How online assessment platforms can curb cheating for Universities

Statistics show that between 6% to 10% of students in Australia have resorted to cheating in exams at some point. Further, seven in 10 students think cheating is easier today than it was a few years back.

Therefore, it is necessary to have an online assessment software that lets you handle this menace effectively while delivering exciting and rich exam experiences to the students. It will also make the process of conducting tests simpler, more efficient, and enriching.

Without an efficient assessment platform, you stand the risk of providing an unsatisfactory exam experience, both to the students and teachers. A test session filled with errors and inaccuracies reflects poorly on your institution. 

But what should a platform intended for this purpose have? What qualities should it have? Read on to find out.

What should an assessment platform have?

  1. Streamlines the workflow process

The platform should let you streamline the workflow process, making it free from errors. It must have authoring and item banking tools that enable you to create an exam in thirty minutes and deliver the results within a day. Doing so also makes the process convenient for the students since they receive their results early.

  1. Provides insights into students’ learning

It should provide insights into the students’ learning capabilities, helping you make valuable teaching decisions with analytics functionality. An analysis tool offers insights into the assessment process through a delivery statistics dashboard, custom reports, out-of-the-box reports, and added functionality.

  1. Adequate security and transparency

The best exam software for universities offer increased security, transparency and scalability. It should protect the sensitive exam data with monitoring, penetration testing, encryption and audit trail of all human touchpoints. It should also enjoy high scalability.

  1. Fair marking tools

It is necessary to have a fair marking system for all students, without inconsistencies of any kind. You can ensure fairness by real-time quality checks on marking teams using standardisation, double-marking and blind-quality monitoring. Each of these helps you with fair marking.

For example, configuring your marking project to allow for double-marking helps you allot marks to a single student script more than once. Blind quality monitoring (BQM) provides the examiner with a standardised student response and then searches for discrepancies. 

  1. Helpful specialist support team

You might initially face difficulties while transitioning to an online test marking system. A specialist support team helps you make the transition smoothly without complexities. 

The team will help you with implementation, onboarding the candidates, configuring the software, organising large-scale exam events, receiving guidance on the latest authoring functionality, training new staff and completing reporting services.

5. Deliver assessments directly

Your students will appreciate receiving the tests directly at their place of residence. An efficient platform lets you do this with remote online proctoring technology. It refers to a process in which an examiner digitally supervises and administers a test through the Internet and the test taker’s web camera. 

The technology uses AI face recognition technology to identify suspicious behaviour through data forensics, keystroke pattern recognition, voice-to-text transcription, and eye movement detection. 

You should choose an online assessment platform that helps you organise and manage exams efficiently, without errors and inaccuracies, while minimising the chances of cheating with real-time tracking tools.