One of the issues that you may have to deal with when teaching an

online class is attempting to prevent students from cheating on

quizzes and exams. While complete prevention cannot be guaranteed,
there are things you can do to mitigate students from cheating online.

A colleague of mine contacted me for advice because he suspected that

his online students were cheating on his quizzes and exams. He
noticed that a lot of the students were earning high grades on his
online assessments. It was as though they had access to the answer
key to his exams. My colleague wanted to know if there was an online
tool that could help with the cheating problem.

Fortunately, there are several tools available; however, these tools

need to be utilized in concert with some other techniques.

Here are 6 ways to make it more difficult for students to cheat online:

1. Test bank: If you are using the publisher test bank you risk
having answer keys floating around on the Internet that students
might be able to download and use during your exam. I would
highly suggest that you begin writing your own quizzes and
exams. I don’t mean taking the publisher’s material and
recycling them, I’m talking about creating original questions
created by you. Be sure to shuffle or randomize the questions
and answers for each student.
2. Time limit: Limit the time for a quiz or exam so that students
who studied have just enough time to read and answer the
questions promptly. They should not have enough time to look
up the answers. There isn’t a scientific formula for the length of
time per question, but if your quizzes and exams are multiple
choice, I would recommend 45 seconds per word question and a
minute or two for questions that require calculations. When
determining the length needed, test your time limits by taking
the assessments yourself.
3. Types of Questions: If you are in the habit of only using
multiple-choice questions for your assessments, STOP! Use a
combination of questions types including multiple-choice, short-
 answers, essays, and problems. Yes, it will take you longer to
grade, but it will maintain the integrity and academic rigor of
your course assessments while mitigating cheating.
4. Detailed Work: If your assessments include problems that
students have to solve, list them as short-answer questions
rather than multiple choice. Insist that the students write every
step that they took in order to get to the correct answer. Inform
your students that simply listing the correct answer is
insufficient and that no credit will be awarded unless all steps
are listed and the answer is correct.
5. Online Tools: There are several proctoring tools that you can
use to mitigate cheating online, some of these tools or services
include: Proctorio, Respondus Lockdown browser, ProctorU,
and examity. Some of these services or programs force the
student to verify their identity to a remote proctor by showing
their face, ID, and their testing environment before taking the
exam. Some of the other tools include software that has to be
installed on the student’s computer and it locks the computer so
that students are not able to surf the Internet, print, or look up
answers. These tools are not free, so check with your school to
find out if they subscribe to any of them.

Students are pretty crafty and some of them would rather take the
time to look up the answer and cheat rather than study and earn an
honest grade. The onus is on you the faculty to ensure that you are
doing everything possible to cover the material and also monitor and
mitigate opportunities for cheating.