How to prevent cheating in online assessment?

Did you know that the online exam proctoring market was valued at $706.23 million in 2022, forecasted to grow drastically to reach US $ 1,742.95 million by 2028? Yes! It's true.

Post covid-19, the world faced an insanely increasing demand for online learning and virtual hiring, leading to a complete transformation of the education and hiring system. The pandemic created a virtual reality for students and working professionals, resulting in a whopping growth rate of 21% in the online proctoring market.

Online assessments have become a convenient and efficient way to evaluate candidates' skills and abilities. However, the increasing use of online assessments has also led to increased cheating.

Cheating during online assessments can compromise the integrity of the assessment and make it difficult to evaluate the candidate's true abilities. Therefore, it is crucial for recruiters and hiring managers to implement effective strategies to prevent cheating during testing.

Why do candidates cheat during an online assessment?

There are various reasons why candidates cheat during online assessments. Some of the common reasons are:

• The pressure of getting the job
• Easy accessibility to information over the internet
• Lack of preparation
• Lack of supervision makes it easier for students to cheat
• Fear of failing the assessment

Why is cheating such a big concern?

Cheating in online examinations has become a significant concern recently due to the increasing popularity of online learning and remote hiring. The ease of access to information and the lack of supervision during online exams has made it easier for candidates to cheat, leading to a decline in the credibility and value of online education.

Some common forms of cheating in online exams include sharing answers with another candidate, accessing unauthorized resources during the exam, using advanced technology to manipulate the exam results, and impersonating another student to take the exam.

The consequences of cheating during remote assessment can undermine the confidence and trust of employers, resulting in a bad reputation for the employee.

To address this concern, recruiters have implemented various measures to prevent cheating in online exams, such as proctoring services, randomizing exam questions, and restricting access to external resources.

Additionally, hiring managers can design assessments that encourage critical thinking, creativity, and originality, making it more difficult for applicants to cheat. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of both the candidates and the recruiters to ensure that academic integrity is maintained and that remote hiring remains a credible and valuable alternative to traditional hiring.

Top 13 strategies to prevent cheating during testing

#1 Use Online Proctoring Tools:

Online proctoring tools use AI technology to monitor candidates during the assessment. Many robust online test cheating prevention software, such as iMocha, provide multi-tier proctoring suites to restrict cheating by all means. iMocha's remote proctoring features include:

#2 Real-time image proctoring

A candidate's exam progress can be monitored using real-time picture proctoring, which captures images of the candidate while the test is being administered.

#3 Window lock that terminates the test:

Secure the test platform's virtual environment with window violation. When activated this feature, no candidate will be able to leave the test window until the assessment timer goes off. Hence it will prevent candidates from accessing other websites or applications.

#4 Question-Answer randomization:

Randomizing the questions ensures that each candidate receives a different set of questions, making it difficult for candidates to share answers. iMocha's question repository has 1Lakh+ question that aids question randomization to a great extent. Try iMocha's strict proctoring suite.

#5 Video Proctoring

Video proctoring makes sure the test-taker focuses on the task at hand and doesn't act unethically. It can also detect multi-faces, or a piece of paper, anything that seems unusual to raise a red flag.

#6 Audio Proctoring

This feature monitors the candidate's background voice activity throughout the test. The advanced AI technology detects the audio, looks for any unusual vocal activity and issues a red alert if any.

Online test cheating prevention software such as iMocha can help recruiters detect suspicious behavior, such as multiple faces, movement, or noises in the background, and flag it for review using its powerful recruiting suite.

#7 Limit Access to the Assessment:

Limiting access can prevent unauthorized access. Recruiters can limit access by providing unique login credentials or restricting access to specific IP addresses.

#8 Combine human and AI Proctors

AI and live proctors are used by many recruitment tools, such as Honorlock, during the online exam to help safeguard academic integrity while assisting instructors and students. Each student's online exam session is monitored by AI, which notifies a real proctor right away if it catches any academic dishonesty.

