Problematic plagiarism
One of the biggest issues in exams across the globe is cheating; it’s almost unavoidable. In fact, studies show, over 50,000 university students have been accused of plagiarism over the last 3 years. However, what’s not unavoidable is catching it! Before the times of digital exams being able to do this was troublesome, and somewhat controversial.
For summative high stakes exams, the consequences of cheating mean an unequal chance for all your students and could also mean a student who is not properly trained being passed as a doctor or dentist who could then be practising on your family members or friends. So, how do we go about spotting suspicious behaviour?
How to beat the cheats
Unless you’re using a digital exam system, it is much harder to detect cheating in an exam. But why is this?
By using a digital exam system, you have access to:
- IP addresses: indicating if students are sat in close proximity of one another
- Timestamps: showing students looking at the same question at the same time
- Logging of activity in exam application: trace keystrokes, user interaction etc.
Using digital smarts to unveil suspicious behaviour
These smarts mean a piece of digital exam software, like Maxexam, can provide an accurate analysis of monitoring suspicious behaviour, all at the click of a button.
Maxexam provides the ability to:
- Pair candidates with most suspicious behaviour according to the Harpp & Hogan index (this is time-consuming without a digital system)
- Identify the number of similarities in both answering correctly, and incorrectly between students
- Compare timestamped activity between any two given students and identify suspicious behaviour between the two
A digital exam system reveals interesting trends that would not be seen in paper based exams. For example, digital exam software shows you where a student may have quickly flicked through an exam paper in order to reach the same question as another student so that they could copy.
Making exams fair
It is always going to be tough to eliminate the entirety of cheating in examinations. However, what cheat detection in a digital exam software platform presents, is a rigorous, time saving process that is not in any way tedious to fulfil.
The outcome of a high-stakes assessment could well be the decision between an individual qualifying as a doctor or not which is why it is so important to reveal this kind of behaviour.
Maxexam can provide an accurate analysis of all suspicious candidates, and supply a solid foundation for further investigation. If you want to find out more about cheat detection email info@maxinity.co.uk or fill in our contact form.
