So many times, we stick with what we’ve always done, when there might be new and better ways to do the same thing. You might even find that these new ways actually save you time and effort! Did you know that you can do your quizzes and exams online in Blackboard instead of using a scantron or bluebook? There are lots of ways to customize your assessments and cut down on academic dishonesty using these tools.
To explore these tools you’ll first need to create your test in Blackboard. Many publishers provide test banks of questions that can be used for testing as part of using their textbook, and you can use those pre-created test questions by just pulling the test bank into Respondus.
Once you’ve got the perfectly crafted test, you’ll want to think about how to discourage your students from cheating. There are a few ways to accomplish that. You could use the Respondus Lockdown Browser, which prevents students from leaving the browser to search for the answers elsewhere. Sometimes you might want the ability to control things a little more tightly. With the Respondus Monitor you have the option to do spot checks of what the students have in front of them. Are they talking to someone else or looking down at their notes? It uses the student’s webcam to film them while they’re taking the test and flags anything that seems unusual like the student leaving the frame and coming back. At that point, you’d be able to go back in and take a look at the video or spot check videos to see if there are signs of cheating.
Sometimes you want full proctoring of online exams though and for those times, Proctor U might be the way to go. Keep in mind, however, it does come with some extra cost.