Alternatives to Proctoring

What options are there?

Academic integrity and rigor are important to instructors regardless of how their course is being taught. Assessments, whether in an on-ground course or online, are important tools that help instructors and students understand how content is being mastered and where there may still be gaps in understanding. While proctoring online assessments is often a go-to strategy to maintain rigor and cut back on cheating, a proctored exam is not always the best way for students to demonstrate their knowledge (Sullivan, 2016) nor is proctoring always beneficial to student success (Daffin & Jones, 2018; Muller et al., 2019). There are a variety of ways instructors can use quality assessment design and evaluation to encourage student honesty and maintain an appropriate level of challenge. Please consider the options below:

Assessment Techniques

1) Random Questions- Create assessments that will distribute a unique set of questions to individual learners. Doing so can help reduce instances of cheating. eCourseware offers two ways to create randomized questions. Adding a Random Question Pool to a quiz adds a subset of questions from a larger question pool resulting in a different version of the quiz for each student. Question pools can be drawn from a Question Library and/or from questions that are in other quizzes within the course.

Video Tutorial: Create a New Quiz with A Randomized Set of Questions

2) Shuffling questions at the quiz level can be done without creating a random question pool. When questions are shuffled, every student gets the same set of questions; however, the order of questions presented will be different for every student. Quiz answers can also be shuffled to add additional variety to a quiz. To learn more, review each of the videos below:

Video Tutorial: Quizzes—Shuffle Questions

3) Setting completion time reduces a student’s ability to access the test, look up the answers, or re-enter a test.

4) Set a short window for testing completion, i.e. one or two days to take an exam rather than a whole week.

5) Require forced completion on exams so students cannot re-enter a test.

6) Use Security Options in eCourseware like 'Password Protect' to require students to type in a password before they can take a quiz. Use a robust username and password to protect computer-based exams.

7) When applicable with course objectives, incorporate at least one higher order thinking question or prompt that asks students to synthesize, create, evaluate, or apply concepts and skills. Even if students do use their resources to help answer this type of question, it is very unlikely a textbook, classmate, or Google search would provide the unique answer a well-designed higher order written-response prompt requires.

8) Use a variety of assessment strategies (e.g. quizzes, short and long papers, video presentation submissions, test questions that require the application of theory or concept, written short answer responses where students relate key concepts to real-life, personal experiences).

9) Emphasize assignments that require written work and problem solving (e.g. essays, papers, online discussions).

Evaluation Techniques

Resources:

Check out these resources for more information on creating quality assessments without proctoring:

But What If They Cheat? Giving Non-Proctored Online Assessments (December 8, 2017). Retrieved from: FacultyFocus.com
This document serves to promote e-Learning faculty with guidelines and strategies to promote academic integrity in online classes. More specifically, general guidelines to prevent and curb cheating in the online learning environment are presented, including strategies to thwart cheating on written work and high-stake assessments.
Guidelines to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Classes
Online quizzes are great! They are a quick and easy way to assess recollection and identification of key ideas; not to mention, they ease the marking burden too! Brightspace by D2L, provides easy-to-use features for managing your online tests and quizzes. [Written for the Brightspace Community by Matt Farrell and Shannon Maheu, both of Fanshawe College, March 24, 2018.] Using Brightspace to Stop Cheating
For many courses of varying format and size, across many disciplines, reasonable alternatives to traditional tests (i.e., paper-based T/F or Multiple Choice) exist. In fact, oftentimes the alternatives may even be advantageous to promote student learning and be more authentic means of students demonstrating what they have learned at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (synthesis, analysis, evaluation). To learn more, review Alternatives to Traditional Testing powered by UC Berkeley—Center for Teaching & Learning (Copyright © 2020 UC Regents; all rights reserved.
To demonstrate and maintain academic integrity, some institutions require proctor supervision of online exams. This paper examines the control issues related to online exams and asserts that the total cost of proctors for online exams (time and money of both students and the institution) exceed potential benefits.
Cluskey, G.R., Ehlen, C., Raiborn, M.H. (YYYY). Thwarting online exam cheating without proctor supervision. Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. Pages 1-8. Thwarting online exam cheating without proctor supervision

Pedagogical References:

Daffin, Jr., L.W., & Jones, A.A. (2018). Comparing student performance on proctored and non proctored exams in online psychology courses. Online Learning, 22(1), 131-145. doi:10.24059/olj.v22i1.1079
Best Practice Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Education. Instructional Technology Council. (June 2009, version 2.0). Link to electronic resource
Muller, K., Gradel, K., Deane, S., Forte, M., McCabe, R., Pickett, A. M., Piorkowski, R., Scalzo, K., & Sullivan, R. (2019, October). Assessing student learning in the online modality (Occasional Paper No. 40). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). Link to electronic resource pages 10-12.
Sullivan, D. (2016). An Integrated Approach to Preempt Cheating on Asynchronous, Objective, Online Assessments in Graduate Business Classes. Online Learning, 20(3), 195 - 209. Link to electronic resources.