This week I’m taking a break from the newest research to talk about a subject near and dear to me: the Office of Assessment and Evaluation’s computer-based testing center in Himes Hall.
I’ve only had the misfortune of taking two classes that required computer-based testing, but even my limited experience has shown me how tragically ineffective and unfair the entire system is.
Obviously, cheaters benefit during any test, but those benefits are usually countered by fear of discovery and punishment.
Unfortunately for honest test takers this deterrent practically doesn’t exist in the computer-based testing center.
While students in the testing center are not allowed to wear hats, have any scratch paper or use a cell phone, it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with ways to cheat the system.
Here’s the foolproof method students used on both of my teachers.
Team up with at least one other student in the class, one takes the test normally but memorizes as many of the questions as possible then tells the other people in the group what questions are on the test in the three days the test can be taken. Next time someone else is the memorizer, and the cycle repeats.
Some teachers try to ensure equality but ultimately fail. Test questions in one of my classes were randomly selected from a larger pool of potential questions.
The pool is a decent idea, but it was not nearly expansive enough.
The teacher compounded the problem by allowing an ungraded “pre-test” several days before the graded test, which drew its questions from the same test bank as the real thing.
The pre-test basically negated the question bank because it gave cheaters another chance to memorize questions before the real test.
My other teacher didn’t seem too worried about cheaters. Tests were around 20 questions and did not change at all in the three-day period.
To make matters even worse, my teacher allowed two of the six tests to be dropped.
Allowing students to drop two of their test grades means a group of three students could fail two of the tests while memorizing the questions then ace the four that counted for a grade.
This isn’t theoretical. I personally saw students in both classes with lists of questions eerily similar to questions I had to answer in Himes the day before.
Teachers give tests because they need some way to evaluate our ability. We receive grades that are supposed to reflect how well we understand the material, but when cheaters are thrown into the mix, grades have to be questioned.
Cheaters make meaningful evaluation nearly impossible.
If a teacher relies on curving grades after a test, then cheaters are going to do disproportionately well and ruin the distribution.
Even if teachers just use grades as a general indicator of test difficulty, cheaters undercut this practice by artificially inflating their scores without actually learning anything.
Those high scores can even result in more difficult tests in the future.
A good student who understands all of the concepts in a class will almost always lose out to a cheater who knows the minor details appearing on the test.
How can the University even refer to this department as the Office of Assessment and Evaluation when the facility it operates is unable to punish cheaters or protect the validity of the grades earned by honest hard      working students?
Teachers have the tools to make this undetectable form of cheating much less attractive.
Significantly increasing the number of questions on tests, or in test banks, would make memorizing an entire test far more difficult and simultaneously help good students who understand the material but forget one or two factoids.
Another option is cutting the test-taking interval from three days to one, increasing the load on Himes.
Making these changes would require more work from teachers and the testing center, but the benefits would far outweigh the costs.
Either shut down the testing center or force teachers to do something about the cheating going on at our esteemed University.
Andrew Shockey is a 20-year-old biological engineering sophomore from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]