This question of the Spring semester of 2020 has remained largely unanswered. How will we give assessments with confidence that they have fidelity? How can we give assessments that are cheat resistant? How can we provide the kind of support to the at home testing student, and still provide the same level of proctoring to the at home student? These are the questions plaguing our team.
Some of the answers:
1. Using Chromebook lockdown on Google forms ONLY works if your students' emails are under your school's domain name. Ours is not.
2. Quizizz seems to be a current favorite of some. They are distributing one question at a time and withdrawing it on a timer. Not good for IEP or some others so not a win.
3. Giving a different version of the test to each at home student, again with a timer and an at home proctor. Not overly practical.
4. Giving different versions of the tests and supervising the students virtually. Not infallible.
5. A testing center on campus that requires students to take their tests in a room with social distancing after school, after a resanitization. Not practical for all families.
6. Screencastify Submit recording of the computer screen and mike, while on Google meet with computer, and with phone, to allow teacher to supervised from the computer/meet view, and from their phones with a side profile/keyboard screen view. This is my current circus. It is taking forever to review the videos, even on speed up. So, not practical for teacher sanity.
7. Pray the school can buy something like a lockdown respondus program, which is not likely in my case. Having used it in my college classes, I know that it is fallible in the prevention of cheating.
I may go back to my standby from last year: At home proctor, test while on screen, then a required Screencastify submit question. So, a typical written test would comprise 60% of the test grade and the video responses justifying and explaining their answers to various questions would comprised the remaining 40%. Also, time consuming, but student beneficial.
What are you doing? Let's face it, this is not an ideal situation, and yet, as a High school math teacher, I know I must prepare my students for the eventual SAT, ACT tests in their futures, and for their eventual entrance to college. No one is going to say that the students lived through COVID-19 and so they are able to just be granted admission. The students must know the content. We need to ensure that they do. Unfortunately, I cannot mandate their character, nor can I rely on their ethics. I need to find some way to ensure that the preparation they are receiving in class is sufficient for them to demonstrate their knowledge on a test unaided by helps that render the test invalid.
I don't know what makes me more sad....the fact that so many kids (and their parents) are willing to cheat for the sake of the "end game" or that I fear that merely teaching about integrity will not translate to better behavior.
Looking forward to hearing the solutions of others, and praying for a program that will allow test fidelity and validity.
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