By Matthew Nguyen
Cheating has always been, and will always be, one of the most common problems teachers have to deal with. Cheating has become even more prominent during distance learning because students are now taking tests without teacher supervision. To combat cheating, some teachers now require their students to use school-issued Chromebooks in class. These Chromebooks allow teachers to create a lockdown browser and also monitor what websites students are looking at. Even if you are not planning on cheating, the thought of someone watching your every move can be unsettling. For this reason, many students are wary about using Chromebooks for school. However, I believe that using Chromebooks for testing is actually a blessing in disguise.
Before some teachers mandated the use of Chromebooks during tests to prevent cheating, they used other methods that negatively affected their students. These methods included the reduction of overall test times and the setting of strict time limits on each question, similar to how the College Board handled AP Exams last spring. Although this method helps prevent cheating, it also reduces the time students have to finish their tests and double-check their work while having to answer the same amount of problems. Students must work faster than they did during in-person school, which is an unfair expectation. Before quarantine, students could easily focus on tests in quiet classrooms. At home, however, students have to take tests while being distracted by their siblings, parents, pets, etc. Students are also prone to making silly mistakes in high-stress situations, such as forgetting a decimal point in math or missing a key piece of information in an in-class essay. Reducing test time just adds to a student’s stress that is already heightened due to COVID-19 testing conditions and may lead to even more clumsy errors that students would not have made if given more time. If students take tests with Chromebooks, teachers are more willing to increase test time because of the reduced potential for cheating. In fact, teachers like AP Calculus teacher Annie Nguyen are already increasing the time limits on their tests since they are more confident that students cannot cheat. Before mandating the use of Chromebooks, Nguyen gave her students about ten minutes more than the time it took her to finish the test, but recently she has been giving her students almost triple her time. This allows her students to showcase what they have learned without the stress of trying to rush through the test.
Some teachers have also tried to prevent cheating by eliminating multiple-choice questions from their tests. Unlike free-response questions, multiple-choice questions test your ability to recognize correct answers rather than recall and apply previously learned information. As long as a student properly studies their material, he or she will most likely be able to identify the correct answer to a multiple-choice question. Free-response questions, however, are much harder to prepare for. To answer a free-response question, students must be able to come up with their own response, which is much harder than simply recognizing the correct answer. On a free-response question, if a student does not know the answer to the question, there is almost nothing he or she can do. However, if a student cannot remember the answer to a multiple-choice question, he or she can use a variety of test-taking strategies, such as the process of elimination. The increased test security that Chromebooks provide allows teachers to give back multiple-choice questions that are much easier and quicker than free-response questions.
Some may ask, however, “Can’t students just use their phones to search up answers?” Yes, but that is only if the teacher is not monitoring where their students’ phones are. Teachers can simply ask students to position their phones in view of the Chromebook camera for the duration of the test and this problem will be solved. However, monitoring a student’s computer screen is impossible without the use of school-issued Chromebooks. That is why Chromebooks are absolutely necessary when administering tests. According to AP Chemistry teacher Letta Meyer, the Chromebook’s lockdown browser will allow teachers like herself to bring back the multiple-choice questions students love.
Some teachers are also open to rewarding their students for not cheating. At the beginning of the school year, for example, Nguyen said that she will either curve a test grade, drop a student’s lowest test score, or offer a make-up exam if no one cheats in her class. If one student cheats, however, the entire class will lose the bonus. Before Nguyen mandated the use of Chromebooks, she already caught two people cheating. As a result, no one in her class will be getting the no-cheating reward. Nguyen is now mandating the use of Chromebooks and will give her students another chance in the second semester to receive the no-cheating bonus. Using school-issued Chromebooks decreases the probability of cheating, meaning that students are more likely to receive the rewards teachers are offering.
The possibility of cheating forces teachers to take precautions that can negatively impact students. The use of school-issued Chromebooks is the best anti-cheating method because it is the only one that does not hinder a student’s test-taking experience. By preventing cheating with school-issued Chromebooks, teachers will be more confident that students will not be able to cheat on their tests, and students will have a better chance to showcase what they learned.