Live Proctoring via Respondus LockDown Browser

 

A new beta function from Respondus LockDown Browser allows instructors to conduct their own live proctoring via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other video systems. For smaller classes, this allows instructors to directly observe their students during exams. 

While there is no technical limit to the number of students who can use this system, the logistics of logging everyone in, taking attendance, observing students, and tracking when students have completed the exam can become overwhelming in courses over 20-25 students. 

The video below is from Respondus and introduces their new functionality:

 

Ten Ways to Increase Online Learning Interactivity

A frequent comment we hear about online learning is that it lacks the interactivity of face to face classes. While this may be true in some ways (online discussion boards often lack the spontaneity of in-class discussions), online classrooms also allow for everyone to have a say, from the quiet student who says little to the most confident and talkative student in the room. 

These interactive types of activities can also serve as assessments that can't be cheated at, unlike more traditional exams. Assessing student learning, fostering interactivity, and preventing academic dishonesty? What's not to love?!

But how can we foster this interactivity? We're glad you asked! 

1. Annotations: Ask learners to annotate a written test or document. This can be done either individually or collectively in small groups. You can use products like Hypothes.is to easily manage these types of assignments.
   
   
2. Collaboration: As students to create documents and presentations together using Google or Office365 suites. To organize larger documents and presentations, they can use collaboration management tools like Slack Messenger, Microsoft Teams, Google Jamboard, and Trello to make sure the group is all on the same page.
   
   
3. Concept Mapping: Have students identify relationships between concepts or networks and then illustrate these relationships by creating a concept map.
   
   
4. Curation: Students can aggregate both visual and textual resources using Google Keep 
   
   
5. Data Visualization: Students can use Google MyMaps to create and annotate maps, or use the US Census's website to create visualizations of data.
   
   
6. Exhibition Creation: You can ask students to create their own virtual museum exhibits using Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint.
   
   
7. Peer feedback: Allow students to provide constructive feedback to classmates as a way to show that they understand the material well enough to positively critique others' work.
   
   
8. Portfolio: Students can use the built-in Folio tool in Canvas to create professional-looking portfolios that can follow them into the job market.
   
   
9. Flipgrid: Adding more of a traditional in-class feel to digital discussion boards, this online discussion board adds video and audio feedback for students, as well as the ability to leave text comments. Talk about enriching the online discussion experience!
   
   
10. Teach back: Have students "teach" a lesson in a short video. This demonstrates mastery because you can't teach it if you don't understand it! 

So there you have it! Ten ways to increase interactivity with content and between students in online courses. Do you have your own ways to increase learner interaction online?

Respondus Announces a Beta-Version of Lockdown Browser

 

With hundreds of quizzes and exams moving to an online format, exam security has been at the forefront of instructors' minds. 

One tool in faculty members' arsenals has been the use of Respondus's LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor tools. 

Until recently, however, this program did not work with the Chromebooks that so many students are either issued or choose as a less expensive alternative to laptops and PCs. This is changing with Respondus's announcement that they will be rolling out a new Chromebook extension that will allow students to use both the LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor, the AI portion of Respondus that monitor's students activity during exams. 

Once the license administrator enables the Chromebook extension, instructors will need to do the following to allow for the use of the browser:

1. Go to the LockDown Browser Dashboard within Canvas 
2. Select “Require Respondus LockDown Browser for this exam” 
3. Expand “Advanced Settings” and select “Allow students to use LockDown Browser for Chromebook (beta)” 
4. Save the exam settings for LockDown Browser              

For students to install the LockDown Browser on their Chromebook, they'll need to follow the instructions below:

1. Log into the Chromebook start Google Chrome 
2. Log into Canvas and navigate to the exam that requires LockDown Browser  
3. Select the link for downloading and installing LockDown Browser 
4. From the Chrome web store, select “Add to Chrome” to install the LockDown Browser Extension 
5. Note: during the beta, this extension will only work with quizzes an instructor has enabled for use with LockDown Browser for Chromebook

For more information about this beta release, the following Knowledgebase article provides additional information about the beta release of LockDown Browser for Chromebook, including feature limitations and known issues. This article will be updated periodically during the beta.

Academic Honesty and Exam Security

In this time of remote learning, academic honesty is at the forefront of many (if not all) faculty members' minds. How do we ensure that our students are meeting their course outcomes? That they are honestly taking their own tests and not using increasingly sophisticated ways to cheat? Switching to remote teaching is hard enough without having increased worries about academic honesty. 

Are students actually cheating? The answer seems to be yes. The explosion of websites like Quizlet and CourseHero have led to students openly bragging about using Quizlet to cheat. In an article in Inside Higher Ed, in 2018 it was reported that 12 students at Texas Christian University were suspended for allegedly cheating using Quizlet. Students at other universities talked about academic dishonesty, like studying likely test questions (broken down by instructor and course) or by opening Quizlet in a separate window while they took their test online. (1) 

So what are instructors to do? There are two main methods for preventing academic dishonesty: creating increased exam security or identifying and switching to alternate assessments. 

How can we increase exam security in a time when it feels like everything is less secure? There are a few options built into Canvas that can be easily deployed, and then a few University-wide tools that you can use to promote academic honesty. 

