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Unsupervised, Online Exams Provide Valid Assessments


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Students work on laptops above Gene Pool, a tile mosaic by Andrew Leicester inside Iowa State University's Molecular Biology Building.

Across different academic disciplines, class sizes, course levels and test styles, the researchers found unsupervised, online exams produced scores very similar to in-person, proctored exams.

Credit: Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University

Iowa State University's Jason Chan and Dahwi Ahn found students' online, unsupervised exam scores largely corresponded to those of in-person, proctored exams.

The researchers reviewed test score data from nearly 2,000 students throughout 18 classes in the spring 2020 semester, including large lecture-style courses and advanced courses.

Said Chan, "The fact that the student rankings stayed mostly the same regardless of whether they were taking in-person or online exams indicated that cheating was either not prevalent or that it was ineffective at significantly boosting scores."

At the time of data collection for the study, ChatGPT was not available to students. The researchers acknowledged that such tools could make it much harder for instructors to evaluate their students.

From Iowa State University News Service
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Abstracts Copyright © 2023 SmithBucklin, Washington, D.C., USA


 

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