Exams and Assessments

• Plagiarism. If your students are turning in papers and you are concerned that they will not be properly attributing text quoted from a source, you can enable Turn it in through Canvas>Assignments

• Test question security. There is no good way to prevent students from making copies of the exam questions (e.g., by taking screenshots). Assume that any questions you use are 'out there' and will potentially be shared with future students.

Start each online quiz with a Code of Conduct pledge. Evidence shows that this actually reduces cheating.

Sample Pledge:

My course materials, including this quiz, are protected by U.S. copyright law and by University policy. I am the exclusive owner of the copyright in those materials I create.

You may not reproduce, distribute or display (post/upload) course materials in any way — whether or not a fee is charged — without my express prior written consent. You also may not allow others to do so. If you do so, you may be subject to student conduct proceedings under the UC Davis Code of Academic Conduct.

As you start this quiz, please remind yourself that as a student at UC Davis, you hold yourself to a high standard of integrity. By taking this online quiz, you reaffirm your pledge to act ethically by honoring the UC Davis Code of Academic Conduct

Check each box as your pledge that you are doing your own work.

If you can not honestly check each of these responses, please email me at vlcross@ucdavis.edu to explain your situation.

I pledge that I am an honest student with academic integrity and I will not cheat on this quiz

These answers are my own work.

I will not give any other student assistance on this quiz

I understand that to submit work that is not my own and pretend that it is mine is a violation of the UC Davis code of conduct and will be reported to Student Judicial Affairs.

I understand that suspected misconduct on this quiz will be reported to the Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs and, if established, will result in disciplinary sanctions up through Dismissal from the University and a grade penalty up to a grade of “F” for the course.

Canvas Pro Tip

If you are going to use a pledge on many assignments then you want to delve into Question Banks. Create a bank called Pledge with just the one pledge 'question'. The example above is Multiple Answer with all the options 'correct'. Then, on each assessment, +NewQuestionGroup > Link to Question Bank > Pick 1 Question > Worth 0 points.

The advantage of this is that you then have only one copy of the question. If you edit the pledge, it will update in all future assessments.

• Consider reducing reliance on a small number of high-stakes exams.

  • For example, you might have weekly quizzes and make them a large portion of the grade. (This does not eliminate the possibility of cheating, but makes it harder to coordinate ongoing cheating.)

  • Or embrace the lack of proctoring and assign short-answer questions, with permission for open book and open notes.

    • Make sure that the grading will not result in an undue burden on your TAs.

• If you must use closed-note, closed-book, multiple-choice exams, they will need to be proctored (e.g., using Examity). This is expensive, intrusive, and prone to technical issues, and we do not recommend it.

  • Many students may not have access to an actual computer or a private room for testing

  • Cost to the university: $12/hour/student ($7200 for a 200-person course with 3 one-hour exams)

  • Another approach that may be available soon is the Respondus Lockdown Browser

    • It prevents students from using any other software on their computers while taking an exam

    • However, it is not a perfect solution, because <newsflash - students have more than one device!> students can use their smartphones to access electronic materials during the exam, to take pictures of the questions on their screens, etc.

• We encourage you to include a statement of integrity/code of conduct pledge that students must affirm before taking the exam (e.g., as the first question on the exam).

Embrace open book, open notes. After all, don't you want to test your students' ability to go beyond regurgitating facts that are available on Google and instead ask them to apply their knowledge to new situations?

• Be aware of any increased demand on TA work load

• Canvas quizzes could be used for multiple choice, fill in, matching, essay questions.

• Follow low-stakes guidelines to minimize cheating.

• You can use TurnItIn to detect plagiarism and duplicate answers if they turn in a take-home exam as a PDF, but not if you use the Quiz tool in Canvas.

Giving students feedback on the exams is vitally important for them to understand the material.

• There is not a good solution for giving students exam feedback remotely without showing them the questions in a format where they could copy the intellectual property.

If you do not release exam questions after the exam, as soon as the students know that they will not be able to see these questions again (e.g., exam 2) they are likely to proactively gather the exam questions during the exam so that they can review them and check their answers in future.

We do not have a good solution for checking written exam answers against other student submissions.

To ensure privacy, don't discuss a student's exam during open office hours. Use a breakout room or schedule individual appointments.

In lieu of exams, consider having the students complete other assignments that can demonstrate their knowledge and be easily graded. Here are some suggestions.

Peer Grading: Canvas assignments can be set for peers to give feedback and grade using rubrics.

Examples:

Have students upload an image that relates to course material and explain how it is relevant

Discussion board (for a small seminar course). Have multiple weekly deadlines to enable interaction - interaction is unlikely to happen spontaneously. Turns out all of our students are deadline junkies. e.g., Every student will submit a xxx word posting by Wednesday 11:59pm; every student will respond to 3 other students by Saturday 11:59pm.

Brief short answer essay questions weekly that are graded as 0 (didn’t complete it), 1 (completed it but was inaccurate), 2 (some inaccuracies but some pieces are correct), or 3 (correct answer). Limit the amount of space they have to write and emphasize brevity as being important if you’re teaching a large class.

Have students write multiple choice questions.

Have students create a 1 minute video explaining a key concept - you will be amazed at what they will produce!

Use SONA online participation for extra credit

Find out what resources are available through the textbook publisher

• Invite up to 50 students to a Zoom meeting.

• Create up to 50 break out rooms. (Create as many as you might need because you can't add more later.)

• If using a password on the quiz, send it using Zoom>Chat before students go to the breakout rooms

• Assign each student to their own breakout room. As students join, make sure they have time to check in with you, ask any questions and get the password. Then assign them to an empty breakout room.

• Oversight

  • In the breakout rooms, students can turn on their camera.

  • In the breakout rooms, each student can share their screen.

• If students have questions, they can send a message to the host and you can join them in their break out room. If they are sharing their screen, addressing any questions they have is very efficient.

• Tell them that you will pop into rooms over the course of the exam. When you do pop in, have your video off so that you are not distracting.