prevent students from copying text from quiz question

[k_wullstein]

With AI tool use so common now with students using the quiz tool for objective testing is challenging.  It appears they can copy the text and then put it in an AI tool to get the answer.  They can do this so quickly that reducing the quiz time limit isn't effective.  I use Lock Down Browser, but that may not be enough. 

1) is there a way to prevent students from copying text from a quiz question?  

2) is there a way to hide text in a quiz question that students can't see if they copy the text? For example put the text is the color white.  When I do this and view as a student, the white text shows up when I copy the text. 

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @k_wullstein,

I don't think it's feasible to prevent students from copying text out of the browser from a technical perspective, as the world wide web just wasn't designed with that kind of thing in mind.  I'm sure there are some solutions that could be deployed, but they might end up doing more harm than good.  Continuing that line of thought, AI is being built in to many browsers, which means the AI could see the underlying webpage code and get the text directly from there anyways, so locking students out of copy/paste wouldn't really address the root problem.

Similarly, while I understand the idea of "hiding" some text, it'll probably end up with more technical challenges than it seems on the surface.  You'd need to make sure that whatever you do was also hidden from screen-readers, as you wouldn't want to negatively impact students with a disability who need assistive software like that.  You'd also have to take dark-mode into account...  While it's only available officially in the Canvas app right now, there are browser extensions that can change background color too.  If you just make white text, people using dark mode would likely see that text as normal and could again be confused.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but I wanted to get these comments out there for you and others who might come along and see this thread.

-Chris