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Rethink the Exams Structure

Day believes that moving from paper exams to online exams gives instructors an opportunity to reexamine the exam. It forces you to reexamine why you hold exams and why you hold exams when you do.

Administrators of UNE may decide to end an exam period. It was originally designed for logistical purposes. Day says, "We had to make sure that all exam locations were booked and that desks and chairs were moved in and that supervisors were ready to sign papers." We are now able to hold exams wherever, whenever, and any day. Why is an exam period necessary? It allows us to make structural changes to our academic calendar. We have a few weeks each teaching period back for teaching, maybe."

Day says that students can use video and web exploration to enhance their exam. This increases the variety of questions and answers students can give.

Prioritize Student Convenience

Many instructors recreate the lecture hall exam scenario by having everyone take the online exam simultaneously. Day stated that "a lot of institutions I spoke to believed that it had to be done in that manner for academic integrity." She disagrees. She disagrees.

Day says that taking asynchronous tests really helps students to manage many aspects of their lives. She says students have the option of sitting their exam after work, at home or at night.

Students of UNE have taken their exams at home when they were sick, on cruise ships while on vacation, and during military deployments. One student even took the law exam under a tree in remote Australia. Day says, "We don’t know why he had to do that but it worked for him on that day."

Online Cheating is Less Successive, Remind Students

Cheating is possible where there are tests. Cheating was punished with death in ancient China, which is one of the countries where exams were first created. Day says that cheating is still common. "The solution is cheating is, to my mind, much like public health or public security campaigns -- you talk about behavior as a way of converting risk taking behavior into help seeking behavior."

UNE collaborates with ProctorU, a proctoring company. Live proctors are available to students 24 hours a days. They verify student identities and watch the student using AI technology.

Day states that this method may actually be more effective in preventing cheating than using the university's in person centers. "When we had paper-based examinations all over the world, an exam supervisor might only supervise a few exams a year and had not received any training. I realized that in many cases, they were not checking that students had ID cards, but that they looked exactly like the photo on the IDs. They didn't have the best record of gathering evidence. They didn't have the confidence to assert themselves if they suspected that someone was cheating. Online, supervised tests are far more effective to me.

Remember that Humans are still involved

Privacy is one of the most common concerns about online exams. People often comment that this is a strange way to view the internet. Day says that someone is monitoring me via a Webcam. We say, "Just don’t let your exam be in your bedroom."

The university recognizes the concern and allows students to take an alternate exam. Recently, this was in the form video-based exams. This option has been selected by only 5% of students to date.

Another worry is that AI (or a proctor outside of the institution) could be used to decide cases in which cheating occurred. But that's not what happens. Day says, "Our proctoring partner notifies us if they notice something odd." "Then as humans, we decide what to make of it." We have a camera, we can chat, and we have the logs from the learning management systems.

These logs and recordings serve both the student and university well. Day stated that "We don’t have to ever raise issues if there was just something odd that happened but it wasn’t misconduct." "Wherever it seems that it could have been misconduct, it's very obvious -- 'Here is the video, It's obvious'. This does not turn into a lengthy proceeding for the student.

Related article from CollegeBasics:
https://www.collegebasics.com/blog/h...ine-exam-help/

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