How to avoid cheating in the entry tests?

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How to avoid cheating in the entry tests? #6

Closed PedroGFonseca closed 6 years ago

PedroGFonseca commented 6 years ago

We have entry tests to ensure a sufficient level of Python. The first edition showed that we have a weakness in grading, as at least one student has obviously cheated to get in.

What measures can be taken to avoid teaching in future?

echo66 commented 6 years ago

Was the entry exam the same for everyone?

PedroGFonseca commented 6 years ago

It was, however given that students had friends do the test for them having different tests would not have saved us

hershaw commented 6 years ago

yeah let's see what Elena comes up for this one...

manugarri commented 6 years ago

One option is to do an in person test, with limited amount of time, kinda like standardized tests (SAT, TOEFL, etc) do.

Im not a big fan though, but self reported solutions will not avoid cheating.

echo66 commented 6 years ago

We could generate tests for each person. Or am I missing something?

PedroGFonseca commented 6 years ago

@echo66 that would not really solve the issue, because (from what we understand) they had friends who knew python solve the problem for them

HugoDLopes commented 6 years ago

I don't see this being solved with tests being done without our supervision... It is really difficult to overcome. Possible solutions:

We either have students in-house doing the entry-exam
We create multiple challenges and randomly assign them to students making it more difficult to copy
We make the challenge online with a timer (reduces chance of copy)
We let them copy and keep warning them that we use extremely advanced algorithms to check, they will be disqualified, and it is not acceptable by any means.

PedroGFonseca commented 6 years ago

Slightly duplicated from #14 :

One way to discourage cheating might be to have the written exam remote, followed by a 5 minute oral exam over Skype. If they know they are going to be questioned, they will hesitate to ask a friend to do it for them. We can just ask basic questions they've already answered in their written form ("You used a for loop here, can you explain your reasoning?"). Should be pretty obvious if they didn't do it themselves.

PedroGFonseca commented 6 years ago

Closing this thread to discuss it only on https://github.com/LDSSA/instructors-forum/issues/14 (got duplicated)