2. Implement various pedagogical strategies to
teach students the importance of academic
integrity
Explain issues regarding copyright and
intellectual property so that students can
understand them better
Use technology tools such as TurnItIn and
remote proctoring to help mitigate and
prevent cheating and plagiarism
3. Concerns about cheating
and plagiarism can be a
big obstacle, and may
limit our choices for
assessment
Studies show that
students may cheat less
online than face-to-face
Luckily, there are ways
to use technology to
help ensure that
students are doing
authentic work
4. There are lots of reasons
why a student might
choose to cheat
Most commonly:
They lack proper
knowledge
The don’t understand
school policies or copyright
They don’t understand the
seriousness
The class is too high-stakes
Poor time management
skills
5. For the “amateurs” (more commonly the case):
Copy and paste
Homework and Answer-sharing sites (not always a bad
thing, but can lead to cheating)
Taking pictures with smart phones
For the “pros” (far less common):
Term paper mills
Identity-swapping
Lessons posted onYouTube (it’s true!)
See
http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/solveproblem/strat-
cheating/
6. There are many ways that technology can help us mitigate
cheating:
“lockdown” browsers and proctoring tools
TurnItIn, Quetext, Plagiarisma, and other plagiarism detectors
Monitoring software for the classroom likeApple Classroom and
GoGuardian
BUT… some pedagogical strategies can help, too
Help students with time management
Tighten up the syllabus
Use bigger test pools, include essay and short answer
Active classroom management
Involve students in the discussion
7. Most students don’t set
out to cheat, but when
time becomes the
enemy, pressure wins
Help students set up
calendars and set aside
time for study
Help students learn to
prioritize
Keep in mind that they
have other classes
Great resource from Cal
Polytechnic
8. Include an Academic
Integrity Policy in your
syllabus
Take time to explain the
policy in class
Ask students to
complete a class
contract at the
beginning of the
semester
If they think it’s
important to you,
they’re more likely to
listen
Purdue Code of
Conduct as an example
Example from IUPUI
Duneland academic
integrity policy
What’s your policy?
9. Provide lessons on
ethics, paraphrasing,
and time management
Uses short videos and
other attention-
getting strategies
Allows students to
explore what
“academic integrity”
really means at their
own pace
Classroom
management advice
from Common Sense
Education
How do you teach
ethics?
10. Despite popular belief,
just because it’s on the
Web doesn’t mean it’s
up for grabs!
May be one of the
biggest problems for
students AND teachers
What doYOU know
about copyright?
Copyright for
Educators online
course
Fair use videos
My favorite Fair Use
video! (a must to share
with kids)
11. TurnItIn, Quetext, Plagiarisma for plagiarism
checking
Respondus LockDown Browser for test-taking
(works with LMS’s like Canvas)
Monitoring/classroom management software
(AppleClassroom, Casper Suite, LANSchool,
GoGuardian, etc)
Respondus Monitor (for remote automated
proctoring – also works with Canvas)
Remote Proctor NOW (for remote semi-
automated proctoring)
ProctorU (live proctoring)
12. Checks written work against a database
Drafts should not be sent to the database otherwise final
copies will be “100% plagiarized”
Shows you a score and specific areas that are
questionable
May have false positives – 10% is about the
tolerance for error
You may wish to share your error tolerance determination
ahead of time to avoid panics!
