Students copying quizzes

Students copying quizzes

by Andy Corson -
Number of replies: 24

I have an issue with groups of students copying each others answers for quizzes. The nature of the courses we run means there is no start/finish date. We are constant enrolling and un-enrolling students. The site has been operating for 5 years. I have uncovered copied answers that go back 2 1/2 years.

Is there a plug in that lets us scan quiz answers to pick up identical or similar answers. If not, is there something that allows us to export answers along with the students name? I know we can view these manually via a manual grade, however this is an extremely time consuming process and is just not practical. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Andy

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Colin Fraser -
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Hi Andy, if you start with this documentation, that should give you some ideas. There are a range of links elsewhere as well. 

What you are describing is not student's inventiveness, but the examiner's laziness. I know, a bit harsh, sorry, but accurate, because I fell into this with another Moodle and that was how it was described to me. I understand what they did was to create a number of different questions, a lot more than was needed in a particular quiz, then randomized it. I have no idea how they did it, but apparently it worked. They don't have to worry about cheating any more. The Quiz documentation should help you get started on that. 

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Andy Corson -

Hi Colin

Actually your comments are well out of order and frankly offensive. Perhaps you might like to ask a few question before throwing around aspersions like these!

The questions are Moderated by NZQA. We are compelled to use the same questions for the course.

Perhaps you might like to keep your opinions to yourself until you actually have an idea what you are talking about!

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Colin Fraser -
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Say as you will, but reality is if something is so proscribed by the NZQA then perhaps the NZQA really needs to review its procedures. Human nature, being what it is, means kids will always look for an easy way out so if the NZQA is so insistent on providing the opportunity for kids to take advantage of their ineptitude, again, I would suggest a review of processes and procedures are well overdue. Simple, and this is not really an opinion, my opinion is very different actually, it is an observation, very different thing. That observation is based in the scanty information given, by you, and my rather long experience with people of all ages, all education, social and economic backgrounds. You can accept observations or not, up to you. 

If you are offended by such observations then perhaps you might want to review what it is you are doing, and demand something better. That is an opinion. big grin And if we always knew what we were talking about before we said anything, how would we ever get anything done? That is a perception. If someone cheats on a test, then why have the examiners afforded the opportunity to allow cheating? That is a question, evil. 

BTW... what is the NZQA? 

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Doug Moody -

I agree with you completely Colin. The truth is what the truth is, and wishing it was different because one is "offended" is a denial of the truth. Self criticism, when justified, leads to progress. Denial of truth stops progress in its tracks and shuts up the critics. You can't have it both ways.

That said, if this were me and I was trying to find the offenders, I would change the questions and/or answers in subtle ways that doesn't change the meaning, but makes them detectable with a search tool. Doing things like putting in extra spaces or invisible characters that are searchable. So, when going forward, it would be obvious and provable which revision of the questions or answers were copied.


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In reply to Doug Moody

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Marcus Green -
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I think I am harder to offend than Andy, but he has a good point about asking more questions before throwing around nasturtions. On the other hand the more information you put in your question the more likely you are to get a good answer.

I worked out early in my teaching career that using the term lazy is rarely helpful. When I was a young person I was frequently described as lazy, but looking back, those people were just using lazy stereotypes. Woops there I go using the word myself, it IS tempting. This isn't about some known truth, it is about an opinion based on limited information.

But enough of this meta-stuff , would anyone like to comment on my idea that creating a helpful query/report is doable?

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Ray Morris -

"out of order" or not, the simple fact is that there are three effective ways of reducing cheating:


1. Include some randomness in which questions each student gets (ie pick three from this category, two from that category)


2. Set Moodle to randomize the ORDER of questions, so students can't say/remember/write down the answer to question #1.


3. Set Moodle to randomize the order of the ANSWERS (for multiple choice, etc.)


Whether or not it offends any particular person, these days everything is posted online. . So the fact is that if you ask the same questions, in the same order, with the answers in the same order, for years, a large percentage of your students will have a cheat sheet marked 1: A, 2: C, 3: A, 4: B.  And there's nothing you can do about it.  You want to detect cheating in that situation?  Mark all students as "cheated" and you'll be right most of the time.  Sorry if that makes you sad, but it's the truth.


Would you feel better if we lied to you and told you running a report would do any good?


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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Andy Corson -

WOW Colin you certainly have a very high opinion of yourself. I posted on here as I was looking for some assistance not because I need to be berated by someone who doesn't have the inclination to find out facts before choosing to belittle others. Your comments are very unhelpful and unwarranted.

