I suspect students are using autofill function for the exam (based on practice exam)

[SeanKim]

Hey everyone. 

I suspect some of my students are using autofill feature of web browsers or extensions, to create their own database of answers based on practice exams which have the exact same wording as the actual exam. When the prompts are the same, the autofill function will populate the answers they have entered previously. (like filling out your home address, etc on a form using a browser.)

I've looked into respondus lockdown browser, but it appears it has to be downloaded on to students' computers, but many of my students use phones to take the exams. 

is there any other alternative to the lockdown broswer? (a possible solution to this problem is to reword the exam questions by adding a word or two which might throw off the autofill function.)

Thanks for any thoughts. 

Sean 

[SusanNiemeyer]

Is there any reason to have the same questions on the practice exam and the graded exam? Even for an exam given in a classroom on paper, I'd want to have different questions. Otherwise, the students are just going to focus on the practice exam questions and not bother to study the rest of your course material. 

[SeanKim]

Questions are  pulled from banks, soo to reword the questions, I have to change the banks and remake the entire exam which uses 20 chapters (for the cumulative final)

[ericwhitmer]

This I have also found at my institution that the questions have been published to sites such as Course Hero when using unprotected questions.

[ericwhitmer]

If you use Respondus Lockdown Browser, there is a setting you can enable for each quiz where it can be used on iPads. The students will still have to download the app from the App Store though. I can't vouch for what the competitors such as Honorlock do though.

[SeanKim]

If you look at the reviews of the browser, it's not very flattering. A lot of students have problems with being locked out when they're not supposed to. That's my last resort. I guess I could give out paper exams, but some expressed anxiety issues with paper exams (being from the pandemic generation, they're used to online tests. some of them literally haven't been in the class for 3 years and haven't seen a paper exam ever since.) Another solution is giving the paper exam only to the students suspected of cheating. And the second to the last solution is rewriting the entire question banks for 20 chapters. (I would rather do this than force my students to use respondus.)

[ericwhitmer]

What one of my instructors has done at my institution, is that he locks the quiz until their assigned time and also locks the quiz with an access code, the students can bring in their own devices to take the quiz and he then provides the access code in person.

[SeanKim]

I'm not following how that will help the situation here. The problem arose, I think, because the quiz bank used the same questions for both practice and the actual exam. And even though the practice exam was only half as long, they were allowed to take it as many time as they want. That alleviates much of the test anxiety students experience. Downside was that there is this thing called autofill, which students may have found out about.