Student Weighs in on Academic Honesty During Remote Learning
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE US STUDENT HANDBOOK
In a remote setting, teachers have had to rethink how to assess their students while also keeping them academically honest.
With the shift from in-person to online learning that Riverdale students and faculty have experienced since the Covid-19 pandemic began roughly one year ago, it has become increasingly challenging for teachers to monitor and enforce academic honesty in their classes. When Riverdale initially transitioned to remote learning, many teachers were unprepared, by no fault of their own, to employ the same strict academic honesty standards that they did previously. Though some elements of the curriculum, such as scheduling, were quickly adapted to the new normal, others, including quizzes, tests, and other assessments were more challenging. It was clear from the beginning of remote learning that testing would be one of the greatest academic hurdles for both students and teachers. In my opinion, though it was and continues to be a struggle to adapt assessments to online learning, this experience sheds light on how we can sophisticate future academic honesty standards even after we leave online learning behind.
Teachers have used numerous testing tactics since the pandemic began to varying degrees of success. A common method, at least in my experience, has been taking an assessment asynchronously or with your camera turned off, and submitting it online. Of course, this model has its variations, but at the end of the day it gave students ample opportunity to violate Riverdale’s academic honesty guidelines. It is probable, though unfortunate, that many students took advantage of this by using resources that would otherwise be prohibited under normal circumstances. Thus, the grades of some students were likely artificially inflated as a result of their academic dishonesty, which may have resulted in some students being promoted to advanced classes unfairly and inaccurately.
Another method that teachers have adopted over the course of remote learning has been to use various online testing applications. Apps like DigiExam have served as relatively effective replacements for less effective alternatives such as testing asynchronously or even testing while on Zoom. DigiExam restricts the user’s ability to navigate certain applications and websites on their computer, so teachers are better able to monitor their students’ performance without having to worry about them pulling up a website on their computer that might give them an advantage over their peers. As we have gained more classroom and testing experience in a remote and now hybrid setting, new testing methods have become commonplace at Riverdale. For example, now that many students are in-person at least twice a week, teachers have been able to schedule tests around the days when their students are on campus. This shift has led to far fewer assessments being held remotely and allowed students to reacclimate to a normal school schedule.
Unfortunately, no method is completely foolproof, and again there are some instances where it is likely that the shortcomings of such software can, and have been, easily exploited. In my experience, there is a lack of formality, broadly speaking, to a true classroom or testing setting when you are at home. This looseness at home culminates in students potentially feeling as though they are relieved of some responsibility to maintain academic standards while physically not at school, which can result in academic malpractice, and even dishonesty. There is definitely less accountability across the board when you are not in-person. When taking a test at home, there are more temptations to cheat than when in a school classroom, and teachers, unfortunately, have little control over this. There have been a multitude of approaches to remedy this discrepancy, including cases in which teachers will ask students to show what their workspace looks like to make sure that no notes or other prohibited materials are within view. Again, the obvious flaw here is that, throughout the course of a test, there remains no feasible way to continuously monitor students and their workspaces, and there is yet to be an effective solution to this problem.
Thankfully, as we move forward into the spring season, these aforementioned approaches will be needed less and less given that we intend to return to campus on a much more regular basis after spring break. If all goes as planned, it is likely that normal testing measures will be increasingly implemented, and teachers and students will have to contend less with the specter of academic dishonesty.
