 |
 |
 |
|
Project/Program Director with the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs |
Associate Director of Instructional Design & Support Services |
Director of Academic Technology and Innovation |
April 29th, 2020 Chris Bryson, Shelly Walters, and Kathryn Zawisza hosted an Academic Integrity Forum online. Many important issues came up during the discussion. Here are some key takeaways from the conversations.
Dealing with students who are flagged by Respondus Lockdown Monitor for lack of facial recognition who say that they were just looking down while they were thinking
The most important key to this is talking about best practices before the exam.
- Don’t have a very cluttered, busy background behind you, because that can make it difficult for the software to pick out your facial features.
- Don’t sit in front of a window, which causes issues with the video quality.
- Suggest to the students that if they are someone who tends to look off into space when they’re thinking, that they should try to consciously pick a place on the monitor that they look at when they’re thinking instead of somewhere off-screen.
- If you have an exam that requires a scratch sheet, then you can turn off the notifications that students get about the loss of facial recognition in order to make it less distracting to them.
A Little Extra Time
If you have a large number of students taking an exam, then it’s important to give a little bit of extra time to take care of any technical issues that might arise. The students can call 575-HELP, which is the University of Arkansas IT Help Desk, and the staff at that number are more than happy to help them with those technical issues. However, if there are 300 people trying to take an exam during a 2 hour time frame and even just 10% of them have issues then it could cause an increase in call volume that could exceed the ability of the Help Desk to provide immediate assistance and cause extra stress for the students. Moments of high stress have been shown to make academic integrity violations more likely to occur. So give them a longer period of time to take the exam, and avoid the stress for everyone.
TIPS for Technical Issues that Students May Face
- Do a quick quiz the day before the exam to check for any issues that the student may run into the day of the exam.
- Students should restart the computer before they start the exam.
- The student should make sure they’re in Respondus LockDown browser and not in Chrome or some other browser.
- If the exam is asking the student for a password, then they are not in LockDown Browser.
- If they experience problems then students should clear their cache.
Sites that May Have Your Course Info
There are many websites where students may be collaborating or accessing information about your course and assessments. You can go to these sites yourself and search by your name or the name of your course to see what is out there.
Option for Open Book Exams
You can make a decision to have an open book exam instead of a traditional exam. Some things to remember for that are to make questions that aren’t easily googleable. Ask questions that connect through the various readings in the course to ensure that they have actually done all the readings and work for that material. Keep in mind that questions that are supplemental to published materials are likely accessible to the students somewhere online so tailoring those questions may be especially important. Also, make sure that they know the citation and collaboration expectations.
If you are in doubt, report the incident
Not every incident that is reported ends in sanctions. If you are suspicious, report it and it will go to an Academic Integrity Monitor (AIM) who can further investigate the issue. Faculty should not feel like they have to be the investigators. The Office of Academic Initiatives and Integrity has come up with an email template that faculty can utilize for notifying a student of a potential violation. It lets the student know that the investigation will be carried out by someone else and is no longer in the hands of the faculty member.
Office of Academic Initiatives and Integrity
Monday – Friday: 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
479-575-5229
You can always call or email for an update about an open case or to discuss an issue before you report it.