• Randomize your questions. Using publisher test banks or creating Question Groups in Canvas will allow you to provide extra test questions for students to answer. Once you have extra questions, you can tell the exam to only pull a portion of them. This ensures that not all students will see all of the same questions.
• Randomize your answers. If you're giving a multiple choice test, using the checkbox on the Quiz Details page will randomize the answers to your randomized questions will eliminate even more opportunities for students to share answers between each other. 
• Use an exam access code. This lets you control who has access to the assessment.
• Only allow students to see one question at a time and limit backtracking. This keeps students from seeing the whole assessment and snapping a photo of it to share with others. 
• Put a time limit on your quizzes, tests, and exams. By using a time limit, students don't have time to look up each of the answers in their book, notes, or on Quizlet. But don't make the time too tight; leave students enough time to ponder their answer, especially if the question is short answer. A good rule of thumb is two minutes per question.  
• Use a lockdown browser. ESU provides Repondus Lockdown browser to all faculty during this time. What a lockdown browser does is open a new browser for students to take their tests in that won't let them navigate to other pages, print the exam, screen-cap it, exit without submitting the exam, etc. Respondus Lockdown browser integrates with Canvas. 
• Use Respondus Monitor. This is a step above the Lockdown browser. Monitor uses AI and a student's webcam to note any "irregularities" in the testing session (the student leaves the computer, picks up their phone, talks to someone, etc.) and flags it. It then makes these irregularities available to the faculty member for review. If you're interested in using Respondus Monitor, please contact Learning Technologies first, as it requires a few more steps for setup. 
• Do Zoom proctoring. Slightly lower tech than Respondus Monitor, but you can have students join a Zoom meeting and then take the assessment. This allows you to watch them. If you have a large class, however, this can be difficult to manage. 

What if you don't feel that any of these options will make your assessment truly secure? Firstly, consider that very few assessments are truly secure. Students are coming up with increasingly sophisticated ways to cheat. If you want to be 100% certain, however, consider changing the type of assessment you use from a quiz or exam to an alternative assessment. These alternative assessments provide students with a chance to demonstrate hands-on proficiency, rather than choosing the correct answer from a list of incorrect ones. Some alternative assessments to consider:

• Journals (using OneNote or Google Drive)
• Papers
• Video demonstrations or short lectures (using Flipgrid, Zoom, Adobe Spark, or Screencast-o-matic)
• Presentations (using PowerPoint, Canva, or Zoom)
• Visuals like posters, infographics, webpages (using Adobe Spark, Canva, or Infogram)
• Discussions (using Canvas Discussions or Flipgrid)
• Peer Reviews (using either Canvas Discussions or Assignments)

Ensuring that your students adhere to academic honesty is a difficult task, especially when teaching and learning is occurring remotely. With these suggestions in mind, however, you can increase your assessment security or change the type of assessment so that academic dishonesty is harder for your students to commit. 

As always, please contact Learning Technologies with any questions!

____________
1) McKenzie, Lindsay. "Learning Tool or Cheating Aid?" Inside Higher Ed, May 14, 2018. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/14/professors-warned-about-popular-learning-tool-used-students-cheat

Vericite is Changing to SimCheck

Over the 2019-2020 holiday break, ESU will change the Vericite plagiarism detection software to SimCheck (Similarity Check) - created by the parent company Turnitin. Below we've listed a few common questions we anticipate with respect to this change.

• Why is it changing? Vericite was acquired by Turnitin roughly two years ago. As part of that acquisition, the Vericite product has been discontinued and is being replaced with a completely new product developed by the Turnitin company called SimCheck. 
  

• Why does ESU need to change now? The Vericite product is no longer updated and support is limited. It is scheduled for end-of-life (EOL) in a few months. Technically, we could wait until summer to convert, but that delay will likely disrupt courses. We've determined that the transition will be less disruptive if completed over the holiday shutdown when courses are not actively running. The actual change will occur on December 17th.

• Does it integrate into Canvas? Yes. It will work very similar to Vericite. (See video links below.) There will be a checkbox in the Assignment area that allows faculty to add plagiarism detection to student submissions. And just like Vericite, faculty can see similarity reports from within the Speedgrader and the gradebook.

• Can faculty 'direct submit' an assignment? Yes. Unlike Vericite which did not support Direct Submissions (eg submitting papers without creating a Canvas assignment), SimCheck allows submission outside of Canvas. Moreover, faculty can submit multiple files at once.

• How quickly are similarity reports created? That is up to the instructor. Reports can be immediate, after the assignment is graded, after a certain date, or never.

• Where are the papers stored? Similar to Vericite, SimCheck can index student submissions in a university (private) repository that is not shared with other institutions. That was a primary reason ESU switched from the original Turnitin product several years ago. This important feature provides intellectual property protection for student work. Faculty also have the option of storing papers in a "standard" repository which is shared with other universities. Faculty can define institutional repository or a standard repository when creating the assignment. A feature called Submission Indexing gives faculty the option to compare papers to other student papers within the institution.

• What happens to the Vericite Data when we change? Turnitin will make an institutional 'copy' of our data when they convert us to SimCheck. That means we can see historical information related to any assignments dating back to when ESU first licensed the product. This data will be available, but will not carry forward into SimCheck.

• Is SimCheck accessible? Yes. SimCheck conforms to WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.

• How do I use it with Canvas? This USER GUIDE provides step-by-step information regarding using SimCheck within Canvas. Or, you can refer to the videos below.

• How does SimCheck color indexing differ from Vericite? SimCheck Colors are actually easier to interpret than Vericite. They range from light blue (0% match) to dark blue (1-24% match), yellow (25-49%), orange (50-74%), and red (75-100%).  

• Is there information for students? Refer to the SimCheck Student Guide  

• Is there information for instructors? Refer to the SimCheck Faculty Guide

Video Tutorials & Slide Deck:

• Full Webinar Recording

• Reviewing a Submission Recording

• Direct Web Submission Recording

• Canvas Specific Information Recording

• Slide Deck from Recording

For questions about SimCheck, please contact the Helpdesk at 5555 or helpdesk@emporia.edu