
By Brianna Davis & Rashard Davis
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
The Problem
Back when classes were in person, students could cheat if they wanted to, but there were safeguards. Teachers looked over students’ shoulders during exams, specific seating arrangements were assigned and phones had to be neatly tucked away.
It could still be difficult to catch cases of plagiarism on assignments, but cheating took a fair amount of effort from students. But when COVID-19 forced virtual learning onto everyone, cheating became a whole lot easier, and preventing it became a whole lot harder.
In May 2020, Wiley, an education publisher, found that 93 percent of 789 professors believed that students are more likely to cheat during remote learning. The COVID-19 pandemic forced instructors to quickly adapt to remote instruction. Tests became more difficult to monitor because students took them at home. And students’ identities became more difficult to verify. The survey also showed that about half of instructors had no experience with online instruction prior to the pandemic. Some turned to monitoring software to try to prevent cheating — but that raised privacy concerns.
Students showed their frustration with take-home exams and other forms of assessments, as these Reddit threads and the #noexams hashtag on social media illustrate. Concerns weren’t just about cheating. Some students also felt they didn’t have enough time to complete assignments, and were taking exams in sub-optimal environments — their homes (which often weren’t quiet, well lit or conducive to thinking).
The Solution
Suzanne Loudermilk, an adjunct professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University, teaches news editing and introduction to media writing. Before the pandemic, Loudermilk gave exams in the classroom while students sat in their assigned seats and had until the end of the class period to complete the test. She decided to change her routine in spring 2020 for remote learning purposes.
The biggest change is that she made exams open note. Part of that was out of necessity — students could easily look up answers even if she didn’t let them. But there was another reason. Loudermilk said journalists are taught to be resourceful and look up answers — so letting them do that on exams mirrors what happens outside the classroom.
To prepare her students, she provides the class with an outlined PowerPoint for each chapter in the textbook and presents it during class. After class, the PowerPoint is uploaded to Blackboard. Students can look up the content without having to consult with classmates.
“I know it’s just such a struggle for everyone, and I didn’t want people to be unnecessarily tempted [to cheat],” Loudermilk said.
Another change she made was to give students more time. No longer were they required to complete exams within the class period. The exam is now accessible to students on Blackboard a week before it is due. Every class before the exam, Loudermilk gives a preview of the exam and allows for students to ask last-minute questions.
Exams are made up of multiple-choice questions and short answer questions. The test is also timed but students are given the choice to stop and resume the test another time before the due date with the remaining time left.
By supplying straightforward PowerPoints for each chapter, Loudermilk’s exam strategy lifts the burden of a massive search for information when completing open book exams. The strategy can also help exams be less stressful — especially for students who have busy schedules or may not have been financially able to afford the course required materials.
Evidence of Effectiveness/Insights
Daija Edwards, a senior biology major at Bowie State University, thinks that more professors should use the open-book strategy for exams. She said this way of giving tests allowed her to “go into the exams knowing that at least I need to know a little something, but knowledge is made easier to… not cheat but to use my resources.”
Added Loudermilk: “For many of the students, they’re working one, maybe two jobs and they also have families. I know that finances are a struggle, and those textbooks are expensive. I hope people can get them because there’s so much more information than I can cover, but I try to cover the high points so that everybody has access … whether they can afford the textbooks or not.”
Loudermilk said students haven’t raised concerns about her exams from her students, and students are generally performing better. She hopes to get feedback about her exams at the end of the semester because students and faculty at Towson take the end-of-semester course evaluations seriously.
“Everyone is doing really well — all the students in my classes are passing and did really well on their midterms,” Loudermilk said.
She said that that some of the writing portions of her exams in her introduction to media writing course can be the most challenging for students.
Loudermilk believes that it is much easier to monitor an exam in the classroom. Knowing that this strategy is temporary, she hopes that when students return to the classroom they will be prepared enough to not cheat on their exam when in-person learning returns.
Limitations
Because some students think open-book exams are less challenging, they may spend less time preparing and learning the material.
Once Loudermilk’s online exams are submitted, students are not able to edit their answers — the test is to be completed within a certain time. Even though the exam is open book, this exam strategy may not effective for courses that require students to memorize content.
Whether students take their exam virtually or in person there can loopholes for students to use their resources during exams.
Some instructors try their best to combat these loopholes, while others embrace the flexibility of these exams.