Secure Blackboard Exams

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Secure Blackboard Exams

• You Can Do It!

Kathleen Miller, Professor of Nursing, Grand
Rapids Community College Rob Gibson, Director of
Instructional Technology, Friends University
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• About Grand Rapids Community College
• Located in Grand Rapids, MI
• Public community college in an urban setting
  founded in 1914
• 14,000 students for winter 06
• 4000 non-credit students
• Traditional students for transfer to 4 year
  institutions, terminal degrees from professional
  and occupational programs, non-traditional adult
  student for job retraining, community enrichment
• Currently uses Blackboard 6.2 and will be moving
  to 7.0 spring 06
• College has used Securexam since 2003

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• About Friends University
• Located in Wichita, KS
• Independent Christian University
• Approximately 2,800 students
• Adult (non-traditional) Graduate and Traditional
  Undergraduate
• Currently utilize Blackboard 6.2 Academic System
  and will be moving to 7.1 summer 06
• The University has utilized Securexam since 2001

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• Is cheating a problem on your campus?
• Research suggests it may be a very big problem
• Perhaps bigger than you may realize

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• Who cheats?
• In a recent survey conducted by Who's Who Among
  American High School Students, 80 of
  high-achieving high-school students admitted to
  having cheated at least once 50 said they did
  not believe cheating was necessarily wrong 95
  of the cheaters said theyve never been caught.
  According to the Center for Academic Integrity at
  Duke University, 75 of college students confess
  to cheating at least once
• Technology makes it easy. Savvy hackers and
  ordinary kids alike are using the Internet,
  pagers, and cell phones to cheat
• In a study of 500 middle and high school
  students, Rutgers University management Prof.
  Donald McCabe found that more than two thirds
  said doing work with classmates didn't count as
  cheating, and half thought it was fine for
  parents to do their homework

U.S. News and World Report. (1999) Exclusive
Poll Cheaters Win.Lake, C.
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• Who cheats?
• Almost 74 of students have observed collegiate
  cheating
• 43 students have witnessed the detection of
  cheating
• 45.6 have confessed to cheating at least once
• Males report a significantly higher incidence of
  cheating than do females, although there are no
  differences between freshmen and sophomores, dorm
  residents and off-campus students, and full-time
  and part-time students
• Both male students and dorm students report a
  higher and statistically significant willingness
  to assist another student in cheating
• Although a substantially high percentage of all
  respondents agree that cheating is ethically
  wrong, nearly half of the respondents find
  cheating to be socially acceptable
• Dormitory students perceive cheating to be more
  socially acceptable than do off campus students

An Examination of Student Cheating in the
Two-Year College (2003).Smyth, M. Davis J.
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• Who cheats?
• Business majors tend to score lower on measures
  of moral development and moral reasoning than
  some other majors (particularly when compared to
  liberal arts students)
• Cheating behaviors are a function of situational
  factors that appear to be either independent of
  or are at least poorly correlated to the level of
  moral development
• Data suggest that instructors who repeatedly use
  the same topic for a final paper are encouraging
  cheating this supports Thornton and Peterson's
  (2000) finding that using the same examination
  each semester encourages cheating

Examining the Decision Process of Students'
Cheating Behavior An Empirical Study
(2004).Bernhardt, R., Metzger, R., Bruno, R.
Hoogkamp, M.
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• So, where are the faculty?

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• So, where are the faculty?
• A survey consisting of 25 questions was completed
  by 742 faculty
• The results indicated that faculty do not
  perceive academic dishonesty to be a serious
  problem!
• Faculty believed themselves to be familiar with
  current policy and procedure and were unconcerned
  with policy implementation
• 86 have suspected and 65 have been certain of
  academic dishonesty in their classrooms
• Most of the faculty did not regularly follow
  institutional policy rather, handled incidents
  of cheating and plagiarism on an individual
  basis. They believed responsibility for reducing
  academic dishonesty lay primarily with students
  and individual faculty
• The fact that 86 of the studied faculty
  suspected academic dishonesty in their classrooms
  but did not perceive it to be a major problem
  should be investigated further

Academic Dishonesty, Plagiarism Included, in the
Digital Age A Literature Review
(2004).Ercegovac, Z. Richardson, J.
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• So, where are the faculty?
• Donald McCabe, Associate Provost for Campus
  Development at Rutgers surveyed 1,800 students on
  nine campuses in 1993 and found that 70 of the
  students had cheated at least once during their
  college careers. But when Mr. McCabe asked 800
  professors at 16 institutions if they had ever
  reported cheating, 40 said "never," 54 checked
  "seldom" and a mere 6 picked "often.
• Concerns regarding potential legal action or
  lengthy student appeals dissuaded many faculty
  from reporting this problem

Why Professors Don't Do More to Stop Students Who
Cheat. (1999) Chronicle of Higher Education.
Schneider, A.
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• Bring on Secure Testing!
• Advantages
• Utilizes a proprietary browser
• Password protected (student does not see the
  password)
• Student cannot e-mail web-surf instant-message
  print copy-paste or browse to other portions of
  the course
• Certain keystrokes are disabled
• Securexam browser can be set up in a computer lab
  or on individual students computers (distance
  education students)
• Significantly reduces a students ability to
  cheat during an online test
• Extremely reliable software

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• Bring on Secure Testing!
• Disadvantages
• One disadvantage weve noted relates to
  Blackboard If the assessment is set to allow
  students to see the correct answers immediately
  following the conclusion, the student can,
  conceivably, enter the course through a normal
  browser following the test gt select his/her grade
  gt view the assessment results gt print the answers
  gt distribute to other students
• This can be manually corrected if the
  instructor makes a change in the test settings
  immediately following the test to prevent
  students from reviewing the answers. However,
  this would need to be done as close to the
  conclusion of the test as possible.
• A special Bb sidebar option must be created in
  conjunction with Software Secures software
  engineering services. Friends utilizes Tests
  Quizzes, GRCC utilizes Tests and Quizzes. Any
  deviation in this wording will result in a test
  that cannot be launched. This has required
  training to educate the faculty

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• What the faculty are saying

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How Securexam works
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• Some benefits to faculty in addition to security
• Less class time used for testing
• Less faculty time for grading
• Ease in making changes in test questions
• Less dispute about test questions
• Direct grade entry into Bb
• Some benefits for students
• Immediate feedback at completion of the exam
• Prepares them for the computerized licensure exam
• They are comfortable with technology

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• Student access
• Enter Securexam browser which then allows them to
  log on to Bb
• Once in Bb through Securexam, all options except
  the test are closed to the student
• At completion of the test session change
  feedback options to score only to prevent access
  to the test document
• Disabled keystrokes
• All Function Keys F1-F12
• Right-Click and Double-Click-All right-click and
  double-click functions can be executed by using
  the pull-down menus
• Start Menu Button
• Ctrl-Alt-Delete-With the exception of Windows
  2000 and NT, Securexam disables the
  Ctrl-Alt-Delete key sequence manual restart
  function. With Windows 2000 and NT, the
  Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence will send a user to the
  Windows Security Screen, from which the Task
  Manager has been disabled

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• Contact Information
• Kathleen Miller - kmiller_at_grcc.edu
• Robert Gibson - gibsonr_at_friends.edu
• Software Secure
• http//www.softwaresecure.com/