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Students copying quizzes | NZQA

by Derek Chirnside -

NZQA http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ 

New Zealand Qualifications Authority

Their role, and I quote:

NZQA's role in the education sector is to ensure that New Zealand qualifications are regarded as credible and robust, nationally and internationally, in order to help learners succeed in their chosen endeavours and to contribute to New Zealand society.

I work with NZQA in one way or another most weeks.  I am surprised Andy there is any part of their operation where they specify assessments at the wording of the question level.  In my contact with them they are more outcomes driven, and assessments are moderated, and are not so prescribed that all questions must be the 'same'.

But they are a big organisation, and I don't know all the things they do.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Students copying quizzes | NZQA

by Andy Corson -

We are getting off topic here, but to clarify, I work with an ITO who reports to NZQA. The quals are reviewed every five years. For this particular course the assessment process is pre-moderated. Due to the nature of the course and economics we are not able to pre-moderate question more frequently than that. Very frustrating but that is the case. Unfortunately the copying issues are perhaps a lot more prevalent in the culture of the trainees I work with, and I am very small cog in a very big machine. I can assure you I have had many many discussions with the ITO regarding this.

NZQA has moved to a more outcome based assessment process however the courses I am operating have not been reviewed at this stage and are unlikely to be for sometime. It's all a matter of economics. If we had the funds to review and re-moderate we would do that, however it ultimately boils down to a user pay system and the end users are not prepared to invest any more funds. 

I do carry out other assessments where we have post assessment moderation and I agree with what you have stated in regards to that.

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes | NZQA

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Andy, I will offer another idea for you.

In moodle, click on the quiz and then in the Administration block, click on Responses.  Then download the responses to an Excel file.  This file will give you quite a bit of detail about the students and their responses. I am not sure if you have already done this.

Once in this form, you can use Excel or even Word to explore your data in deeper detail.  But this method will give you a chance to look at the data, and then decide how much deeper you want to go.  If you are using randomly selected essay questions, it will take more effort. I do not know of any easy way to have moodle show you all the responses to one randomly selected question, but maybe someone else here will suggest a method.  It might be in the quiz "statistics."

Yes, it can take more effort to match up the wording of the question with these responses, etc., but you can focus on a question, sort by this column, use Excel to break a column into its words, and explore for patterns.  I have never done this, but you might be able to take this data into an anti plagiarism tool, or data-mining tool, to help you find patterns.  This data give you the students' names (of course), and date information.  So you might be able to match some date specific patterns.

When I give online exams, which are supposed to be taken individually, I use moodle to look at the "time" statistics, results, and the students' IP addresses (which are easy to get to in moodle's logs.) If is see two students taking the exam from the same IP address, at about the same time, and with similar results, I call them on "cheating."  This is about the best that I can do, and yes, I have caught students cheating.

You have no way to prevent students from printing their exam questions and passing them on to other students.  If you are ever showing them the answers, these too can be printed and passed on to others.  I am surprised that all of the answers to these questions are not already somewhere on the Internet.

On my exams, I use randomly selected (yet similar) questions, I used calculated multi choice questions, and I use (short) time to try to assess what the students have learned.  My current challenge is to create more questions in my question bank.  I do not use essay questions.

If you do not end up with an acceptable solution, make sure to go to the Moodle Tracker system and post a feature request.  Then, make sure to encourage folks to vote for your request.  If you have a good idea that others need, it will eventually be implemented.  For example, I have one feature request that I made over two years ago, and it looks like it will soon be provided. Moodle's quiz engine developers are really good!


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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Students copying quizzes | NZQA

by Andy Corson -

Rick you are a legend!! That's a great solution. Unfortunately I'm a part time moodle user and I wasn't aware I could do this. This is an excellent solution.

Thank you very much!

Kind regards

Andy

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes | NZQA

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Sometimes it just takes a little while for people to understand what you seek.  It is really not odd for someone to have good intentions but be off target a little.  I am not connected with Moodle's administration in any way, but I have learned that folks her on moodle.org try their best to help.

You still have your work cut out for yourself, but you now have one solution.  Good luck to you.

Please don't hesitate asking for more help, either.

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Rick Jerz -
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Your post made me wonder, what is the form of the questions?  Essay, numeric, true/false, multiple choice, short answer, etc.  Can the questions have more than one answer?  Are you selecting questions randomly for each student?


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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Joseph Baxter -

Hi,


Lets get some clarification.


Do you have to set the same questions every time the quiz is taken? Or do you have to use a set of questions from the same pool every time the quiz is taken?