13. More popular in university
use but seeing more use in
high schools with
blended/online components
Removes the ability to do
anything else on the
computer except go to the
LMS and start a test
Good for lab situations where
everyone is in the same room
together
Does not really mitigate
cheating for those with
access to multiple devices at
home
14. Works with Lockdown
Browser (comes as a package
– relatively inexpensive)
Records the student taking
the test through their
webcam
Automatically walks students
through the preparation
process
You must watch the videos to
review suspicious behavior
Only works within the LMS
15. Available at an extra cost,
approx. $15 per exam per
student, picked up by your
department (ask for
authorization)
Semi-automated – the
student activity and screen is
recorded, but a human
watches the recording and
flags suspicious behavior for
you
Easy to use, integrates with
any LMS or standalone
16. Live proctoring
through the Internet
and a student’s
webcam
Incurs a fee of $17-$25
depending on the
length of the exam –
students must pay this
fee for each exam
Use for high-stakes
online test settings
There are many reasons why a student might choose to cheat on an exam, project, or paper. Some of the most common reasons cited in studies of student academic behavior include:
They lack proper knowledge
The don’t understand university policies
They don’t understand the seriousness
The class is too high-stakes
Poor time management skills
Of these, poor time management and a lack of time for proper study are cited as the top reasons why students cheat. Rarely do students go into a class with the intention of cheating, in fact; it happens over time as they realize that they have not been able to put the proper time in to do well in the course. The likelihood of cheating goes up when a class or specific test is very high-stakes and may “make or break” a student’s performance or ability to continue in a program. On the other hand, there is a fair number of students who are completely honest when they state that they did not know they were cheating, or that they did not know it was not allowed. It may seem like common sense to you and me, but to students who have gone through a high school career where group study and open book tests were frequently the norm, they may not truly understand your policies regarding academic integrity, or how seriously you and the university takes it.
There are of course many ways that students can and have thought of to cheat on exams and projects, including the most common way of copying and pasting from Internet resources, but there are other methods as well. Term paper mills exist where students can purchase a paper, although most of these are already catalogued by technologies like SafeAssign. Homework and answer-sharing sites such as Quizlet and Sparknotes are also available, which are often not in themselves meant to be cheating resources, but students may be tempted to use them in this way.
The more extreme examples of cheating include identity-swapping, where students take exams or complete assignments on behalf of another student. Some may also take pictures with their phones of exam questions and send them to other students – solutions like ProctorU and Remote Proctor Now can take care of this behavior when students are online, but even in class, the enterprising student can use these tricks. Those who are really interested in cheating (the “professionals” as we might call them) will even review lessons posted on YouTube about how to cheat on exams and papers. They are certainly out there to be viewed.
Time management, as noted previously, is a big problem for many students. Some have not yet learned how to set aside time for study, and others do not have a good idea of how long it should take them to study for the many classes they may be taking. Students often wait until the last minute or find themselves behind because they did not devote their time in the right way. Teaching students how to prioritize and compartmentalize their time will help them with all aspects of their schoolwork, although keep in mind that they do have other classes than yours. It is often difficult for us to consider how long students may need to spend with courses that are not in your discipline, but do your best to guide them to dedicate at least 3-5 hours per course per week outside of class. Urging them to use calendars and planners may be helpful, and a template is available on the student cheating and plagiarism BlackBoard course.
Your syllabus is a great place to start with establishing policies in your classroom. Include the official Academic Integrity policies in your syllabus and take time to explain these in class. You might even ask students to complete a class contract at the beginning of the semester, which might even be a quiz of some kind about what’s on the syllabus and what your policies are. If they agree to a contract and understand the importance of academic integrity that you place in class, they will be more likely to pay attention to it. If you appear to place little emphasis on such policies (even if you really do value them, but just don’t express it!), then students may not be as likely to take them seriously.
To prevent cheating and plagiarism, there are several tools available to us, including SafeAssign, LockDown Browser, Respondus Monitor, Remote Proctor NOW. These tools help prevent cheating and plagiarism through electronic means. SafeAssign is integrated into every BlackBoard assignment and allows students to send work to a database that looks for matching sentences and phrases from websites and other similar papers. It returns an originality score to the instructor and if you like, you can let students see their originality report as well. No report is perfect, as there are always some words, citations, and phrases that are picked up, but any score over about 10% would indicate that some plagiarism is taking place, or that students are using too many quotes and not enough paraphrasing.
