Ask Slashdot: How To Allow Test Takers Internet Access, But Minimize Cheating? 330
New submitter linjaaho writes "I work as lecturer in a polytechnic. I think traditional exams are not measuring the problem-solving skills of engineering students, because in normal job you can access the internet and literature when solving problems. And it is frustrating to make equation collections and things like that. It would be much easier and more practical to just let the students use the internet to find information for solving problems. The problem: how can I let the students access the internet and at same time make sure that it is hard enough to cheat, e.g. ask for ready solution for a problem from a site like Openstudy, or help via IRC or similar tool from another student taking the exam? Of course, it is impossible to make it impossible to cheat, but how to make cheating as hard as in traditional exams?"
just your basic setup... (Score:5, Informative)
Block all traffic except port 80 http. (They don't need https, do they? They aren't checking bills online or using email, or some other security oriented task...)
Block all udp connections.
Dns filter a blacklist of known cheating sites.
Block bullshit sites like facebook, myspace and pals too. That's just good sense.
Re:Watch them closely (Score:4, Informative)
easy way to do this is have a question POOL where the test draws X questions and there are 7X questions total (adjust to your liking) if your pool is large enough then even if they ask the folks around them they won't be able to get enough info to pass.
Re:What are you testing (Score:4, Informative)
I've heard a lot of horror stories about students who were able to ride on the success of others.
Ah yes, the parasite. In high school I had a classmate in my CS class who couldn't program a VCR. I, being naive, socially awkward, and wanting to have friends, allowed him to look over my shoulder every week to get the correct answers. He went on to graduate with honors, was selected as the valedictorian, got a full ride to an ivy league university where he undoubtedly continued his shenanigans, and now he's a vice president at Visa Inc. So let that be a lesson to all you would-be cheaters, I guess.
You're solving the problem the wrong way (Score:5, Informative)
The halting problem fails because it's too easy to craft countermeasures aimed deliberately at the scanner. Enumerating the irrationals fails because there is so much complexity, it's literally impossible to go throgh it all.
But just because you can't solve this problem technically doesn't mean it can't be solved. It's difficult, but I believe it might be possible. Don't bother beyond the basics. Get a computer lab set up with computers you control. Don't allow the students to bring in any USB sticks or CDs.
Then simply install tracking software on every PC. (You can also use a network sniffer to back this up.) The idea isn't that to prevent cheating technically; rather, you want to preserve the ability to tell that people have cheated, and simply punishing them under the existing rules.
You tell everyone in the class that you'll be monitoring their internet usage during the exam. Then tell everyone what you consider cheating. Have your grad students go through the logs manually; the difference should be fairly obvious.