The Spectre Of Cheating In Exams And Collusion With Other Assessment Items

The Spectre Of Cheating In Exams And Collusion With Other Assessment Items
By Richard D Boyce

We all know that cheating and/or collusion between students will always be a concern where exams and other assessments are done. Teachers need to develop a process on how it is to be handled, particularly if there is no school protocol.

Below are actions to consider when cheating is discovered during an examination:

• When you discover cheating during an exam, note the time and place in 'red' ink on the actual exam paper. Separate the individuals involved if possible. Allow them to complete the exam. You must also remove any 'cheat' page used to cheat and include it with the final exam paper when it is collected so this will be used in judging the appropriate penalties.


• Indicate on the front page of the exam what has happened and who else was involved.


• Report the incident to your up-line supervisor and the student's teachers if it is not your student.


• Follow your school's protocol on penalties in the marking of the assessment task. Here your up-line supervisor will be your guide.

When an assessment task is done outside school time, there is opportunity for collusion to take place between students or students can get others, e.g. tutors, to do the task for them. The best ways to detect if this is occurring include:

Mark one section of every student's work at a time. This will make finding the direct copying of others' work easier. Look for common and sometimes unusual errors, diagrams, spelling mistakes and setting out.

After looking at the suspect students' academic records, you may be able to conclude who copied or cheated. Both students need to be interviewed and penalised if both were involved, based on the school protocol. Sometimes a student copies the other's work without their knowledge.

1. Another scenario occurs when a student does exceptional work beyond his/her normal results. This is a cause for concern and needs to be investigated. Your first course of action is to interview the student, asking questions to test the student's knowledge of the topic to see if it reflects the student's results. If it does not, further investigation is necessary to determine if the work is from the student's own efforts. (Sometimes in non-traditional assessment, students do perform at a higher level). If there is a real doubt as to the integrity of the assessment task, ask more direct questions on how it was done, who might have helped and so on. You may get a 'confession'.


2. If you get a 'confession', follow school protocol in relation to marks, redoing the work and so on.


3. If you do not get a 'confession' and you are sure something is amiss, pass the issue on to your supervisor to deal with.


4. Document all your actions in regard to this issue. I would record it in your diary and with your student records (in pencil only so it can be removed if it proves an unwarranted assertion).


5. Mark the assessment task as you would normally and record the results until the issue is resolved one way or the other.

In these days of 'political correctness', you need to be very careful about what you say to students about these issues. Therefore, document what you say and do with the students and their work and keep your supervisor informed of what has transpired. Finally, ensure you follow exactly the school protocol.

The website http://www.realteachingsolutions.com provides an eBook that looks at all aspects of examinations and other types of assessment. The eBook is "The Exam Book". Our author, during the last 16 years of his teaching career was the Head of a Mathematics Department where he was responsible for the assessment program. He offers practical advice that works on aspects as diverse as running a class exam up to how best to mark alternative assessment tasks.

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Assessing Students Becoming Sick During Exams

Assessing Students Becoming Sick During Exams
By Richard D Boyce

There will always be conscientious students who are sick but will come to school to do an examination. Teachers should discourage this practice both to the student and their parents as most, if not all schools, have protocols to overcome initial absences from examinations.

Encourage your students to tell you if they have been or are feeling sick prior to an examination. Then, with them, you can make a decision as to whether they will attempt it or not.

If the worst does occur and the student does get sick doing the exam, here is a process you might follow.

• Note the time this occurs on the student's exam paper at the point where the illness occurs as the student may like to continue at a later time.


• Treat the ill student in accordance with school protocol.


• When the exam paper is returned to you for marking, mark the parts of the exam that have been done prior to the illness occurring and any other work separately. Compare the two sections to see if they seem to be typical of the student's results and then discuss the results with your supervisor to decide on a mark or adopt normal school policy on how to give appropriate credit.


• Check also if the child was sick before the exam. This too could be factored into your decision about a final rating/mark for the exam. It may be that the results you already have from previous assessment items, give you enough data to give a valid level of achievement for the subject. That means you can ignore this exam result. School policy may suggest how you treat this situation.


