Proactive Measures Against Violations in Your Class

1. Proactive Measures Against Violations in Your Class Assistance for this presentation was provided by: Camilla J. Roberts, Associate Director, Provost Office

2. This module will give you ideas and the tools needed to create a learning atmosphere that will hopefully not tempt students to be academically dishonest but rather will discourage dishonesty. Highlights of three online resources will be provided, however, it is our hope that you will take the time to read each online document in its entirety for additional knowledge and clarification.

3. Designing Online Courses to Discourage Dishonesty (Barbara Christe) • Syllabus Design • Craft course objectives carefully: “Identify not only the specific topic to be mastered but also the level of assessment required.” • Identify behavioral objectives. • Define academically inappropriate behavior: e.g. some students may not realize that sharing a computer file with another for assistance is academically dishonest. • Identify institutional policies for dishonest behavior: For K-state, here are the mandatory statements for course syllabi. • Identify reasons to be honest.

4. Designing Online Courses to Discourage Dishonesty (continued)(Barbara Christe) • Syllabus Design, continued • Discuss the relevance of the course material: Seeing long term value in the material will often encourage students to truly learn the information. • Describe monitoring/technology tools available to encourage compliance with course guidelines: e.g. frequency and duration of being logged in for posts/testing, location of log ins, etc. • Assess student preparedness to begin the class: e.g. basic computer preparedness for the online class – confusion can often lead to frustration which could lead to academic dishonest decision making. • Establish deadlines. • Explain what procedures and consequences are in place for problems that commonly arise (email crashes, ISP crashes, uploading an incorrect file, etc.).

5. Designing Online Courses to Discourage Dishonesty (continued)(Barbara Christe) • Content Presentation • Present the information well: “Unclear content will lead students to circumvent guidelines because they may feel they have ‘no other choice.’” • Learn how to use technology well but reliably. • Tell students what is important – Communication is key in online courses, sometimes you need to be upfront to inform the students of important topics. • Be clear about supplemental resources used to expand a topic. • Student-Instructor Relationship: Good student-instructor communication leads to a good relationship which, in turn, builds mutual respect. This respect will often deter any of the student’s thoughts of academic dishonesty.

6. Designing Online Courses to Discourage Dishonesty (continued)(Barbara Christe) • Assessment • Vary the type of assessment tool used throughout the class. • Write questions well. • Consider using honor statements in your assessments. • Plan for the worst (have penalties in place for potential violations). • Use time limits as key to good design. • Monitor Activity (time students accessed exam, look for patterns with other students, guard access to exams). • Create a large question bank to offer multiple versions of the exams.

7. Tips, Tricks, and How to…Prevent Cheating in Distance Education This article gives a listing of suggestions for potential course design and assessment to prevent cheating in a distance course. The ones mentioned in this module are just a sampling of the suggestions provided by the author. • Require students to participate in discussion groups (you will hopefully learn the writing styles of the students). • Assign work due frequently through the semester. • Require students to have a proctor. • Require students to use a camera on their computer for discussions and exams. • Develop various forms of assessment (rather than just an online test) – the article provides various options for this. • Teach students about citation – do not assume that they have been taught about this previously. • Change topics for assignments each year. • Give students clear expectations for a collaborative project. • Request photocopies of references used to write a paper.

8. Tips, Tricks, and How to…Prevent Cheating in Distance Education (continued) This article also gives tips on how you might recognize academic dishonesty in your class. • Paper formatting is drastically different from what you require or changes mid-paper. • Incorrect name left in the header/footer (especially common in excel files when you do not see the header/footer unless in print preview or printed format). • Mixed writing styles. • The paper is on a topic not assigned to the student.

9. How to Stop Cheating in Online Courses(Eric Wignall) This online article not only gives you examples of how someone might cheat in an online course, but also some “strategies to beat cheating.” Some have been mentioned in previous articles, but others are new ideas or suggestions. • Explain Cheating – help students understand what you view as cheating for your course. • Create multiple, high quality assessments. • Use online services such as TurnItIn(you must have an account), DupliChecker (free), Plagiarism-Detector (paid software), or simply use Google. • Give non-graded assessments. • Don’t give assessments – “…a radical way to combat cheating…” • Do live “check-up” evaluations via skype or web-based tools. • Notify students of the K-State Honor Pledge.

10. References http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0348.pdf • http://tutorials.txvsn.org/pluginfile.php/4627/mod_resource/content/1/cheatingdistanceeducation.pdf

11. What is Next? • Confronting and Reporting a Violation • Resources for Working with an Alleged Honor Pledge Violation