eKlausur@home - Minimising the risk of cheating in an online exam

ONLINEPRUEFUNG 20-005

What you need to know

An eExam@home is an exam that takes place within a fixed and short time frame (e.g. 90 minutes) on the student's home computer.
The exam is taken at the same time (synchronously) for all students (with or without the camera switched on).
Students work on a FELIX test, which can consist of different question formats (e.g. single-choice, multiple-choice,drag and drop, true/false, cloze, hotspot, free text, file upload, etc.).

With the obligatory declaration students confirm beforehand that they will take the online exam without outside help and only with aids that have been approved by you, i.e. that have been recorded and communicated in writing. Aids can be, for example: literature, Internet pages, notes and text modules saved on the PC, PowerPoint slides of the lecture, lecture notes.
Since an exchange between students or a recourse to aids that may not be permitted by you cannot be excluded in a controllable manner, we recommend designing an eKlausur@home as an open-book exam.
In an open-book- exam, students have the opportunity to draw on all possible sources - as is the case, for example, with a written paper. Of course, plagiarism is still forbidden.
Automatically evaluable question formats should be avoided or kept to a minimum in an open-book exam, since copying can hardly be prevented in such cases.
An open-book exam therefore requires tasks that are aimed at the transfer performance of the students.
Content should be tested that is aimed at higher cognitive requirements than pure explanation (reproduction) and / or the naming of learning content. The tested content should necessarily derive from the teaching objectives of your course.

Tasks with a higher cognitive demand level are for example:
- Application tasks (e.g. How would you proceed in the situation presented?)
- Analysis of situations (e.g. Work out three strengths and three weaknesses of XY),
- Evaluation (e.g., Give three reasons for your approach).
- Development (e.g., Develop an empirical research design for the following question).

FELIX question formats such as "free text" (allows a limit on the number of characters for easier correction) or "upload file" allow such transfer work to be submitted digitally directly in the FELIX test. Answering such question formats requires an individual creative effort. Answers can thus not be copied directly from the web, lecture slides or literature. However, they cannot be evaluated automatically and underlying assessment criteria derived from your teaching objectives are mandatory for evaluation.

In contrast, an eKlausur@home is a closed-book exam in which no aids are allowed.

In this guide, we have compiled some recommendations for both open-book and closed-book exams.
They are intended to minimise a risk of unwanted collusion before, during and after the exam.

What you have to do

  1. Before the exam

    • Communication:
      Be sure to discuss your plan, the tools allowed, and consequences of attempted cheating.
      Please feel free to use our PDF that we have compiled for ekl@home for this purpose. You can find it on the information page of your exam course, in the "General information" section.

    • Randomisation in a FELIX test (see Helpcard 20-070).
      Reduce the risk of copying by randomising the answer options within the questions (to be considered already when creating the questions!), the questions within the test as well as sections within a test if necessary. All questions will then appear in random order.

      Random assignment of questions in a FELIX test (see Helpcard 20-075).
      If you create several question variants of a question, then FELIX can randomly distribute question variants within a section to the examinees.
      Each examinee then does not work on all questions, but on one question variant.
      Thus, depending on the number of available questions, individual exams can be created. Already with, for example, four variants of a question you reduce the risk that exactly the persons with the same question will find each other within a short time to compare.
      It should be noted that these questions must be equivalent in terms of content and should be backed by these evaluation criteria.
      Examples:
      Math tasks with different numerical values.
      Development of a concept for a specific task (marketing concept for product XY, health promotion in department XY).

    • Limit time: having to answer many questions within a short period of time can reduce the risk of collusion or using some kind of help.

  2. During an exam
    Prevent students starting the exam at different times.
    Usually your FELIX exam test has a configured processing period (e.g. 90 min).
    This processing period runs from the start time.

    • If someone starts later than agreed, then this person also has the full test duration available - if you do not prevent this manually as we recommend!
      Please do not set a time limit on access to the exam!
      In our experience there are individuals who need a test period extension and therefore you have to control access and test duration manually.

    • Observe the start of the exam in the assessment tool. If someone has not started the FELIX test after a predefined time for unknown reasons (for example, 5 to 10 minutes), you can withdraw the Felix test of the corresponding person (see Helpcard 2060).

    • It is essential to perform the following steps towards the end of the exam:
      Collect tests, block access to the test module, set exam course status to "Preparation".
      Please follow the step-by-step instructions on Helpcard 20-020.

  3. After the exam: carry out plagiarism scans for free text questions, if applicable. Conduct announced oral exams for suspected cases, if applicable.

Problems or questions?

ZLL | Learning Services
Your contact for innovative teaching

FU C1.10 | VS C1.01 | TUT A3.04

Contact us at the following number 07723 920 1382 or log a support request under "FELIX" at servicedesk.hs-furtwangen.de.