Building Secure Exams

Recommendations and considerations for both proctored and non-proctored exams.

Write effective questions

Keep in mind that AI is exceptionally good at helping students answer multiple-choice, true-false, fill in the blank, and essay questions. Consider rewriting your questions to take advantage of different question types. If you are using online exams for your course, there are many question types available in ICON, including fill in multiple blanks, multiple answers, numerical answer, formula, file upload, and multiple dropdowns. If you use multiple-choice or true-false questions, write some new, or revise some existing questions each semester to be more effective. You can also consider the following:

Number of answer choices. Not all multiple-choice questions are created equal. There is no rule which says that all multiple-choice questions must have four answer choices.
Avoid selecting a missing word. Do not write questions as an incomplete sentence with a missing word. All it takes is a little guesswork to recall a single vocabulary item.
Avoid direct quotations. Avoid using direct quotations from a text. This becomes a simple recall question.
Avoid extremes. Students know that an extreme (always/never), nonsensical, or unreasonable answer is usually not correct. Distractors should be incorrect but still plausible.
Keep choices similar in style. Answer choices in a question should be similar in style, length, or grammatical structure. It is striking when one answer choice is very dense, and the others are short. It is an unnecessary clue about the right answer.
Avoid giving clues. When possible, avoid giving clues to questions within other exam questions. Students are looking though the quiz or exam and not necessarily working in the order you intended.
Avoid using “none of the above” or “all of the above” or “A and B,” etc. Students only need partial knowledge to answer these questions. By selecting none of the above, students do not demonstrate that they know the correct answer. By selecting all of the above, students only need to recognize that two of the answer choices are correct.
Ask students to recall principles or apply rules to get the correct answer. Put application of knowledge into your multiple-choice questions. Write scenarios that must be analyzed and not simply recognized.

Recommended minimum ICON security settings

Exam proctoring is the most secure method of maintaining exam integrity. However, if your exams are online, you can utilize the available settings in the Quizzes page of ICON to enhance security even without proctoring.

We recommend using, at minimum, the six ICON Quizzes' settings listed below.

Single attempt

There is an option to allow a single attempt or multiple attempts at a quiz/exam. We recommend allowing only one attempt for high stakes testing and multiple attempts for low stakes quizzes or reviews. The reason for allowing a single attempt during high stakes testing is that some students have found this as a way to cheat; meaning they can preview the quiz questions, look at their notes, and then take the quiz. Exceptions can be made manually for students who encounter technical difficulties; contact Exam Services with questions.

Time limit

This option restricts the amount of time, in minutes, that a student can spend on a quiz or exam.

If you are not sure how much total time to give students, we recommend about 1 minute per question. Keep in mind that online multiple choice and true-false questions can be answered much faster than that. This is because selecting an option online is faster than writing text online/on paper or filling in a bubble on paper.

When using a time limit, the quiz or exam will force-submit once the time limit is up. Exceptions can be made for individual students needing extended time on quizzes or exams; contact Exam Services for details.

Availability

The Assign to field can restrict the dates and times that the exam is available for the student or students. The exam or quiz will become available on the date and time listed in “Available from” and will close on the date and time listed in “Until.” The due date field is not necessary.

Shuffle answers

Selecting this option will randomize the order that the answers appear in. No two students will see the exact same answer choice order for any multiple choice and multiple answer type questions. This setting will apply to every question in the quiz or exam.

To avoid confusion, do not use enumeration in your answers, e.g. A, B, C or I, II, III. In addition, do not use answers that rely on display order, e.g. “all of the above,” “none of the above,” etc. Shuffle answers means that the order of any enumeration or answer like "all of the above" will not appear in the order originally intended.

Shuffle questions

Shuffling the order that the questions appear in for each student can be done using the Question Banks rather than changing a setting. This is the online method of using versions for paper exams. There are a variety of approaches. You can think of a question bank as a folder containing your exam questions. Here are the most common:

Shuffle all questions. Let us imagine that a quiz or exam has 25 questions and the order that they appear in for students is not critical. All 25 questions can be put into the same question bank. When that question bank is pulled into the quiz/exam, every student will see those same 25 questions in a different order.

Shuffle each question bank. Let us imagine that a quiz or exam covers a few different topics which should be evaluated separately. Your exam questions can be grouped into different question banks by topic. Set the exam to pull all questions from the Topic 1 question bank. This means that each student will get all the Topic 1 questions, but each student will answer them in a different order. Repeat until all the question banks for each topic are pulled into the exam.

