Teachers often are concerned that students working online might be prone to cheat on homework and assessments. Here are a few tips to help avoid this problem using your language program’s Supersite or Prime online course.
- Be clear about your expectations with your students:
a. Make sure your students clearly understand the different actions that you would consider cheating.
b. Have students commit to a ‘Code of Conduct’ that clearly lays out the ground rules for what is, and is not, acceptable for your online assignments. - Add more ‘open-ended’ activities to your class that require students to provide a personal response (that you can read, watch, and/or listen to and evaluate):
a. The following activities are examples that require written or oral production:
i. Composition and Open-ended writing activities
ii. Student recording audio activities
iii. Partner Chats
iv. Virtual Chats
b. If you are concerned about the time needed to grade open-ended answers, here are some tips:
i. In the grading area, the “Spot-check” feature enables you to review a certain number of the students in detail, and then grant full access to the rest of your students. This enables you to identify trends and keep students honest, while avoiding a full review for all students’
submissions.
ii. Assign open-ended activities to a ‘Credit’ gradebook category. This enables you to review student work, if you choose, but otherwise grants full credit to students for their submission. - Take steps to customize or “randomize” assessments, such as tests and quizzes:
a. The toolset included in Custom Assessment allows you to create duplicates of existing assessments and then modify them as desired. Modifications may include:
i. ‘Shuffling’ the order of questions in an assessment.
ii. Adding new sections to an existing assessment: - For example, add an open-ended writing prompt to an otherwise ‘auto-graded’ lesson test to ensure some written production.
b. Limit the amount of time that a student can work with an assessment by utilizing the ‘time-limit’
feature when assigning.
i. Note that if time limits pose problems for some students, you can provide individual students in your class with a different time-limit or none at all.
c. Password-protect the assessment. For K-12 students, an emailed password to parents can help ensure that students are accessing the Assessment in a controlled environment.
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