Learn more about non-proctored exams.

Definition

A non-proctored exam is an exam completed without supervision either from a person or from proctoring software. Student are not typically limited from accessing other materials while testing. Therefore, this type of exam highlights the responsibility of the student to maintain academic integrity.  Often, these exams are used when something other than mastery or recall of course material is being tested. Non-proctored exams are frequently used because they are easy to administer and can be completed at the convenience of the test taker.

Benefits of non-proctored online exams

Support for non-proctored exams

Some types of paper or online assessments may not lend themselves well to proctoring. If your exam or quiz will be completed without proctoring, you will not be able to use the services offered by our team and therefore, do not need to add your exam details to the Proctored Exams Portal. If your course is online, reach out to the Course Administration Team at DOE for support. If your course is in person, reach out to the SITA team for support.

AI tools and cheating

Exam Services recommends that all online quizzes be protected with Respondus Lockdown Browser. It is a browser that locks your students' computers into a single window of ICON. No other windows, tabs, or programs are accessible while using Lockdown Browser. This includes AI content tools like ChatGPT. These types of tools can write:

  • Essays of any length
  • Short answer responses
  • Jokes & poems
  • Music & screenplays
  • Resumes & cover letters
  • Code and debugging code

Without using Respondus Lockdown Browser, students are able to allow the AI content tools to read the online quiz or exam and suggest answers.

Visit this page for more details on AI tools: https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/artificial-intelligence-tools-and-teaching

Prevent cheating in online exams

Exam proctoring is the most secure method of maintaining exam integrity. However, if your exams are online, you can utilize the available settings in the Quizzes page of ICON to enhance security without proctoring. We recommend using, at minimum, the six ICON Quizzes' settings listed below:

There is an option to allow a single attempt or multiple attempts at a quiz/exam. We recommend allowing only one attempt for high stakes testing and multiple attempts for low stakes quizzes or reviews. The reason for allowing a single attempt during high stakes testing is that some students have found this as a way to cheat; meaning they can preview the quiz questions, look at their notes, and then take the quiz. Exceptions can be made manually for students who encounter technical difficulties; contact Exam Services with questions.

This option restricts the amount of time, in minutes, that a student can spend on a quiz or exam. If you are not sure how much time to give students, we recommend about 1 minute per question. Keep in mind that multiple choice and true-false questions can be answered much faster than that. This is because clicking on an option is faster than writing or filling in a bubble. The quiz or exam will force-submit once the time limit is up. Exceptions can be made for individual students needing extended time on quizzes or exams; contact Exam Services for details.

The Assign to field can restrict the dates and times that the exam is available for the student. The exam or quiz will become available on the date and time listed in “Available from” and will close on the date and time listed in “Until.”

Selecting this option will randomize the order that the answers appear in. No two students will see the exact same answer choice order for multiple choice and multiple answer type questions. This setting will apply to every question in the quiz or exam. To avoid confusion, do not use enumeration in your answers, e.g. A, B, C or I, II, III and do not use answers that rely on display order, e.g. “all of the above,” “none of the above,” etc.

Shuffling the order that the questions appear in for each student can be done using the Question Banks rather than changing a setting. This is the online method of creating different versions of the - There are a variety ofuy76 approaches. Here are the most common: 

  • Shuffle all questions. Let us imagine that a quiz or exam has 25 questions and the order that they appear in for students is not critical. All 25 questions can be put into the same question bank. When that question bank is pulled into the quiz/exam, every student will see those same 25 questions in a different order. 

  • Shuffle groups of questions. Let us imagine that a quiz or exam covers a few different topics which should be evaluated separately. The questions can be grouped into different question banks by topic. Set the exam to pull all questions from the Topic 1 question bank. This means that each student will get all the Topic 1 questions, but each student will answer them in a different order. Repeat until all the question banks for each topic are pulled into the exam. 

  • Select X number of questions. Another way to shuffle what appears for students is to group questions by topic. Then, set the exam to pull just a few questions from the question bank. For example, the question bank may have 5 different questions for Topic 1. Answering any of the questions will demonstrate mastery of the subject. Therefore, for each student, the exam will randomly pull one question from the question bank for Topic 1. Repeat with remaining question banks. 

All University of Iowa courses can use this platform free of charge. By enabling this, students will be “locked” into the quiz or exam until they press submit or time expires. Students will not be able to access anything else, including Chat GPT and other similar AI extensions/plugins/tools, on the computer they are using during the quiz or exam. If you do not lock down the computer the student is using to take the quiz or exam, it becomes incredibly easy for AI to help students answer the questions. Lockdown Browser can only protect ICON quizzes or exams. 

Visit this page for more details on Lockdown Browser: https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/respondus   

Other settings to prevent cheating

While our team recommends using the settings indicated above for any quiz/exam, there are more options in ICON. To increase the level of security for your online quiz or exam, you may consider taking advantage of the following additional possibilities in ICON:

To protect an online quiz or exam, you can add a password which you will give to the students once they sit down to take the quiz or exam.

By default, any new quiz/exam built in ICON will allow students to see the correct answers for all questions both as soon as they submit the quiz/exam and at any point after that. This makes it very straightforward for students to be able to save the exam and the answers for future access. 

We recommend that you uncheck the "Let Students see their quiz responses" box. This will prevent students from seeing the questions and the correct answers after submission. We recommend that you provide one-on-one exam feedback or provide general feedback to the class on exam results.

This option, when selected, displays only one question on the screen at a time for students. The student must press the forward or backward arrow to move through the exam. When combined with shuffling questions, it can be a powerful method to prevent cheating. 

NOTE: Students with problematic internet connections will struggle when this setting is used. This is because each question must load one at a time.

Extend your knowledge

Contact Exam Services