Shuffle X number of questions per question bank. Another way to shuffle what appears for students is to group questions by topic. Then, set the exam to pull just a few questions from that question bank. For example, the question bank may have 5 different questions for Topic 1. Answering any one of the questions will demonstrate mastery of the subject. Therefore, for each student, the exam will randomly pull one question from the question bank for Topic 1. Repeat with remaining question banks.

Respondus Lockdown Browser

All University of Iowa courses can use this platform free of charge. By enabling this, students will be “locked” into the quiz or exam and prevented from opening new browser windows or tabs until the exam is submitted or time expires. Students will not be able to access anything else, including Chat GPT and other similar AI extensions/plugins/tools, on the computer they are using during the quiz or exam. Lockdown Browser can only protect quizzes or exams on the Quizzes page of ICON.

If you do not use Respondus Lockdown Browser for quizzes or exams, it becomes incredibly easy for AI to help students answer the questions.

Visit the Office for Teaching, Learning, and Technology website to find more details about Respondus Lockdown.

AI tools and cheating

Exam Services recommends that all online quizzes be protected with Respondus Lockdown Browser. This browser locks your students' computers into a single browser window/tab of ICON. No other windows, tabs, or programs are accessible while using Lockdown Browser. This includes AI content tools like ChatGPT.

If you do not require Respondus Lockdown Browser, students are able to allow any AI content tool to read the online quiz or exam and suggest answers. In addition to recommending responses to multiple choice and true/false questions, AI tools can write:

Essays of any length
Short answer responses
Jokes & poems
Music & screenplays
Resumes & cover letters
Code and debugging code

Visit Office of Teaching, Learning and Technology's website to find more details about AI tools and academic misconduct.

Additional ICON settings to consider

While our team recommends using the minimum settings indicated above for any quiz/exam, there are still more options available in ICON. To increase the level of security for your online quiz or exam, you may consider taking advantage of the following possibilities in ICON.

Password

To protect an online quiz or exam, you can add a password of your choosing. You may choose to provide the password to students once they sit down to take the quiz or exam in your classroom. Some instructors of classes with multiple sections will change the password for each section.

View correct answers

By default, any new quiz/exam built in ICON will allow students to see the correct answers for all questions. It is then very simple for students to be able to save the exam and the answers for future access. The default setting can be turned off.

We recommend that you uncheck the "Let Students see their quiz responses" box. This will prevent students from seeing the questions and the correct answers after submission. We recommend that you meet with individual students to provide one-on-one exam feedback or provide general feedback to the class on exam results.

One question at a time

This option, when selected, displays only one question on the screen at a time for students. The student must press the forward or backward arrow to move through the exam. When combined with shuffling questions, it can be a powerful method to prevent cheating.

It is possible to lock the questions after the student pages forward. This setting forces students to proceed in a specific order and does not allow students to circle back to questions later in the exam.

NOTE: Students with problematic internet connections may struggle when either of these settings are used. This is because each new question must load each time the student pages forward or backward. Slow connections can cause long wait times or even cause the exam to freeze.

Grading online questions

There are many question types available in ICON Quizzes. For questions that are auto graded, be sure to provide ICON with the correct answer(s). For questions that must be manually graded, ICON provides a method to add a grading rubric online and a method to grade the same question for all students, one after the other.

NOTE: We encourage you to label your questions as you build them in ICON. The labels are not visible to students but will help you identify question content for future revisions.

See examples of how students answer each of the question types listed below.

These question types are auto-graded by ICON:

These question types must be manually graded:

Materials allowed

During a virtually proctored exam, you may find that the camera can't quite see everything that is happening. An exam which allows paper materials means that students will be looking down frequently and the viewer may not be able to tell what the student is looking at. Limiting materials allowed during an online exam significantly minimizes the potential for undetected academic misconduct. Below are the most frequently used materials allowed.

Calculators. Both the virtual proctor, Honorlock, and the tool used at Campus Test Centers, Respondus Lockdown Browser, have built-in online calculators which can be set to four function mode or scientific mode. The built-in online calculators do not have a graphing option or a financial option. If you allow your students to bring their own calculators, proctors at the campus test centers will ask students to show their calculators without a calculator cover. Exam Services recommends that you instruct students to show their calculators to the camera if virtually proctored.
Scratch paper. Scratch paper can be helpful for exams which require students to perform calculations. While scratch paper at a test center is highly controlled, it is difficult to monitor scratch paper through the webcam on a computer because it's hard verify what students are looking at when they look away from the screen. It's also difficult to control what the student writes down while completing an exam.

Extend your knowledge

Visit the Canvas Community pages for more information about maintaining quiz/exam integrity online.