Heberling, Michael (2002). Maintaining Academic Integrity in an Online Environment. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume V, Number I, Spring 2002. Retrieved 9 October 2007.
Heberling is president of Baker College Center for Graduate Studies, which has a robust online graduate program. Heberling addresses concerns about opportunities for plagiarism in online courses, and finds that while technology has created an environment in which students can engage in various forms of academic dishonesty, technology also equips educators with new tools for detecting it: " Ironically, a strong case can be made that it is actually harder to cheat online and that it is also easier to detect. In a traditional class, the instructor does not have the benefit of seeing ongoing written products from each student. A few intermittent written assignments do not provide the same level of insight into a student’s writing style that one would find in an online class." Heberling outlines various online tools for and methods of detecting academic dishonesty among online students and provides examples of how faculty have dealt with such issues. Further, he discusses the need for strong administrative support of faculty who strive to maintain academic integrity. Administrators must back up faculty when students complain about the consequences of their plagiarism.
Comments from Linda: I found this article very relevant to the writing classes I teach online. Because I can work more closely one-on-one with online student writers as they develop a piece of writing, I can tell when there are wild variations in the quality or voice of an assignment they submit. It is still possible for a person other than the registered student to complete the work in an online course, but the impostor would have to do ALL the work, or the stylistic differences between the student and the impostor would be obvious.

CIS237 Assessment and Evaluation - Week 6 Posted by suecat

http://www.thejeo.com/ReasonsFinal.pdf

This paper describes how due to the limited amount of resources available, a mid-western university is trying to implement a resource that would be fair to all involved - students, faculty, and administration that would effectively evaluate the work of the online student. They describe their pilot project of supporting online evaluations for distant education courses that would make a difference in evaluations. Described in this paper are issues considered and challenged that are ongoing to evaluation for the distant education student. They describe some of the benefits associated with electronic data gathering and reporting that help with this process.

Week 4: Assessments and Evaluations Posted by Shabana
Learning and assessment of learning is a complex process and becomes more complex for online assessment. Cheating and plagiarism have become big issues for distance learning and educators are focusing on different ways to reduce them.

Following is a worth reading article on the topic which provides valuable suggestions to minimize cheating in online student assessment. Cheating in Online Students Assessment: Beyond Plagiarism http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer72/rowe72.html
The author says that online assessment has a narrower bandwidth than classroom assessment (instructors cannot watch students work, for instance) and this might make cheating easier. Three most common problems involved in online cheating are: Problem 1: Getting assessment answers in advance Problem 2: Unfair retaking of assessments Problem 3: Unauthorized help during the assessment Different suggestions have been provided to prevent online assessment cheating. As far as my experience is concerned I have not encoutered any issue of cheating may be due to nature of assessment. For quizzes, I give them open book exam and do not totally rely on these quizzes.

Another resource on rules of assessment and evaluations can be useful while planning and delivering an online assessment. http://www.iuk.edu/~koctla/assessment/9principles.shtml
9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning
1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values.
2. Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time.
3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes.
4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.
5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing, not episodic.
6. Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved.
7. Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.
8. Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.
9. Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.
Comment by suecat :It's a shame some students feel the need to cheat weather online or F2F. For some online classes instructors have their students come into the building to take course tests. This may give some people a sense of at least it will make it harder to cheat - if not nearly impossible. Some people are up for the challenge.
We can try and set up some things in our learning systems that will possible help somewhat with assessments. We can set up letting students only have one chance to take a quiz for example. I like the suggestion of open book exams as well and not totally depending on these. Trying to build a trusting relationship on line may detour on line cheating.


Alex's article

	Authenticating, Identifying, and Monitoring Learners in the Virtual Classroom: Academic Integrity in Distance Learning.
Authors:	Shyles, Leonard

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association (88th, November 21-24, 2002, New Orleans, LA).
You can find a copy of the article here

This article was relatively short and started out with some pretty basic ideas for ensuring that students are not cheating, basically proctoring exams. This idea is certainly nothing novel whether in face-to-face courses or now with online but it keeps distance education courses from being totally distant. While this is a limiting factor, having the students come in for scheduled exams should be fairly easy to do since most students are from the local area and can reschedule other commitments like family and work. Additionally, it gives students a chance to physically interact with each other and possibly also with the professor.

The 2nd recommendation of the article was to use biometrics (e.g. fingerprints, retinal scans, photos, voice recognition, etc.). This idea is pretty interesting (including a monitor that they set up near their computer when they take a test) but not financially feasible. Students are already struggling to buy books etc., let alone some sort of biometric monitoring device.

Note from Doug:
I expect that, soon, all computers will have a biometric device. Many laptops have them (thumbprints) already.

Holzberg, C. (2002, November 1). Assessment, Assessment Rubrics and Evaluation Guidelines.techLEARNING.Retrieved November 14, 2007, from http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/WCE/archives/evalguid.php Although the tools linked out from this article are not specific to online teaching and learning, they are a great list of online tools to help construct valid assessments and rubrics.
Comment from Shelley: I'm a huge fan of RubiStar. I rarely use one of the sample rubrics exactly as is...I usually combine a bunch of samples to help develop my own.

The Advantages of Rubrics, Posted by Kay
The five part series at this URL give comprehensive definitions and “How-To” instructions on creating rubrics. I was interested in the distinction between analytic rubrics (which identify and assess components of a finished product) and holistic rubrics (which assess student work as a whole).

