STOPPING STUDENTS CHEATING
While online testing has many benefits, e.g. using LISA to mark your students' answers (🙂), the ways that students can cheat in a test have also increased. There are things that can be done to reduce students' cheating, but ultimately none are entirely foolproof.
This article describes how students can use their computer to cheat and then discusses things that LISA does, and teachers can do to reduce the incidence of student cheating.
HOW CAN STUDENTS CHEAT IN AN ONLINE TEST?
Technology has improved the administration, and now marking, of tests. However, it's also increased the ways that students can cheat. In an online test, students can:
- Access another website
Students can open another tab in their browser and go to a site, e.g. ChatGPT, and enter the question as a prompt. They can they paste the answer back into the test. - Message another student or person
Students can use message (email, etc) another student or person with the test question and get them to write the answer. - Use a pre-saved answer
Students could have a pre-saved answer, especially if another class has already sat the test and told other students what the question is, and paste this into the test. - Give someone else remote control of their computer
Students could give someone external, control of their computer. If you've ever contacted an online helpdesk, they may have asked you to give them control of your computer.
WHAT DOES LISA DO TO REDUCE CHEATING?
Teachplus is currently investing ways of stopping or minimising students' ability to cheat in tests. We are trying to avoid students having to download software on to their device to do so. Unfortunately it's not easy to do this from a web browser for reasons explained below.
In the meantime, we have done the following to reduce student cheating when they use LISA:
- No cut and paste
We've turned off students' ability to paste anything into LISA when they sit a test. This makes the test more like a pen and paper test, where students can't copy and paste either. - No autocorrect or autosuggest
Technically this isn't cheating, however, to ensure that the students work is their own, we've disabled any automated spelling features in LISA.
We are looking at other options, including 3rd-party solutions that we can integrate into LISA. We will liaise with schools as we develop this further.
WHAT CAN TEACHERS DO TO REDUCE CHEATING?
Teachplus is currently investing ways of stopping or minimising students' ability to cheat in tests. We are trying to avoid students having to download software on to their device to do so. Unfortunately it's not easy to do this from a web browser for reasons explained below.
In the meantime, we have done the following to reduce student cheating when they use LISA:
- Vary questions
LISA has many questions for you to use. Set up two (or more) tests so that students sit a test of the same level / complexity, but with different questions. - Refer to the resource in your question
Having a resource that students must reference in their answer will make it more difficult for students to prompt an AI, as they must first merge the resource and question ... and then carefully distinguish these to the AI in their prompt. It will be time-consuming and more prone to error by the AI. - Use an Image
Put text into an image and refer to this in the question, or create an image that has your question in it. This can be read by AI, but not as easily as text. It raises the difficulty for students to prompt an external AI. - Know your students
A purpose of LISA is to reduce the overhead of teaching, and therefore encourage teachers to test more often with smaller, informal tests. This will help you build a set of results for your students and get to know their writing. You can then use your judgment to determine if the writing is in line with their past work. If it has significantly improved, ask the student "What have you changed about your writing that makes it so much better?".
WHAT ABOUT STUDENTS SITTING A TEST AT HOME?
Teachers can use LISA to get students to sit a practice test at home or schools can use it to test international students before they leave home to travel to your school. In this situation there is no point trying to prevent cheating. Even if you could control the students' computer, you have no control over who's writing the test or if a student has a second computer sitting alongside them.
Student use of LISA at home needs to be done on a trust basis.
Why is it difficult to lock down a browser?
Web browser developers have designed browsers not to let websites take control of a visitor's browser or computer. This makes sense. If websites could do this, there would some websites that use this to maliciously take control of a visitor's computer. They could then hold the visitor to ransom to get control back, or use the computer for illegal purposes.