How to prevent cheating in online classes? Use these 4 teaching hacks. 

Online learning has become the ‘new lifestyle’ for education. 

Classrooms have turned virtual, converting education into a technologically developed sector. 

Though this development has several positives, one of the common issues faced by it is rampant cheating. 

Video classes support a certain level of interaction, however, the absence of an in-person interaction has led to ‘easy cheating’ in online classes and exams. 

If you are a first-time teacher, then you should know the different ways in which cheating happens and understand how to prevent cheating in online classes. 

All of this is covered in this blog post. Read on.

How Do Students Cheat In Online Exams?

Students are more advanced than the teachers in using technology to their advantage. 

The following are some of the ways in which students cheat in online exams.

Using two devices at the same time 

• This is probably the simplest of ways to perform cheating and also one of the most common techniques. 
• Connecting to the class /exam on a desktop and “googling” for answers in another device (such as mobile) is very common.

Screen sharing with friends 

• Students share their screen with a friend and get help from them for the questions. 

Proxy writer

• Student gives complete control of their system to a proxy writer who writes the exam on their behalf.

Are Online Students More Likely to Cheat?

Students resort to shortcuts when they don’t feel connected to the course. 

Like e.g giving namesake assignments without understanding their needs ends up with students googling the shortcuts and passing the exam with minimal efforts. 

In a recent survey titled: Cheating in the Digital Age, 32.1% admitted to cheating in a classroom, and 32.7% of students admitted to cheating in an online class. 

As per the report, cheating online is slightly higher with students asking help from friends to answer quizzes. 

Related Post: How to find a course topic your students will love

So, why do students cheat? 

Like I mentioned above, student’s cheat when they can’t connect with the course. 

Another reason could be that they are unclear about the assignment. There is also undue pressure for the student to ace the test without much preparation. 

However, In most cases, the more disconnect a student has with the instructor the higher are the chances of resorting to malpractices. 

Related Post: Best Practice Tips To Prepare Your Online Classes

4 Teaching Hacks You Can Use To Prevent Cheating

Most people have a misconception that it is impossible to eradicate cheating in online classes and exams. 

But Rohini, one of our earliest clients, who faced a lot of cheating incidents in her academy, completely suppressed them.

She embraced the following tricks and techniques to achieve this feat.

Clarify The Course Objective & Student Benefit 

• She clearly explained the purpose of the assignments and told the students what to do in it. 
• Also, she highlighted the student benefits. This motivated her students to put the necessary efforts to complete them. 

Create Application Oriented Questions

• She converted all the tests into an open book and open internet tests. 
• And, created questions that required a conceptual understanding of the subject rather than answering from a simple web search. 

Use Open Ended Essay Type Quizzes

• She also crafted questions that asked for the students’ opinions rather than a direct answer. 
• Her questions gave students the desire to showcase their unique answers. 

Reduce Class Duration and Increase The Engagement

• She limited the class duration to 30 minutes (from an earlier duration of 1 hour).
•  Interacted with the students through Q&A and discussions after the class. 
• The students started understanding the topics better, asked questions, and never felt the need to cheat again.

By incorporating these techniques, the cheating in her class completely got eliminated and her purpose of teaching got achieved. 

Related Post: Make Engaging Classes With A Blended Learning Approach

Apart from these techniques, you can also try the below techniques to reduce cheating

• Locking tab switching so that students can’t switch screens to search for answers.
• Setting full-screen mode for the test page. This prevents students from moving out of the application during the test.
• Personally invigilate through webcams and if anybody switches off the video, he/she gets caught red-handed.
• Restricting key pressing is a good way to avoid switching between windows.

Advanced technologies that can detect cheating

The below technologies can also help to detect cheating in online exams – 

Online Proctoring 

Just like an invigilator in a physical classroom test, an online proctoring system can monitor the students in an exam. 

Biometric scanner

An AI-powered biometric scanner can be used to ensure the authenticity of the students’ identity, which eliminates impersonation.

Facial recognition and fingerprint scanning are the most common checks done to authenticate the identity.

Plagiarism Checker

Students tend to search for answers on the internet and everyone ends up writing the same answer for a particular question. 

In such cases, plagiarism detectors come in handy. 

Teachers can run the plagiarism software on the answer scripts and easily find out whether the answer was copied or not. 

Here are a few suggested plagiarism detectors for teachers:
Turnitin – Best for Teachers & Educators
Prepostseo – Best for Teachers & Students

Other Advanced Technologies

Other technology like keystroke recognition and IP address tracker, can also be used to detect cheating. 

Keystroke recognition can detect keystrokes and typing patterns, to ensure that students do not copy and paste answers from a website. 

IP address tracking can be used to detect proxy writers writing from another location. 

Related Post: How To Secure Your Exam Contents Using Exam Software

Conclusion 

Be it online or offline, students can always resort to cheating. So, then how to prevent cheating in online classes? 

By giving your students the best way to interact and be understood. Create your course materials that make it rewarding for them to submit assignments. 

Don’t load them with assignments. Remember that, it’s the student’s job to do the assignments. But it’s the instructor’s job to create a learning context for your students. 

More than 300+ instructors use question randomization and limiting the number of test-attempts to prevent cheating in online classes.

So, what are the next steps? 

At Learnyst, we help you with the entire process of course creation to marketing, creating your own branded online academy.

If you already have course content ready, signup with us and get your online academy free for 14 days.

You can create your own branded online academy, upload, sell, and get 100% course sales credited to your bank account during this 14 day trial period.

So, go ahead. Create and Sell Courses online and make 10X revenue within months.