We describe and evaluate a method to mitigate unwanted student collaborations in assessments, which we recently implemented in a second-year undergraduate mathematics module. The method requires a list of specific pairs of students to be prevented from collaborating, which we constructed based on the results of previous assessments. We converted…

Unproctored and teacher-proctored exams have been widely used to prevent cheating at many universities worldwide. However, no empirical studies have directly compared their effectiveness in promoting academic integrity in actual exams. To address this significant gap, in four preregistered field studies, we examined the effectiveness of…

In spring 2020, the chemical education community faced an abrupt transition from in-person to online classes, which also necessitated online assessments. Building upon an existing three-semester study (F17, S19, and F19) using Rasch modeling and classical testing theory to improve in-person multiple choice exams, this study investigates the impact…

Unlike the traditional multiple-choice (MC) format, the discrete-option multiple-choice (DOMC) format does not necessarily reveal all answer options to an examinee. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the reduced exposure of item content affects test security. We conducted an experiment in which participants were allowed to view…

A common approach to increase test security in higher educational high-stakes testing is the use of different test forms with identical items but different item orders. The effects of such varied item orders are relatively well studied, but findings have generally been mixed. When multiple test forms with different item orders are used, we argue…

This paper reports on findings from a large Australian research project that explored the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design. Using survey responses from 14,086 students and 1147 educators at eight universities, a multivariate analysis examined the influence of a range of factors on the likelihood that different…

A concern that has been raised with the transition from pen and paper examinations to electronic examinations is whether this will make cheating easier. This article investigates how teachers and students perceive the differences in ease of cheating during three types of written examination: paper exams, bring your own device e-exams and e-exams…

To reduce academic dishonesty and strengthen learning outcomes, I adopted in-depth oral examinations as my benchmark and summative assessments in a Human Anatomy & Physiology course taught in an online asynchronous setting. This decision led my students and me down the transformative path of mastery learning. This was a "threshold…

This paper is designed to synopsize the efforts of a team of general chemistry teachers to enact assessments during the abrupt transition to online-only instruction and reflect on what was done successfully and what could be improved. The focus is on the extent remote, online assessments accurately measured student knowledge described within the…

A sample of 327 engineering bachelor students from a public university in Mexico took part in an information integration study to explore systematic thinking underlying propensity for cheating during a course exam. All study participants were provided with written descriptions of 12 scenarios pertaining to the academic evaluation criteria and were…

As online learning is becoming very popular in formal educational settings and in individual development, online exams are starting to be recognized as one of the more efficient assessment methods. Online exams are effective in either blended or traditional forms of learning, and, when appropriately used, bring benefits to both learners and the…

At Saudi universities, there was a sudden shift from face-to-face instruction to distance learning and assessment in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This study explored the status of online exams in language, linguistics, and translation courses in the first two semesters of the Pandemic (Spring 2020 and Fall 2020). Analysis of faculty…

This paper reports on longitudinal study regarding integrity of testing in an online format as used by e-learning platforms. Specifically, this study explains whether online testing, which implies an open book format is compromising integrity of assessment by encouraging cheating among students. Statistical experiment designed for this study…

Rapid growth in the use of internet-based instructional technology (IT) necessitates greater attention to the pedagogical implications of this transition. Though much of the literature on the uses of IT focuses on outcomes and student learning, we also need to ask whether and how different technologies force us to reconceive the boundaries for…