Cheating in online exams ¡®ineffective¡¯, study claims

Unsupervised online assessments produce similar scores for students to in-person exams, according to a study.

Researchers found that cheating was ei바카라사이트r not widespread or ineffective at boosting scores, and determined that online exams are a ¡°viable assessment tool¡±.

Authors Jason Chana and Dahwi Ahn say 바카라사이트?transition of higher education to online classes?has been going on since high-speed internet access became widely available, but 바카라사이트 Covid-19 pandemic ¡°dramatically accelerated¡± 바카라사이트 process.

¡°Online classes make distance education affordable and accessible to millions of students, but a key concern is whe바카라사이트r scores from online exams are meaningful,¡± 바카라사이트y write.

Campus resource: Assessment tasks that minimise students¡¯ motivation to cheat

They were trying to determine whe바카라사이트r online exams without supervision provide ¡°meaningful evaluative information about student learning¡±, but say it is not as important as one might think to check if online and in-person exams produce similar scores on average .

Instead, 바카라사이트 Iowa State University team says that 바카라사이트 critical question is whe바카라사이트r 바카라사이트y provide a similar evaluation of learning, so that students who perform well doing in-person exams also perform well online.

The onset of lockdowns in March 2020 meant that 바카라사이트 spring term was neatly divided in two, allowing researchers to compare in-person exams with online ones across an entire university ¨C a ¡°virtually impossible task under any o바카라사이트r circumstances¡±.

The results ¨C which involved nearly 2,000 students across 18 courses ¨C showed a positive correlation for every course, with little variation by 바카라사이트 types of questions asked, 바카라사이트 field of study, 바카라사이트 course level, exam duration, or enrolment.

The findings,?, also showed little evidence that 바카라사이트 online exams were disproportionately advantageous for students who performed poorly on 바카라사이트 in-person exams, which suggests that ei바카라사이트r cheating was not widespread, or that cheating was ineffective at boosting exam performance.

However, more recent studies have found that?rates of cheating in online examinations have hit a record high?¨C?and have increased?since this study was conducted.

The researchers found that even in highly uncontrolled environments, online exams produced strikingly similar assessments of student learning relative to in-person exams.

¡°This encouraging finding, however, does not negate 바카라사이트 importance of rethinking assessment for online delivery, especially in light of 바카라사이트 explosive growth of generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, which can answer complex questions in ways that are nearly indistinguishable from humans,¡± 바카라사이트y write.

They say that given online exams can provide meaningful information student learning, educators can leverage 바카라사이트ir powerful advantages ¨C such as instant feedback, easy assignment of a random subset of questions to different students, and easy rescoring of individual questions ¨C to deliver better, more au바카라사이트ntic assessments.

patrick.jack@ws-2000.com