Cheating in quizzes

Cheating in quizzes

by Vlas Voloshin -
Number of replies: 7
Hello! Some time ago participants of Russian moodle forum brought up a problem with using moodle 1.9 quizzes: cheating. Some students found a way to comlete quizzes using an automated system. This could be done using a javascript to fill in forms with preset data (which were first made by students themself or even stolen from the database or using teacher's password) using page html code: it contains questions and answers ID that do not change through sessions and attempts. Another way could be to use browser form auto-filling features, for example:
1. Install Mozilla Firefox Portable.
2. Install Autofill Forms plugin on it ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4775 ).
3. Create new profile in settings with the quiz name.
4. During quiz attempt, turn on showing form details.
5. For short answers, for example, - right-click on the response field, "Add an Autofill Forms rule for this field"; for other types of questions there are similar actions. Some types of questions though are not so simple to automatize - sorting, drag&drop (they're based on JavaScript) and calculated, for example.
6. Then this browser is shared among students. They now only have to open the quiz, right click anywhere on the page and choose the corresponding profile with filled answers.

That's one of the simplest ways. There can be other ones with different complexity. The point is - what do the developers think about this problem? Are they planning to do some improvements to prevent cheating (at least simple one, like described above), and is there a technical way (not by punishing students that is smile ) to deal with it now, without massive changes in the code?
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In reply to Vlas Voloshin

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by Louis Fleming -
Randomizing the questions and answers would stop this wouldn't it.


Right short answers on wrong questions - tells teacher the student has early access to answers.

If they are taking them outside of class- then phones and everything else come into play for cheating.

Two paths - Everything in class - and randomize.

Even make it more powerful by writing more questions than you wish answered- example - write a 20 question bank.

Set up Quiz to be a random 10 questions from the 20.

At this point - no autofill script going to work - as there will be questions that are totally new each time the test is taken.

Also - set number of questions to a page smaller than the total.

10 question quiz - 5 questions to a page - a lot of the autofill scripts are not going to change the page for you.

Other thing is - look at elapsed time on a one page quiz - autofill will be faster than 99% of most students.

So a very fast finisher on more than 1 quiz might be a flag.

Hope this helps
Louis


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In reply to Vlas Voloshin

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by ben reynolds -
This strikes me as a troll Nonetheless, I'll respond.

IMO, it is not the job of a course management system to combat cheating any more than it is the job of a face-to-face instructor to confiscate cell phones to prevent cheating.

As Tim Hunt points out fairly frequently about iron-fisted attempts to make the quiz activity into some kind of f2f locked room closed circuit TV surveiled dungeon, if you can't prevent cheating in real life, real time, you can't prevent it with a course management system either.

(Not to put words in Tim's mouth without his permission. Just, as I said, my opinion.)
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In reply to Vlas Voloshin

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Ben nearly saved me from answering, but I have a little bit to add.

We have made sure that you cannot deduce the correct answers by looking at the numerical ids in the HTML source.

However, we have never tried to make it so that the numerical ids in the HTML are different for different students to prevent the sort of cheating you describe. There might be ways of doing that, but only by making the code a lot more complicated.


I can't help thinking that if some of you your students are cheating like this, then you have serious problems with the moral and educational environment at your school, and you should probably be addressing that directly, rather that engaging in an arms race where you try to change the Moodle code.

I also think that this sort of student behaviour would be fairly easy to detect from the Moodle lots and quiz reports.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by Vlas Voloshin -
Well, thanks god *we* don't have such a problem smile We (and some of the Russian moodle community) were just interested, what do the developers might think about it. The response is quite predictable - it's similar to our position in Russian moodle forum as well.
Thanks for your replies smile
And yes - for those, who do have such a problem, Louis' advice whould be useful, imo.
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In reply to Vlas Voloshin

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by Craig Grimmer -
We had a big problem with cheating when the Moodle system was first introduced here. We identified the cheaters by sorting the quiz results according to quiz times and pulling out all the ridiculously short quiz completion times with high quiz scores. It proved to be a very good method for identifying the cheating students.

We also found that students were working together, printing and sharing the quizzes and preparing answers before attempting the quiz. The answer to this one was to increase the number of questions, use random question selection, and limit the number of quiz attempts. It has reduced but not eliminated the problem.

Another idea (not yet implemented - we'll try it next semester) is to limit the number of questions per page to a small number (say 2) to make it a hassle for the cheaters to collect the question information.
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In reply to Craig Grimmer

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
The devil's advocate in me is wondering if it is an entirely bad things to have students collaborating to find the most efficient way to complete a particular task wink

Also, the real problem with cheating is that it is self-defeating. The real outcome of any course of study is to come out the end of it with more knowledge and skills in your brain. Not to have a certain score against your name in the Moodle gradebook. OK, that is the idealist in me.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Cheating in quizzes

by Tony Gardner-Medwin -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

It would be interesting to know how Moodle quiz use divides between formative assessment (assessment for learning) and summative assessment (for grading/ranking). Online assessment is never any good for high stakes summative assessment surely, unless you invigilate to eliminate all the various versions of "phone a friend". I completely support the idealist devil that Tim finds in himself!  But Moodle sometimes does seem a bit unfriendly for formative use, which many institutions are really trying to encourage (more self- and peer-assessment, more collaboration, more feedback, fewer tests and exams). It could be (I hope) that my impression is out of date though, because my experience and discussions were a year or so ago.

Issues I remember encountering were that it was cumbersome to give immediate feedback each time a student answered a Q, that Moodle didn't easily enable students to enter comments linked to a Q that would be easily visible to other students in the same context, to generate interaction and constructive improvement; you couldn't use runtime randomisation of variables in math Qs, and that once use of a quiz had started it wasn't possible to correct errors or make improvements in it. The way things worked was good for summative assessment but the missing features would be really valuable for stimulating effective learning. In this context, as Tim says, it should be easy to persuade students that cheating is really stupid - if you genuinely reassure them that you aren't going to use their formative marks in any way that might incline them to cheat. One in-between strategy I've used is to allow them to redo math tests (with randomisations) as often as they want, with the requirement that they must eventually reach a pass mark; they could cheat, but probably seldom do, because it's pretty obvious that by behaving properly their errors don't count against them, and they will learn something they need. There's no point in cheating when practicing your tennis strokes against a wall!

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