Today’s front pages headlines here in Orlando have centered on a sensitive topic, but one we must address nonetheless–cheating in our classes. The story concerns a B-School prof at U.of Central Florida (UCF), which is now the 2nd largest college in the US, with 56,000 students. This, of course, means large classes–often shown on closed circuit TV. In a class of 600 Strategic Management seniors, the instructor used a 300 question Test Bank (which he thought to be secure) to create the midterm of 55 multiple-choice questions. Unusually high grades led to 206 students admitting they had studied from the Test Bank.
Nationally, about 21% of students admit to cheating, with more problems on large campuses and in large lecture classes. As the DSI Meeting takes place at this moment in San Diego, maybe this is a good time to raise the issue.
Yes, Test Banks are more and more available on-line, despite threats and suits by publishers. Our own publisher has taken legal action against people using our copyright material. But some schools using our OM text actually buy copies of the Solutions Manual and Test Bank and sell them as study tools to their students. So it is a fair assumption that some “ambitious” students will try to get an edge gradewise by whatever tool is on the market.
Jay and I have discussed the problem many, many times and have tried to foolproof our system to this extent: (1) we have a massive Test Bank, with well over 2,000 questions, and a text with over 900 problems. This gives the ability to keep from repeating the same questions from semester to semester; and (2), we created MyOMLab with a goal of making it as integrity-driven as humanly possible. The key is the algorithmic nature of the on-line problems that come from the text. You can assign them “bookmatch” (ie, identical to text), or “algorithmic” (ie, where each student gets her own data).
Randomizing questions from large Test Banks, using new assignments each year, and MyOMLab are just 3 ways to deal with this visible issue. Please share your comments.