In view of the steady improvement of Google Translate and similar sites, and the temptations that arise when students are working remotely, L2 instructors are understandably concerned about maintaining academic integrity in their courses.
As suggested in the discussion of academic integrity in the Syllabus section, it is strongly recommended:
- that instructors provide clear guidelines for quizzes and tests in the course
- that these guidelines are adapted realistically to a remote learning environment, in which students may be using their computers to take tests — which would presumably not be the case in a F2F version of the same course — and need to be warned against using online grammar and spelling aids
- that these guidelines be included with each test, and not merely at the beginning of the semester.
If you suspect students are cheating on tests or quizzes in the course, consider implementing some of these options for test design and administration:
- Avoid test items that lend themselves easily to online solutions, e.g., vocabulary quizzes (“What does ____ mean in English?”) or sentence-level translations. Instead, create CLOZE-style testing items, or finish-the-stem sentences, i.e., items that cannot be easily looked up online. OR: Give students sentences with errors written into them and ask students to identify and explain the errors.
- Require students to record themselves in a Zoom session while taking the test, stipulating that they cannot pause the video recording once they start.
- If time zones permit, administer the test verbally via Zoom by reading the questions and then giving students a stated amount of time to respond in writing, and record the Zoom session for checking later. Example: For an L2 vocabulary test: Create an audio quiz with you providing the definition (or the L2 word), and allowing a reasonable amount of time for students to write the word (or the L1 definition).
- Have students at more advanced levels create a video (Zoom / Flipgrid / etc.) in which they explain the concepts that you want to test — in L1 or L2, as you prefer. Example: You send them a (correct) L2 sentence or set of sentences, and for the test they create a short video in which they explain an assigned aspect of it: morpheme use / word order / conjugations / fixed combinations of verbs and prepositions / style and register / where the L2 example differs from English. (This idea is taken from Rhett Allain’s online article cited below.)
- Avoid using previous tests for remote assessments, which may be available in some dark corner of the internet or on a friend’s computer.
- If possible, schedule tests to be taken at the same time, in order to decrease the possibility (and temptation) of students’ providing test questions and answers to each other. You can send out the questions at a prescribed time, and require students to send their answers back to you within an allotted timeframe.
- Lower the stakes for each assessment by giving shorter tests more frequently; students may feel less pressure to cheat if they know that they have many opportunities to show you what they actually do know.
References & Resources
Allain, R. (2020). How to stop students from cheating on remote tests during a pandemic. OneZero. (Accessed July 13, 2020)
Ko, S. and Rossen, S. (2017). Course design and development (Chapter 3, especially pp. 81ff). Teaching Online: A Practical Guide. New York & London: Routledge.
Christe, B. (2003). Designing online courses to discourage dishonesty. Educause Quarterly, 4, 54-58.
Lee, C. (2020). How to uphold academic integrity in remote learning. https://www.turnitin.com/blog/how-to-uphold-academic-integrity-in-remote-learning. (Accessed June 15, 2020)
Orosz, G, Toth-Kiraly, I, Böthe, B, Kusztor, A, Kovacs, Z. and Janvan, M. (2015). Teacher enthusiasm: A potential cure of academic cheating. Frontiers in Psychology. Published online 2015 Mar 31.