THWARTING ONLINE TEST CHEATING WITHOUT
PROCTORS
G. R. Cluskey Jr., DBA, CPA, CFF, CFE
Troy University, Global Campus
81 Beal Parkway, SE
Fort Walton Beach, FL 32548
850.301.2162
gcluskey@troy.edu
spectrum.troy.edu/~gcluskey
Craig R. Ehlen, DBA, CPA, CFE
University of Southern Indiana
8600 University Boulevard
Evansville, Indiana 47712
812.464.1785
cehlen@usi.edu
1 THWARTING ONLINE TEST CHEATING WITHOUT
PROCTORS
G. R. Cluskey Jr., DBA, CPA, CFF, CFE
Craig R. Ehlen, DBA, CPA, CFE
ABSTRACT
Some online college programs require proctors to demonstrate academic integrity.
However, proctoring can be very expensive. Costs to students can include fees at testing centers,
costs to purchase the Remote Proctor, time to find an approved proctor, and the effort required to
coordinate a time for the exam. Expenses of the school include the salaries of staff to administer
a proctoring process (i.e., approval of proctors), maintaining testing centers, and potential loss of
enrollments since not all schools require proctors. This paper examines these issues and presents
an alternative to proctoring. Using a set of eight simple internal controls, faculty are able to raise
the cost and thus reduce the benefit of cheating for students. Much like in auditing, where the
goal is to achieve “reasonable assurance that the financial statements contain no material
misstatements,” academics should not expend excessive resources trying to eliminate cheating.
Some students will try to cheat in a classroom even with the instructor watching. Is the cost of
proctors (time and money of both students and the school) worth the marginal, if any, benefit?
This paper suggests not and proposes less costly alternatives.
2 THWARTING ONLINE TEST CHEATING WITHOUT
PROCTORS
It is management’s responsibility not to temp honest employees. (Source Unknown)
Introduction
The “Underground Professor” has taken a plunge into the cyberspace of learning –
teaching online courses. While this has been technologically challenging (WebCT and
Blackboard learning system, producing and loading videos, Respondus Lockdown Browser, and
securing laptop internet connection on the go) the experience has been extremely rewarding.
Online courses are providing students a convenient means to complete degrees, explore
alternative career paths, gain credits to progress in their careers, and pursue graduate degrees.
These cyber students include active duty military personnel on deployments, non-traditional
students who are full-time managers with families, traditional students working toward
graduation, and degreed working professionals.
While teaching for Ivory Tower University, this academic warrior encountered a basic
dilemma common to online educators. How does one ensure the integrity of an online student’s
grade? How do you know that the student registered for the course is the student taking the exam
and turning in the assignments? How do you know students are not completing individual exams
or assignments in collaborative teams? How do you know that students are not completing exams
and homework from a test bank or solutions manual? Yes, some of these dilemmas also apply to
classroom courses. However, the following teaching notes will address online specific issues.
Of course Ivory Tower feels the need to get involved and “help” solve the problem.
Administrators, in a mad scramble for “accreditation,” have decreed that all online courses must
have one proctored exam per term. That sounds reasonable. The university wants to provide
evidence to the accreditation agencies (SACS – Southern Association of Colleges & Schools,
AACSB – Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, and ACBSP – Association of
Collegiate Business Schools & Programs) that their online course programs have academic
integrity with respect to student grades. However, does proctoring really solve the problems
noted above? Additionally, the “bean counters” and “number crunchers” have figured out that
one proctored exam might account for as much as 50% or as little as 10% of a student’s grade.
What is our reply when the accreditation teams ask, “What about the other 50% to 90% that is
vulnerable to cheating?” Proctoring might not be the most cost effective solution.
The “proctor” may be either a person or a machine (the Remote Proctor). This Remote
Proctor is supposed to verify the student’s ID (thumb print) and eliminate cheating through a
motion detector. Suspicious motion by the student causes a video to record the student’s action.
Instructors then review these exam videos for evidence of student cheating. Additionally, Ivory
Tower sells the Remote Proctor (RP) to graduate and undergraduate students asserting that it will
be required (a potential conflict of interest?) in their courses. However, should you try to find a
faculty member who advocates using Remote Proctor, you may as well join Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza on their quest to find Dulcinea! Faculty members then are told they should use
Remote Proctor since graduate and undergraduate students have purchased it and are expecting
3 to use it (circular reasoning?). Some faculty members probably use it just to avoid being labeled
“uncollegial,” while those who have avoided using Remote Proctor may find themselves not
being scheduled to teach overload or summer courses, thus losing out on extra pay.
Hoping to become dynamic fraud busting professors, we have engaged in a crusade to
thwart online test cheating by students without the use of proctors, since we believe proctors
provide only a minimal amount of assurance for academic integrity. First, we identify the major
avenues involved in cheating. Next, since we cannot totally eliminate this cheating (fraud), we
devise measures (internal controls) to thwart online cheating or at least make the costs outweigh
the benefits. Finally, we construct a comprehensive academic plan which contains several
complementary internal controls designed to thwart online cheating.
This approach is much like how a CPA approaches an audit. First, assess the risk or
potential for fraud (cheating). Second, examine internal controls. Finally, design the audit
procedures (internal controls) to detect, dissuade, and discourage fraud (cheating). An auditor’s
goal is “reasonable assurance that the financial statements contain no material misstatements.”
Likewise, academics should not expend excessive resources trying to eliminate cheating. Some
students will try to cheat in a classroom even with the instructor watching.
