Intro Text

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. 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 the multiple-choice question. 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 time to give students, we recommend about 1 minute per question. Keep in mind that multiple choice and true-false questions can be answered much faster than that. This is because clicking on an option is faster than writing or filling in a bubble. 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. 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.”

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 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 and do not use answers that rely on display order, e.g. “all of the above,” “none of the above,” etc.

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 creating different versions of the - There are a variety ofuy76 approaches. 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 groups of questions. Let us imagine that a quiz or exam covers a few different topics which should be evaluated separately. The 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. 

  • Select X number of questions. 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 the question bank. For example, the question bank may have 5 different questions for Topic 1. Answering any 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 until they press submit 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. If you do not lock down the computer the student is using to take the quiz or exam, it becomes incredibly easy for AI to help students answer the questions. Lockdown Browser can only protect ICON quizzes or exams. 

Visit this page for more details on Lockdown Browser: https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/respondus  

AI tools and cheating

Exam Services recommends that all online quizzes be protected with Respondus Lockdown Browser. It is a browser that locks your students' computers into a single window of ICON. No other windows, tabs, or programs are accessible while using Lockdown Browser. This includes AI content tools like ChatGPT. In addition to recommending responses to multiple choice and true/fall questions, these tools can write:

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

If you do not require Respondus Lockdown Browser, students are able to allow the AI content tools to read the online quiz or exam and suggest answers.

Visit this page for more details on AI tools: https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/artificial-intelligence-tools-and-teaching

Additional ICON settings to consider

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

Password

To protect an online quiz or exam, you can add a password which you will give to the students once they sit down to take the quiz or exam.

Do not let students see quiz responses

By default, any new quiz/exam built in ICON will allow students to see the correct answers for all questions both as soon as they submit the quiz/exam and at any point after that. This makes it very straightforward for students to be able to save the exam and the answers for future access. 

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 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. 

NOTE: Students with problematic internet connections will struggle when this setting is used. This is because each question must load one at a time.

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). 

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.

These question types are auto graded:

You must manually grade these question types:

See samples of how students answer each question type. 

Materials allowed

During a virtually proctored exam, you may find that the camera can't quite see everything that is happening. 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 calculators which can be set to four function mode or scientific mode. The built-in calculators do not have a graphing option or a financial option. If you allow your students to bring their own calculators we require them to show them to the proctor at the test center; we recommend you instruct them 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 whether students are using (allowed) scratch paper when they look away from the exam or accessing unauthorized materials. It's also difficult to verify a student's scratch paper doesn't already have information on it or 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.