When the pandemic forced Iowa State University to switch from in-person to remote learning in the spring of 2020,
ISU psychology professor Jason Chan says he feared unsupervised online exams would unleash rampant cheating. “At the time, my first impression or instinct was that, ‘Oh, no! Any exams I give now are going to be meaningless,'” Chan says. “That’s because students are going to be taking them online at home and they’ll have the textbook with them, and they can just look up any information they want, essentially turning all the exams into open book.”
As part of an ISU study, nearly two-thousand students in 18 classes were analyzed from the 2020 spring semester. Chan says their sample ranged from large lecture-style courses with high enrollment to advanced courses in engineering and veterinary medicine. “To my surprise,” Chan says, “when I got the test scores back, they were pretty close — actually very close — to the exam scores that students got before we moved online.” Those students who were receiving Bs before the lockdown were still pulling in Bs when the tests were moved online and unsupervised.
Chan says the pattern held true for students up and down the grading scale. “The key issue here is not so much whether the scores overall, on average, is about the same whether doing student exams online or in person, it is the ranking of the students that matters more,” Chan says, “so that the students who do very well on the in-person exams relative to their peers, continue to do very well on the online exams relative to their peers.” While the study results indicate unsupervised, online exams -can- still provide a valid and reliable assessment of student learning, Chan warns there are potential weak spots, especially with the emergence of Chat-G-P-T and A-I writing tools.
The ISU study was supported by a National Science Foundation Science of Learning and Augmented Intelligence Grant.
(By Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)