• Always encourage a student to do the exam at a later date rather than do it when they are ill. The exam can be marked and used as a guide to their achievement as well as giving the student a real idea of how he/she understood the learning tested in that exam. This would allow him/her to do remedial work if necessary before continuing the subject or starting the next unit in the subject or the next year. These marks could be recorded with an explanation and may be used later to give extra data to help decide on the final subject rating on exit from the year or from school.


• Check for serial 'sick' offenders,.i.e. students who always seem to be sick on exam days. Some may have chronic illnesses and the school may have a policy for this situation. Those who have no history of chronic illness need to be 'forced' to do the exam ASAP under exam conditions with the same time or even less.

Perhaps they might be given a different test and the tests could be in their time, not class time. Again, this is a school policy issue. It is worthwhile checking the history of these students with past teachers and referring the issue to higher authorities for further intervention, e.g. parent interviews with school administration.

It is important that no student be disadvantaged through genuine illness at exam time. Additionally, they must be seen to be treated fairly in the allocation of their final grading. Here, a teacher must use their professional judgment based on the evidence of learning in class as well as the available assessment data. Here 'like' students can be a guide to where the student lies in the class order of merit in that subject.

The website http://www.realteachingsolutions.com provides an eBook that looks at all aspects of examinations and other types of assessment. The eBook is "The Exam Book". Our author, during the last 16 years of his teaching career was the Head of a Mathematics Department where he was responsible for the assessment program. He offers practical advice that works on aspects as diverse as running a class exam up to how best to mark alternative assessment tasks.

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The Student Quiz

The Student Quiz
By Richard D Boyce

Early in my teaching career, I was always looking for something different to stimulate student learning. I found the simple quiz was a great diversion for the students from the normal chalk and talk lesson of that era. Therefore, I created a series of different quizzes that I used in a variety of subjects that I taught in lower high school classes. This is one of those quizzes. It is called the Student's Quiz and I have included the two versions I have used.

Essentially, the individual student or groups of students develop the questions and become the quizmaster.

Here is the procedure for the two versions.

Version One

1. Select a topic. This may be one you have just taught or it could be one which needs revision.

2. As homework, the students are instructed to devise five questions each (with answers). These are to be written out neatly.

3. During the next lesson, the teacher asks a student for his/her questions, checks them and the answers and if they are satisfactory, the teacher asks the student to give the class his/her test.

4. Ensure that the student delivers the questions in a way that the class can hear and understand. Check volume and speed of delivery and that there is enough time between each question to allow the students to write their answers.

5. The student gives and explains the answer.

6. The teacher adds any teaching comments and/or supports and/or corrects the answer given by the student.

7. The process is repeated as often as the teacher wants in the time available.

8. The teacher must check the questions of the next student to ensure that no question is repeated and that all questions are suitable.

9. To ensure that every student get a chance to ask a question during the one lesson, I sometimes allowed each student to select only one of their questions to give to the class.

Version Two

1. Divide your class into groups of four or five.
2. Each group is given a different topic, e.g. Topics for the forthcoming exam.
3. Each member of the group devises five questions of varying difficulty on the topic as a homework exercise. Answers must be included.
4. In class the next day, each group test the questions on each other and then develop a five question quiz on their topic - the questions from easy to hard with answers included. (All group members get a copy of their group's quiz.)
5. The teacher rearranges the whole class into the same number of groups but this time each new group consists of one person with questions from each of the previous groups.
6. Each member of the new group 'quizzes' their new group with their questions. This process may take more than one lesson but would allow the revision of several topics.
7. The teacher needs to roam the classroom, keeping the students on task and clearing up any problems.
8. The teacher is given a copy of each group's questions.

A special note:

Students invariably ask questions which are harder than those of the teacher so it is important to instruct the students to write five questions which vary from easy to hard.

Outcomes that can occur:

1. Better understanding is created by:
   1. individual question creation and
   2. group discussion of the best questions and the correct answers.
2. Students have ownership of the questions.


