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Northern Illinois University

Teaching with Blackboard

Problems with Online Testing

Written by Greg Ritter, Blackboard, Inc.

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View answers to frequently asked questions asked by NIU faculty and staff.

Connectivity

Since the browser does not generate any network traffic while a student is completing an assessment in Blackboard, the student's ISP may drop the connection due to inactivity (no traffic passing over the connection).

If a student's connection is lost, as long as they re-establish the connection without closing the Blackboard window before they submit or make any other changes to the browser window, then they should be able to submit without a problem (and be sure not to minimize the browser window if using Netscape).

If they do not re-establish the connection, then it will be recorded as an Incomplete Attempt (grading error). There is no way for the Blackboard application to tell the difference between an ISP-dropped connection and a student who got frustrated and turned off the computer. The Faculty Member will have to do the appropriate due diligence to discern the actual situation.

Several approaches to solving this (mostly the responsibility of the student):

  • Change ISPs to one that won't time you out or take the quiz somewhere you have a persistent connection.
  • Keep a second browser window open (say, to Yahoo or whatever) and make changes to it every few minutes to generate traffic.

The best solution is for the student to download freeware/shareware "connection management" tools. These tools run in the background and generate a few bytes of traffic over the connection every few minutes. In the past I've pointed people to StayAlive Pro or KeepAlive. Some ISPs are wise to this tactic and block traffic from those kinds of applications. Individuals may need to experiment with these or similar tools to find one that works with their ISP.

Cheating

When faculty begin delivering assessments online, often their first questions are "Can the student have their book open while they're taking the online quiz?" or "Can the student open another browser window and look up the answer on Yahoo?" and the like. The answer to most of these questions is "yes." The technology can't prevent students from cheating.

However, the important concept to understand is that these problems are not problems of online assessment; they are problems of unproctored assessment. A teacher would face similar issues if delivering a correspondence course through the US Postal Service instead of delivering a course online through the Internet.

The best approach to mitigating the risks of unproctored assessment is pedagogical: re-think how you write assessments and re-consider exactly what you're assessing. Many faculty, accustomed to delivering assessments in a proctored environment, create tests that primarily assess the student's ability to recall knowledge, because that form of assessment is fast, easy, and works well in a proctored situation. When you move to an unproctored assessment environment, you want to create questions that assess the higher levels of learning -- for example, a student's ability to analyze information, or to synthesize information from multiple sources within the course, or to solve problems, etc. -- instead of just assessing their ability to recall knowledge, because in an unproctored environment they might be "recalling" that knowledge from a book or web page.

Strategies beyond that include:

  • Time limits: Blackboard provides the ability to limit the time students have to take the exam. Appropriate time limits can reduce students looking up answers; if they don't have the time to find it, they won't be able to answer the question.
  • Randomization: Blackboard provides the ability to randomize assessments from Question Pools, assuring that each student will receive a different set of questions, useful to keep them from comparing exams.
  • Proctoring: Sometimes proctoring is necessary. The password feature in Blackboard's assessment tool can be used to assist in proctoring. Instead of taking the assessment online, at home, a student takes it in a proctored environment where they must identify themselves to the proctor who has the password to allow them access to the assessment. This could be done at an institutions own campus, through reciprocal arrangements with other institutions (for distance ed students), or through arrangements with commercial testing centers (e.g. Sylvan Learning Centers).
  • Selective use: if student cheating is a serious concern for the institution, the online assessment can still be used very effectively for self-assessment and/or practice exams. Blackboard assessments can be set to allow multiple attempts so that a student can study the content, take an assessment, receive immediate feedback on their answers, and (if necessary) go back, review the content, and take the assessment again to see if their knowledge has improved.

Printing

Faculty Members can place an HTML code into the test instructions that will prevent students from printing the test. Another code also disallows copy and paste. Check our online instructions for placing these codes into your assessments.

Find more answers...
Are you looking for more information related to online assessments in Blackboard? Review the answers to frequently asked questions regarding online testing with Blackboard. Also, consider attending one of the upcoming Blackboard workshosp.

Last Updated: 09/05/2007