Mastering can help protect against cheating for items that you assign
Video: Use Mastering security features
The remaining features in this list apply to regular or Parent assignments, but not to Adaptive Follow-Up assignments.
For testing centers or other proctored settings, you can require a password for students to access the assignment, and for multiple testing sessions, you can change the password between test sessions.
Password protected assignments are listed, but cannot be opened, on a mobile device, even if they contain only mobile-ready items. Caution your students to plan ahead to be at a computer to complete any assignment they see listed with the key icon.
Statistical studies conducted on courses in several Mastering disciplines have found that students who cheat actually do less well in Mastering than those who do not, even when they incur no penalty for cheating. The learning effect of Mastering tutorials and feedback more than offsets the supposed advantage of cheating, and students who cheat tend to do less well than their peers as the term progresses.
In addition, information available on individual students’ performance makes it relatively easy to identify both students who may be cheating and those who are giving other students their answers.
Cheating tends to reveal itself starting at about the third assignment. Students who cheat tend to do homework very quickly, use few or no hints, and get consistently high scores on homework, but not on assignments that use the Quiz or Test category.
Some recognized cheating methods and ways to prevent them are described below. If you think you've found a new way that students may be cheating, please contact Technical Support.
This cheating method is common to all online learning systems.
How this method works |
A group of students get together and sacrifice one of their members to get the correct answer for an item or item part. This student guesses at the answers, taking the penalty for incorrect answers or requesting the answer. The other students then copy the correct answer. |
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How to recognize this type of cheating |
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How to prevent or defeat this type of cheating |
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A variant on the sacrificial lamb is the phantom student method of cheating.
How this method works |
A student appears in the course Roster, but gets a bright red row of very low grades or zeros in the Gradebook. (How to view student grades) This "student" usually requests the answers to items. The other students then copy the correct answers. |
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How to recognize this type of cheating |
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How to prevent or defeat this type of cheating |
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Tip: A red row in the Gradebook can indicate a phantom student.