Stephen Marshall: director of Victoria University’s Centre for Academic Development on unis reverting back to pen and paper tests to stop cheats

More universities have reverted back to testing students with pen and paper exams because of the difficulty securing digital exams from cheats.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, more university courses have relied on virtual exams - allowing students to bypass protections and cheat their way into better marks.

Professor Stephen Marshall, the director of Victoria University’s Centre for Academic Development, says they've caught a number of students cheating in digital exams - but the metrics are difficult to track.

"It's actually very difficult to really nail down exactly what might be happening in a remote environment or on a remote device. We haven't actually, to my knowledge, pursued many formal cases, if any."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now to the universities. Some universities are apparently reverting to
pen and paper exams to cut down on cheating. Pen
and paper exams we're, of course the only kind of
exam for a lot of unique courses for centuries. But
since the pandemic, we've seen a number of students at
their tests online. And while these digital exams do come
with systems designed to prevent cheating, some students are finding

(00:20):
ways around that, aren't they. Stephen Marshall is the director
of Victoria University Center for Academic Development and with us
Now host Stephen.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Get A.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
What are you guys doing? Are you back to pen
and paper?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, we do a bunch of things. It depends a
little bit on the course and what the needs of
the students are and where they are in terms of location.
But we are returning in some cases for good reason
to pen and paper, particularly while we transition towards other
forms of assessment in the future.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
What are the other forms of assessment?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Anything where you can get people talking to each other
and observing what they're talking about and seeing evidence of
them doing the sort of complicated, rich things that people
do in modern collaboration environments.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Basically oral exams and potentially.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
That's one of the formats, but also collaborating around the
creation of something on a collaborative tool that might be
about visual material or written material working together. There's a
bunch of different ways people now work, and we need
to be assessing those skills as well as the traditional
long form test type skill.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
You guys seen cheating on the digital exams.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
We've had a few instances where there were some issues
that the proctering environment flagged as potentially an issue, A
very small number, to be honest, it's actually very difficult
to really nail down exactly what might be happening in
a remote environment on a remote device. We haven't actually,

(01:56):
to my knowledge, pursued very many formal cases, if any
at all, when we were using the digital proctering tools.
For a bunch of reasons.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
How do kids get around this stuff? I mean, I
would have thought it would be pretty straightforward. I don't know,
you'd be able to run some sort of an AI
device over the thing and see if there's been cheating
going on? Is it not simple? Are they just smarter
than us? They just get around it.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
It's not as simple as some people would make it sound. Like,
depending on the type of tool that you use to
control what somebody is doing, you can lock down most
of the sort of immediately obvious ideas that people have,
such as using another device, or having someone else being
able to communicate with you, or perhaps using a virtual

(02:38):
machine or some sort of technical wizardry like that. The
really solid platforms that we've tested will lock machines down
so that some of those things are very difficult, if
not impossible, to do. The problem is that in so
doing they create an environment that's technically quite brittle, and
that leads us to creating more harm as we put

(02:58):
students through a proceed that they're already stressed. They're already
wound up because it's a big deal doing.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, you want to Tex Steven, how stressed out do you?
How stressed out are they having to write an entire
exam out with pen and paper? Do you remember having
to do it at school?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh? Absolutely, and practice, right.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
You would have been practiced at writing with a pen.
These kids aren't. And even then your wrist was sold
by the end of it. Now, how are they coping
with this?

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:25):
It is.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
It is a problem. We're doing some things. Actually we're
shortening tests. So many of our end of year paper
tests where we're doing it in pen and paper, are
now only two hours rather than three hours, and and
part of that is because we do know that they're
not as skilled and trained at writing with a pen
as they have been in the past. The other feature,
of course, is that it affects marking time of people's

(03:46):
handwriting really disintegrates under pressure and lack of practice. It's
that much harder for our staff to really understand what
they've written and give them the proper credit for it,
so it's not high deal.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yay, Stephen, listen, Thank you very much, really appreciated. Stephen Marshall,
Director of Victoria University Center for Academic Development. Jees, I
feel for these kids. Do you remember we used to
write with pen and paper all the time, But sitting
through a three hour exam and writing of the pen,
you dread it. Now, imagine these kids all they do
all the time is they sit there. All of the
kids nowadays this now whole life. I don't even know

(04:20):
what it means to write on pen and paper anymore.
Then it's terrifying for them.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
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