Vonderwell, S., Lian, X., & Alderman, K. (2007). Asynchronous Discussions and Assessment in Online Learning. Journal of Research in Technology in Education, 39(3), 309-328. Retrieved November 14, 2007, from EbscoHost.
This is a research study of the assessment of graduate students in discussion board environments. The results demonstrate that higher order levels of thinking and learning can by demonstrated, and therefore assessed.

HELP. Where am I? Doug is lost in cyberspace.
Whose wiki am I in with this article? I've been following links that started in my wiki, but I've also been to Linda's and Shabana's, and Alex'. There is no indicator on the page to let me know my current location.

http://www.onlineethics.org/CMS/edu/resources/socimp.aspx. This provides an extensive bibliography about much research covering the title issues, Legalities and Ethics. In one of my Engineering classes, I was given only one department instruction, I must spend one period talking about ethics. This I built around student opinions about how they would behave when confronted with a variety situations - each one legal, but was it the 'right thing to do'? All of this is universal, but what about on-line courses? The simplest aspect is: how many of us are using pirated software? Have you ever paid for shareware download? This becomes an issue when you are making lessons from home. There are many other issues concerning privacy. How do you protect your own? http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/legalissue.html. This article refers to issues such as cyber-stalking and identity theft. One other issue is what defines unacceptable language? There are many usages in common today, including prime time tv, that I cannot tolerate. I'm probably labeled old-fashioned, however, i believe that one's thoughts can be expressed more than adequately by the English language, or most others, without constant interjections of profanities. To me, that is a sign of limited language skills. I've witnessed it frequently from highly intelligent people I admire. What constitutes hate speech? (I need to stop here, the editor won't let me enter anymore!! This sucks.) I wrote this on the editor on my (Doug's) wiki page.

Classroom Assessment Techniques Designed for Technology. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from
http://www.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed99/Martin.htm#Abstract

Angelo and Cross have developed strategies for assessing teaching effectiveness at the college level. As they have stated: "College instructors who have assumed that their students were learning what they were trying to teach them are regularly faced with disappointing evidence to the contrary when they grade tests and term papers." Angelo and Cross have developed some written "instant" feedback techniques which they call classroom assessment techniques. Generally using ungraded activities, the goal is to measure the "current state" of the classroom. We will examine a series of assessment techniques which are most useable in the technological classroom.

Comments by Margarita
Delivery of the content and assessment of the learning in the classroom are one of the key factors in learning. Why? Because it's here when we realize if the material has been grasped and understood by the student. Unfortunately, we still have to use in our classroom the traditional way of assessing student’s performance through quizzes and tests.
However, since I learned about CAT’s a couple of months ago, I have been able to see assessment with different eyes. The authors explain several techniques that can be used both in a F2F or an online environment. Techniques such as:
Minute paper, Chain notes, Memory Matrix, Directed paraphrasing, One-sentence summary, Exam Evaluations, Application cards, and Student-generated questions are explained in this article.

Classroom Assessment Techniques in Asynchronous Learning Networks. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from
http://technologysource.org/article/classroom_assessment_techniques_in_asynchronous_learning_networks/

As more college and university courses are offered via asynchronous learning networks (ALNs), such institutions face an important question: How can classroom assessment techniques be implemented for distance students, especially students communicating asynchronously?
Cross and Steadman (1996) define classroom assessment as "small-scale assessments conducted continually in college classrooms by discipline-based teachers to determine what students are learning in that class" (p. 8). Classroom assessment provides in-process feedback and allows instructors to implement continuous quality improvement techniques in their class (Soetaert, 1998).


Comments by Margarita
This is an excellent article that complements the CAT’s techniques mentioned above.
The author uses two simple questions to be used as assessment:
1. What is the one thing that helped you learn the most in this week's activities?
2. What is the one thing in this course that is least helpful to your learning?


(Posted by Lorna)
Gaytan, Jorge; McEwen, Beryl C. Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, v21 n3 p117-132 Sep 2007.
https://ezp.mc.maricopa.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ780620&site=ehost-live&ssl=y
Notable points
1. Meaningful and timely feedback is critcal.
2. Well designed rubrics that support assessment activities should be available to students.
3. A variety of online assessments should be used.
4. Assignments should be checked for clarity by a third party before they are posted.


Rowe, Neil. Cheating in Online Student Assessment: Beyond Plagiarism. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume VII, NumberII, Summer 2004. Retrieved April 2008.
This paper give interesting insight into the history of cheating as the internet and distance learning has evolved. It covers topics as basic as knowing the individual that is actually taking the test, to hackers and spyware. There are suggested ways of minimizing the prospect of cheating such as avoiding multiple choice questions, or if MCQ's are used, use pools of randomly selected questions along with other ideas of proctoring. Jump to the bottom of the paper to view the list of recommendations.
(Posted by Lea)


Moskal, Barbara M. (2000). Scoring rubrics: what, when and how?. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(3). Retrieved May 12, 2008 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=3
This paper discusses assessing using rubrics. It is a scoring tool that divides an assignment or project into performance objectives providing a detailed description of what should constitute a quality final product. Objectivity is maintaintained when measuring student learning and grading their work. Different types of rubrics are discussed in this paper as well, for exampleanalytic versus holistic and general versus task specific rubrics. (Posted by Annapurna)