Designing and conducting student assessment

Topic: Teaching online

How can you ensure academic integrity and prevent plagiarism when your students are working online?

This topic is designed to help you improve:

What do you think? iconIn this topic, two excerpts from recent papers put opposing views about the possibility of plagiarism in online assessment.

What do you think: Is the possibility of plagiarism increased or decreased in online assessment?

 

Further reading icon Further reading on this topic:

 

Marais, E., Minaar, U., & Argles, D. (2006). Plagiarism in e-learning systems: Identifying and solving the problem for practical assignments. In Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (in press). Kerkrade, The Netherlands. Retrieved June 1, 2006 from http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12420/01/WWW2006.pdf*

“The integrity of the e-learning server's submission system can be violated by electronic corruption if not checked during and/or after submissions have been made. ... The statistics presented in this paper will show that this is a problem that needs urgent attention. The solution to the problem is not to push the task of checking for electronic corruption onto the shoulders of the lecturer but rather to integrate new tools into the e-learning systems that the lecturer can make use of.” (Abstract)

 

Varvel, V.E. (2005). Honesty in online education. Pointers & Clickers, 6(1). Retrieved June 1, 2006 from http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/pointersclickers/2005_01/VarvelCheatPoint2005.pdf

Reviews the literature on cheating in online education and puts forward suggestions for “necessary precautions and effective course designs” to ensure that it supports effective learning along with academic integrity.

 

Overview |Plagiarism-proofing assessment | Checking submitted work for originality
Designing and marking group work | Teaching online

* Used with permission of the International World Wide Web Conference Committee.