LockDown Browser prevents students from opening other programs or windows on their computer while taking a test. Respondus Monitor works with Lockdown Browser to take video and audio of the student taking the test. You can then go back to the videos to review and see if anything “funny” was going on. Remote Proctor NOW also records all interactions and has staff look at the videos after the student takes the test, but the difference is that someone from the company reviews these videos and reports any suspicious activity back to the instructor after the fact back to you. Both systems work well for high-stakes testing that needs to be done at a distance. RP Now does incur a fee to the department, of $15 per student per exam at a flat rate. Consult with the OLT and with your department chair if you wish to use this product, which has been adopted by the Purdue system, and is in pilot evaluation here at PNC as of Spring 2016.
SafeAssign checks papers for plagiarism by comparing submitted work to a database that covers almost everything imaginable. It returns a percentage score of how much the paper matches to the database, and even allows you to see the source of the original item when plagiarism is found.
With this in mind, take note that SafeAssign is just a tool, and as such as its failings. It may show you false positives, especially with references and quotes, which increase the percentage score. Typically, most instructors accept 10-15% as a margin of error for submitted assignments checked by SafeAssign – you should still check any paper if you have concerns more carefully, of course, but typically you won’t see “real” plagiarism until you get something over 20%. If you allow students to check their own scores, you may wish to share with them your margin or error tolerance that you have determined, so that they do not get concerned when they see a percentage higher than they expect.
Respondus Lockdown Browser is a program that allows you to remove the student’s ability to do anything else but get into BlackBoard and take their test. All other applications will be closed and cannot be accessed until Lockdown Browser is shut down. BlackBoard can be set to require the browser to be used, removing the ability for a student to get into the test without using Lockdown Browser.
This is an actual application that students must download, install, and open on their computers in order to use it. If you have students with difficulties in doing these things on their computers, you may want to refer them to the tutorials or walk through it with them at least once.
Also, note that this program is available in most of the labs, and is great for tests you give in person in a lab setting. When students are at home, it is quite possible that they will have other devices available to them, so if your concern is about their ability to take screenshots or otherwise copy questions during an exam, Lockdown Browser will not necessarily stop them from doing this.
Respondus Monitor is available within the course tool for Respondus Lockdown Browser. This tool adds an additional measure of security for a test by requiring that students use their webcam and microphone in order to be recorded while taking the test. It works with Lockdown Browser, so by requiring LDB is the only way to require Monitor.
Monitor will automatically walk students through a series of steps to ensure that their camera and microphone are working properly, and in the Course Tool you can preview and select each of these steps for yourself. You can also, from the Course Tool, review the videos that have been captured after students have taken the exam. The entire exam is recorded, and you may choose to watch the entire thing, or skim through. This will allow you to see and/or hear any suspicious activity that may have been going on in the student’s environment while he/she was taking the exam.
Remote Proctor Now is a new system adopted by the Purdue system recently. This is available at an extra cost of $15 per exam, per student. Your department must agree to pick up this cost, but this system will not require students to pay anything to participate.
It works very similarly to Respondus Monitor. The difference is that instead of you watching the videos, someone else at the company watches the videos and flags any suspicious behavior seen for you. You will have a dashboard of videos and flags after an exam is finished that you can review and decide what to do with any “offenders” as needed.
An additional perk of RP Now is that it work with any online testing service. So if, for example, you have students complete tests in a textbook site like MyLab from Pearson, you can still have the tests remotely proctored. Respondus Monitor only works within BlackBoard, so it may limit your options if you use any outside exams.
Contact the OLT if you would like to learn more about Remote Proctor Now.
ProctorU is a live proctoring service performed remotely via webcam and microphone. A student takes a test with a real human on the other end watching them, and their screens, and flags any suspicious behavior. The cost of this service starts around $17 is based the test length. This service can work with any system, including anything outside of BlackBoard, but the cost of the exam must be taken on by the student. At this time the university has no agreement with ProctorU. If you wish to use this system, you should inform students about their need to purchase exam time at the beginning of the semester so that they are prepared. You may also wish to consult with your department chair about the use of this system.