By employing this approach, online exams can be proctored in a safe and non-invasive manner since a proctor will not intervene unless the AI detects potential misconduct.

#9 Take action to ease exam anxiety among students

Before taking any action to assist in lessening test anxiety in students, it is critical to understand what triggers it. According to the American Test Anxieties Association, about 16-20% of students have high exam anxiety since they don't know what to expect and are worried about advanced technological features.

So here are the effective two recommendations to ease exam anxiety in students' examiners must follow:

• To assist students during the exam, use online proctoring software that blends AI and human proctors. This will reduce human intervention amidst assessment, resulting in a distraction-free, relaxed, and focused assessment.
• It is important to provide students with frequent practice tests in order to prepare them for what they will encounter and to ensure that their technology is working properly.
  
  

 #10 Use a multi-step hiring process

Using a multi-step hiring process is one of the most effective strategies to prevent cheating during the test. How? Here's how it can help;

• Verify information

A multi-step hiring process will help recruiters verify candidates' information. Candidates will be required to provide information such as references, resumes, transcripts, and more at each step of this multi-tier hiring process.

• Assess different skills at each step

Multi-tier hiring process assesses the candidate's various skills, such as cognitive, aptitude, psychometric, behavioral, etc., to determine the candidate's sustainability.   

• Provides accurate results

During multi-tier hiring processes, multiple interviewers are involved, each predicting the candidate's performance from different perspectives, providing more accuracy. It can also help identify any discrepancies in the information provided by the candidate.

Learn more about iMocha’s Live interview process to get most accurate results.  

#11 Disable Copy-Paste Option

Disabling copy-paste option during online examinations has many significant perks, such as

• Prevents plagiarism and ensures that the work submitted by the candidate is authentic
• Encourage more critical thinking by forcing candidates to rely on their own knowledge and understanding of the subject and not rely on search engines
• Protects assessment integrity

#12 No Backtracking the questions

Permit the student to concentrate entirely on one question at a time, respond to it with a concluding statement, and then go on to the next. By forbidding backtracking, the examiner can stop students from spending unnecessary time at the conclusion of the exam trying to find the right response, forcing them to respond to the question to the best of their knowledge.

#13 Get students to sign an academic integrity contract

Make an online examination integrity reminder agreement and distribute it among candidates. Ask candidates all the students to sign it before attempting the examination.

Recruiters can execute the contract using a free LMS tool, such as a polling or survey function, or have the students sign, scan, and upload the contract as an assignment before the test. Bounding examination's integrity by a contract is one of the top strategies to prevent cheating during testing.

Conclusion

Preventing cheating during online assessments is crucial to ensure the integrity of the evaluation and evaluate the candidate's accurate skills and abilities. The strategies discussed in this article can help recruiters and hiring managers to prevent cheating during online assessments and select the most qualified candidates. By implementing these strategies, recruiters and hiring managers can ensure a fair and accurate evaluation of candidates during the assessment process.

FAQs

Can online assessments detect cheating?

It is impossible to detect assessment cheating without relying on proctoring software. Using a reliable and robust AI-enabled proctoring tool such as iMocha, recruiters can detect even the minute cheating instances. IMocha's AI-enabled proctoring suite offers advanced features such as

• Randomization for questions and answers
• Audio, video, and image proctoring
• IP range restriction
• Candidate ID verification
• Copy-paste locking

How to prevent students from cheating in online exams?

Preventing candidates/students from cheating online can be real-time challenging without any external help. Here are some strategies to prevent cheating during testing:

• Use strong and reliable proctoring software such as iMocha, Mettl, Honorlock, etc.
• Randomize questions and answers
• Set time limits for each answer
• Create sets of question paper

Can you cheat on an iMocha proctored assessment?

The chances to cheat with iMocha are almost negligible. It can detect unusual faces, voices, impersonation, or any minute movement and raise a red flag. In addition to that, the entire assessment duration is recorded for each student and provided to the recruiters for further review.