How Students Cheat
How will online students cheat? Most often they will obtain the exam questions or even
the exam answers before they take the exam. Some instructors actually make their exams
available online for a week so students may take the exam at any convenient time. Students then
work through their network of friends. A superior student (or sacrificial lamb) may take the exam
first, record the answers, and/or copy the questions. Then the questions are researched, answered,
and distributed to the remaining students. If instructors do not change exams from term to term,
then student groups develop files for their classmates to use.
Students also may obtain the test bank or solution manuals from current or previous
textbook editions online from other university libraries, faculty, or reference sources. Exams that
remain open for long periods of time allow groups of students to have one student take the exam
with help from the rest. Then the remaining students take the exam later.
Internal Controls
The solution is for faculty members to employ a few simple internal controls. Professor
Cyber Warrior has developed and tested a set of internal controls that will severely reduce
(although not totally eliminate) students’ ability to cheat and avoid detection. A review of exam
scores and resulting grades indicates face validity of exam integrity and no grade inflation when
using these internal controls. It then becomes a matter of cost/benefit analysis for the student,
which is at the heart of any fraud.
The first internal control (IC) is to offer the exam only at one set time. The team test
takers are not able to collaborate together and then sequentially take the exam. The difficulty
4 with this IC is that even classroom courses have the occasional sad sack who misses the exam.
Online courses with students around the world working different shifts have many more
deviations from a scheduled exam time. The good news is your geographically dispersed and
separated students (Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle-East, etc.) are probably not much of a threat
for cheating, based on our experience.
The second internal control is for the exam to be “accessible” only for a very brief period
of time (15 minutes). If students have only 15 minutes to “access” the exam, then those students
taking the exam will be involved in answering questions instead of cheating. Students will have
little overlap time when one student finishes and coaches the rest.
The third internal control is that the questions should be randomized (Blackboard, Test
Manager, set for Random ordering). Additionally, the answers can be randomized. That way if a
group is trying to collaborate then each student’s question #1, 2, 3 . . . and answer will be a
different selection. Thus, random ordering of the questions and question answers complicates the
cheating efforts of “team” test takers.
The fourth internal control, another option of Blackboard, Test Manager, is that the
questions are presented one at a time. Students may only work on one question. Exams should be
delivered so students go forward from question to question without retracing. They should not be
allowed to return to previous questions. This thwarts pairs of superior students who team to
cheat.
The fifth internal control is to design the exam to occupy the time allowed for the exam.
Professor Cyber Warrior uses test bank multiple choice questions consisting of a mix of theory
and problem type questions. After gaining “access” to the exam, students have 90 minutes to
complete 25-40 questions. The goal is for the “A” and “B” students to complete the exam with
little more than a few minutes left. The “C” and “D” students may or may not complete the
exam. These students have a trade-off dilemma to solve. The exams are open book. Thus the
students may verify a tough definition or find a unique formula. However, they do not have time
to learn the theory nor learn how to solve the problems.
The sixth internal control is the limitation which most learning systems automatically
incorporate - that a student may only “access” the exam once. Instructors must deal with
students' alibis and excuses as to why they were unable to submit their answers and need to have
the instructor “reset/retake” the exam. The Underground Professor has established a general rule
of “No Exam Resets.” Students are advised: (1) do not use wireless, (2) take the exam in a
library, computer lab, or testing center, and (3) save each answer individually, before submitting
the exam. If a thunder storm, Blackboard outage, or act of God occurs, then students are advised
to contact Blackboard IT immediately for an analysis. If Blackboard IT confirms the problem
was not the student’s fault, the exam may be reset.
The seventh internal control is to require students to use Respondus Lockdown Browser
(RLB) to “access” the exam. RLB is a special browser where students are “locked” into the
exam. They are unable to exit/return, cut/paste, or electronically manipulate the system. An
advantage to the student is that RLB creates a more stable Blackboard platform which is not
likely to lock up or freeze students out when they submit their exam answers.
5 The final internal control is that instructors should change at least one third of multiple
choice questions each term. This rotation of exam questions helps reduce the value of
“fraternity/sorority test files.” Instructors have the equivalent of a new exam every three terms.
The Testing Plan
If we implement the internal controls noted above, we can construct a testing plan that
does not require expending proctor resources. The plan will not eliminate cheating entirely, but it
will provide reasonable assurance of no material misstatements. A sample testing plan would
consist of the following:
• The exam would be scheduled for a set date and time (with exceptions).
• The exam would be open for student “access” during a brief period (15 minutes).
• The exam would contain questions which are randomly delivered to each student
and whose answers are randomly listed.
• The exam would be structured so students may only work on one question at a
time and may only go forward and not return to questions.
• The content of the exam would determine the time allowed for the students to
complete the exam.
• Students should only have one attempt to “access” the exam.
• Students would “access” the exam using RLB.
• A portion of the content would be changed (at least 1/3) each term.
Summary
As any set of internal controls evaluated during an audit or fraud examination would
reveal, we are merely hindering fraud by increasing the cost of cheating. Some fraudsters will
steal regardless of internal controls, and some students will attempt to cheat in spite of our best
efforts. Even with proctors, our colleagues tell grim stories of collusion. Internal controls are
implemented to raise the cost in the cheater’s cost/benefit analysis. However, cost/benefit also
applies to proctoring. Is the cost of proctors (time and money, students and staff) worth the
marginal, if any, benefit? This paper suggests not and proposes less costly alternatives.
6