

Prevention:

• Easier to prevent than catch cheating. Let students know up front that you can pull activity reports and put it in the syllabi. 
• Blackboard will kick a student out of a test if they have Blackboard open on 2 devices – tell students this. 
• Randomize test questions. 
• Use Test Pools – a different test for each student 
• Pull Activity reports (will show if students are flipping between content and test – will show test, content, test, content, logout; will show if they looked at the whole test; will show if group of students took the test at the same time in the same building) 
• Use SafeAssign (checks for plagiarism) 
• Check for a difference between education level, grammar, and writing style of minor assignments and major assignments. 
• Check consistency/location of IP Addresses. 
• Show one question at a time (makes it harder for students to see if questions are the same) 
• Reduce time per question to 60-75 seconds. 
• Adjust text of test questions so Google doesn't find them quickly.