3. Several topics can be covered.


4. Students get experience in oral work and in explaining their Maths or Science and so on.


5. Students gain more confidence in their various subjects.


6. Students want to have the 'best' or 'trickiest' questions. This is a great motivation for many students.


7. The group acts as the 'correction mechanism' for errors in question technique, understanding of the students' learning and the answers.


8. Students enjoy their learning.


9. The teacher may gain a valuable reservoir of questions and answers.


10. The questions asked are often ones which students feel they need or want to know - almost a self-diagnosis.

This article explains one of a series of different types of quizzes that our author has used to great effect during his career in high school classrooms. In his early career, he taught several subjects to junior high school classes where he learnt the art of using the quiz as a revision tool and as an introduction to a new topic where he reviewed past knowledge. You will find two eBooks on his website http://www.realteachingsolutions.com explaining his use of his different types of quizzes. The titles are, "The Quiz in Middle School Mathematics" and "The Quiz as a Teaching Strategy".

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Different Question - Same Answer

Different Question - Same Answer
By Richard D Boyce

One of the skills of excellent teaching is good questioning technique. I was fortunate to be trained initially as a primary school teacher where you needed to be able to ask relevant questions in a range of subject areas. A year after graduation, I was transferred into the secondary school arena where for almost ten years I taught a variety of subjects including English, Science, Mathematics, History and Geography with even a little Physical Education thrown in. This enhanced my understanding of the need to question in different ways. The remainder of my career was spent teaching Mathematics. Therefore, for that reason and because we all did Maths at school, let me use Mathematics to illustrate these points.

• Questioning in different ways can extend students' understanding of the subject.
• It can enhance their critical thinking/problem solving skills.
• It can teach the vocabulary of the subject studied.
• It can develop an understanding of and the use of the language and terminology of the subject.
• It will help develop communication skills as well.

Here are questions from the field of Mathematics.

1. 5 plus 7
2. What is the sum of 5 and 7?
3. Increase 5 by 7
4. What do I get when I add 5 to 7?
5. What is 5 more than 7?
6. Simplify 5 + 7
7. Find the missing number 7+ 5=...
8. Solve 7 + 5 =..?..
9. Two items I want to buy are $5 and $7 each. How much money do I give the sales person?
10. Increase 5 by 7
11. If the answer to a sum of two numbers is 12; and one of the numbers is 7, what is the other number?
12. 7 take 5
13. 7 minus 5
14. Take 5 from 7
15. 7 subtract 5
16. Subtract 5 from 7
17. What is the different between 7 and 5?
18. Decrease 7 by 5
19. What must I increase 5 by to get 7?
20. What do I take/subtract from 7 to get 5?
21. I have $7 and I spend $5 on an ice cream. How much do I have left to spend on lollies?
22. 5 times 7
23. 5 multiplied by 7
24. Add 7 up 5 times
25. What is the product of 5 and 7?
26. The factors of the number I want are 5 and 7. What is the number?
27. Solve 57=?
28. Find the missing number... ?..= 5 7
29. Simplify 5 7
30. 35 divided by 5
31. 35/5
32. If 5 is a factor of 35, what is the other factor?
33. What do I get when I divide 5 into 35?
34. How many times can I take 5 away from 35?
35. How many 5s do I add together to get 35?

Of course, in each group of questions the answer is the same. I'm sure in every learning area at each level teachers could devise a 'similar' quiz. Obviously, it is an opportunity to revise and enlarge the vocabulary of the subject while enhancing learning.

Teachers should keep a record of these questions and enlarge their list as they go. Teachers could ask these questions in the form of a quiz in primary and lower secondary schools where they can also be valuable revision tools.

Our author spent over 40 years in the classroom. Early in his career he taught many subjects as well as Mathematics and mastered the art of asking questions in different ways to test the depth of understanding of his students and to enhance their learning. He has put all his experience in an eBook, "The Question Book". It examines all aspects of questioning providing practical hints for the teacher. The website is http://www.realteachingsolutions.com

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