If it is the first one then you need to find a way to monitor for cheating. it would also be worth discussing with NZQA what you have observed as the may change there process i.e. cycle through different questions periodically.


If it is the later then in addition to monitoring you could discuss with NZQA the option of increasing the set of questions and then apply the random approach discussed previously.

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In reply to Joseph Baxter

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Marcus Green -
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The answer to Andy's original question is no there is no such plugin. Depending on the question types it would not be that hard or expensive to pay for someone to write a query that search for identical answers. Finding "similar" answers might be a little more involved.

However as Colin suggests the only real solution to students copying answers is to ensure there are sufficient questions that it is simply not worth while trying to memorise them. Unfortunately this is rarely done as creating unambiguous questions that address the learning topics is really rather hard and so quite expensive.  Andy, how many questions are there, what type and on what topics?

Decision makers almost always underestimate the difficulty of question creation. Assuming that NZQA is the New Zuland Qualification Authority (or similar), I imagine they have a similar mind-set to the UK equivalent and they are unlikely to listen to suggestions from Andy.

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Derek Chirnside -

Marcus, you say: "I imagine they have a similar mind-set to the UK equivalent and they are unlikely to listen to suggestions from Andy"

In actual fact, I have found them very reasonable.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Marcus Green -
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The problem with running a query to determine if essay questions answers are copies is that you would want to do more than simply find duplicates, you would want to find similarities, which is somewhat tricky. Here is an example of how it might be approached in PHP

http://php.net/manual/en/function.similar-text.php

Derek, who are you thinking of as the UK equivalents?

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Andy Corson -

Thanks for this Marcus, very much appreciated. I'll have a chat with my moodle provider to see if they know of any one who might be able to assist. Unfortunately it will probably come down to where the funding will come form, hence my initial post here to see if there was already anything out there.

Kind regards


Andy

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Andy Corson -

Thank you to those of you who have chosen to offer some helpful advice.

Unfortunately I have to use the same set of questions each time as the course is moderated and needs to meet NZQA (New Zealand Qualifications Authority) criteria. We are not allowed to over assess so I cannot pop in other questions. I do feel as though I am fighting with one hand tied behind my back and unfortunately the scenario is very much ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, however the situation is I do not have the option of changing questions. This would mean we have to review the qualification every month or so. These qualifications are currently reviewed every five years.

I am dealing with adult learners from a particular ethnic background who have a very different culture around the concept of  studying and examinations.

The questions are essay style questions.

So in answer to my question, Thanks Marcus, there is no plug in.

I have to say it is very disappointing to post on a forum asking for assistance or ideas to be told I am lazy or inept by people who don't have any idea of the circumstances. I am most certainly not lazy nor am I inept. I thought these forums were designed to help users not for those who have extremely high opinions of themselves to chastise other users.

Thanks again to those who have provided constructive feedback.

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Derek Chirnside -

This is interesting Andy.

We teach a lot of NZQA courses.  The 'review of the course' is different to 'moderation' where I work.  We can develop assessments for a course at any time in the review cycle, and these can be moderated internally and/or externally.  We often run a version A, B and C option to allow for resits etc.  I think we never would have just a version A and nothing else.

Also we are able to make a percentage change to an assessment and not have to get things re-moderated for that particular assessment. 

I wish you well.  I'd regard this situation as being more than "one hand tied behind your back"

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Andy Corson -

Hi Derek, I'd love to be able to do that. Unfortunately as I contractor the funds are not made available to me to re-write assessments and have them go through the pre-moderation process. At the end of the day this is a relatively low revenue stream for the ITO, that's life unfortunately.

Cheers

Andy

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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Joseph Thibault -
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Hi Andy, any thoughts on enforcing proctoring for the tests? If there is a cumulative test you could set the rules for the virtual proctor to force the student to take the exam solo (and bar any copied materials from being available to the student through the rules as well). In the states we use ProctorU which works great though there are other proctoring companies as well (with various approaches to monitoring students).


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In reply to Andy Corson

Re: Students copying quizzes

by Margaret Matthias -

Hi Andy,


Another option is to make it an assignment instead of a quiz.  Sounds like these are essay questions.  Check out Turnitin.  I do not work for the company.  We use it at our institution.  There is a plugin to work with Moodle and our faculty really like the option.

Your essay questions would be an assignment that gets submitted to Turnitin through Moodle.  As the evaluator you would click on submissions in Moodle and then click on the student's submission.  This opens in Turnitin show redundancies/duplication.  I believe you can even create a sort of bank of your students submission for the comparison basis.  Grades are in Moodle.  Has a lot of nice features


Hope this helps. 

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