Advanced digital technologies and social media have greatly improved both the learning experience and the assessment convenience, while inadvertently facilitated potential plagiarism and collaborative cheating at the same time. In this article, we will focus on the strategies and their technological implementations to run exams, or in-class tests…

Undergraduate first-year courses are often mandatory for students in a variety of majors and degrees. Many students view these core courses as of little interest and relevance, which is associated with lack of motivation for study and can lead to cheating. Contract cheating in text-based is difficult to detect and prove. Contract cheating in…

This chapter investigates the dual role of Generative AI (GenAI) in providing support and feedback to students and in reshaping formative and summative educational assessments, addressing both the burgeoning opportunities for enhancing teaching methodologies and the associated ethical challenges. There is a focus on the necessity for balanced…

Ten years ago, the author worked as the Director of Assessments for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). For temporal context, the author arrived after the first of the infamous test cheating scandals and left just before the incident that spawned a second. Indeed, the author filled a new position created to both manage test security…

What do students learn in school? In the 21 century, this question has become a political dilemma for countries around the globe. It is a deceptively simple question, but there has never been an easy answer. The problem of measuring student learning appears to express an educational problem: What and how much do students learn? Most student…

In this classroom note, we outline a system of assessment used by the authors since 2020 to deliver individualized summative assessments to students from first- and second-year mathematics courses. Our system comprises three modular components allowing a mix-and-match of different technological approaches and mathematical question types. First is…

ChatGPT has been at the center of media coverage since its public release at the end of 2022. Given ChatGPT's capacity for generating human-like text on a wide range of subjects, it is not surprising that educators, especially those who teach writing, have raised concerns regarding the implications of generative AI tools on issues of plagiarism…

When campuses across the world needed to transition to the online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many challenges educators faced, and addressing academic integrity issues were some of the most important. Certain strategies, such as online proctoring or additional software, were not available to most institutions because the…

Student evaluation is a key consideration for educational program administrators because program success depends on students' ability to demonstrate successful development of core competencies. Student evaluations must therefore be aligned with learning objectives and overall program goals. Graduate level educational programs typically incorporate…

When it comes to secure testing online, even high-tech solutions rely on an old standby: a human proctor. This article asks the question: Is such an approach sustainable in the long run? A student labors over a midterm exam while a vigilant proctor peers over his shoulder, watching for any sign of cheating. It sounds like a tableau from a century…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are playing an increasingly important role in higher education around the world, but despite their popularity, the measurement of student learning in these courses is hampered by cheating and other problems that lead to unfair evaluation of student learning. In this paper, we describe a framework for maintaining…

It is almost universally agreed that more frequent formative assessment (homework, clicker questions, practice tests, etc.) leads to better student performance and generally better course evaluations. There is, however, only anecdotal evidence that the same would be true for more frequent summative assessment (exams). There maybe many arguments…

At a very early age, students learn the point system and how school can be about the accumulation of points, not the accumulation of knowledge and skills. Grading systems are pervasive in districts across the nation, with questionable results. For example, a southern school district was highlighted in a 2009 Associated Press story for selling test…

In this article, the author describes the use of an electronic quiz on a trial basis as a means of improving students' awareness of academic misconduct issues and their understanding of how to avoid those issues. The quiz integrated several new factors into information-sharing processes, increasing feedback to both students and staff. It was by no…

The cheating scandal that has rocked the 48,000-student Atlanta school system was an egregious, but not entirely unexpected, byproduct of accountability pressures, many testing experts say. The reason: As long as test scores are used in any field to make decisions on rewards or punishments, including for schools or educators, a small percentage of…