About online examination

I know that in U.S. are a lot of Distance Learning Universities/College and Online Universities. What I don`t understand, how can be a University sure that the person who enroll is the person who make the examination. I know that every student becomes a ID and a password. We have also Distance Learning Universities in Germany, but the examination it`s make by the University. Evan a online University makes the examination with all students in a School or determined places.

Isa

 

It´s realy interesting. That´s mean, I´m looking for a student who just enrolled, or sameone who have a bachelor or a master Degree, I pay him/her a couple of tousend $, and he/her take all the examens for me. And so I´m a graduate student.
I realy don`t want to know, how many "students" done something like this.

 

And a proctored exam is better? Anyone can make or buy a fake ID for $30.

Cheaters will cheat. What can you do?

 

Of course, it's possible for the same thing to happen at an on-ground university. I don't ask for photo IDs in my classes--and it's already been mentioned that they can be easily faked up. How do I know that someone taking a given class is the person they claim to be unless I already know them? Probably wouldn't happen in the classes I teach like gov't, or biz law or crim law, but something like college algebra or calc or stats that someone might need to pass to get their degree, who knows? It's probably happened thousands of times where students paid a ringer a few grand to take a class for them--and got away with it.

 

Same at regular B&M universities. However, they have to provide a University ID that might cost more than 30 bucks to fake.

Not too long time ago, I discovered a web site that was charging 5K to write master's degrees proctored exams from UoL. The web site went down for obvious reasons but there is a market for fraud for sure.

Online just makes it easier as the person can be located anywhere in the planet.

When I wrote my proctored exams, the only valid ID was passport for the same reason. Faking a passport costs more than 30 bucks for sure.

 

Steve,

During my first (miserable) stab at higher education, one of my classes was held in a lecture hall, with well over 100 students. The professor just handed out the quizzes/tests, then collected them, and graded them. I'd bet my life savings that I could have had anyone, male or female, take the tests for me, as long as they put down my information, and no one would have been the wiser.

Cheating will always exist, but IMO, most DL programs have much tougher safeguards against it than B&M schools do.

 

Cheating will always exist, but IMO, most DL programs have much tougher safeguards against it than B&M schools do.

I guess the B&M schools more-or-less take for granted. that you are who you say you are.

Come to think of it, I was never asked for an ID either when I took B&M based classes.

 

OFF TOPIC

Maybe so. One thing I've noticed about my program at GW is that courses have very low reliance on exams. Most courses haven't had any. Instead, there are projects and papers due.


This question is a bit off topic but:

Don't most Graduate programs work this way?
Are there midterms and finals in grad school? (Generally speaking)

I'm not close to grad school but my wife is, and this subject came up just yesterday.

THX

 

Re: OFF TOPIC

In my graduate program, there were no midterms or finals, grading was based on class participation and written assignments (research papers).

 

I teach undergrad and you are correct that we don't ask for id's when giving exams. Some of my classes have been quite large so someone could show up and take a course for another student and I would never be the wiser. Of course, they only hurt themselves in the long-term.

I teach accounting and had assigned a comprehensive project to be completed outside of class. I'm aware that students would work together and that's not altogether bad since they can learn from one another. I did have one student who turned in all of the financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, etc.) that was to be completed after all of the postings and adjustments. My question to her was how she was able to complete the statements without doing the postings? Needless to say, she didn't pass my class.

My experience in graduate school was different than undegrad. We had few exams. Most of my classes (B&M school) were project related. Several of them involved team projects and the team members were asked to privately grade their team members. The one class that I remember having exams was taught by a guy that was an adjunct, but he was the director of a medical facility. His class was tough and the exams were all essay. You couldn't bullshit your way through those exams because he knew if you knew what you were talking about. Those nights when I had his exams, I walked out of the room feeling like I had met up with someone in an alley who beat me with a baseball bat. Needless to say, I learned a lot in that class!

 

Re: OFF TOPIC

In both my MBA and DBA, most classes had at least final exams but also included projects and assignments. Very few classes were just projects or papers. The exeption were the research oriented classes.

Exams put a lot of stress on the student but force you to go through the material.

 

Thank you for the info on the "Off Topic" question. I get the general idea of what these programs are about.

I will pass the info on to her.. Strange she is a member of this board and I ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS!!

Ahh the married life...

My life would be complete if I could only get all the answers to those darn FEMA exams!!!! LOL

 

Many of the online exams are timed, so either you know the material or you don't. You can open your books or Google to search for an answer if you'd like, but you'd be wasting precious time. I suppose you could have someone else take the exam on your behalf, but he/she would really have to know the material well. Many of the test questions are written, as you would think, to blend cohesively with the text for the course. If you haven't read and studied the specific course text, you could still be in danger of missing a ton of questions, even if you "know" the overall course content.

Pug

 

This thread is interesting because of two situations that recently took place in my life.

1) I learned that someone I know, several years ago, earned $1,000 to attend classes for one semester at a B&M college for another student so that the person who actually received the degree would not have to take the courses.

2) In my most difficult class this semester (I won't say which one), I did a little experiment: I decided for one particular week not to study whatsoever, not even to open the book to the chapters that were assigned. At the end of the week I took the timed online test and had Google and Wikipedia open in other windows and my textbook open to the index.

I completed the timed test with about 1/3 of the time remaining on the clock. I scored 100% correct answers.

After I took the test, THEN I did all of my assignments for the week and submitted them. It took me about an hour to complete them, without cracking the text at all.

So my conclusions are:

1) Fakery and cheating can take place in the B&M classroom just as well as it can in the online classroom.

2) It is possible, at least in my test case, to do well in an online class/test with just your open book and open browser.

 

Apparently in this case it was a summer semester and the person getting paid had an interest in the courses, so they considered it a "free" education with $1,000 bonus cash.