As stories about how students are using AI technologies to complete their academic work proliferate, we in Information Technology Services are increasingly being asked for tools faculty can use to offer exams and written assignments that would be AI proof. Unfortunately, it is generally impossible to completely remove the possibility a student could use AI for some part of an assignment or written work, if it is completed away from the careful eye of the instructor. Sometimes even then!

Back to the classroom

This leads us back to the classroom for in-class assignments, written work and testing. Simultaneous with the development of functional AI tools, is the concurrent degradation of student handwriting. While this has been a long process over the past 25 years, students frequently now report that they not only don’t have good, legible handwriting, but that many primary school districts no longer teach handwriting at all! Faculty regularly report that the handwriting of their students has rather universally become worse over time. This, unfortunately means that one tool for in-class written work, the universally despised “Blue Book” is functionally no longer an option. Nor would this sort of manual system allow for full access for those students who have an accommodation we are required to support.

Technological solutions

What we can tentatively offer, at least in the short term, is a tool for writing exam and quiz answers within our learning management system, Moodle, called Safe Exam Browser. This is an open source tool that is a part of Moodle. (And you can learn more about the settings for Safe Exam Browser in Moodle, in the Moodle Documentation.) Safe Exam Browser allows faculty to set up a Moodle Quiz in a separate locked down browser environment on the student’s own computer (or a classroom computer), that doesn’t allow them to access or open other applications, or web pages, while completing the assigned assessment. You can also learn more about Safe Exam Browser at https://safeexambrowser.org, including details about the various settings that are possible to configure the browser experience, or if you want to allow students to access specific web sites during the exam.

Doesn’t stop some cheating

Such tools do not, unfortunately, completely stop any opportunities for students to access resources if they have access to another computer, a tablet or a network connected phone or other device where they can pull up relevant information. It should stop easy cut & paste copying, but things can still be retyped. So such tools are not a panacia for eliminating AI content from student work, if that’s your goal.

Feedback requested

As faculty start using this tool, we need your feedback on how well it works for you and for your students. There are other similar tools out there, and some, like the tool we use for Honors Exams each Spring, would be significantly expensive for the College to license. So we’d like to ask for your opinions on how this one works for you. We’d also like to hear if you have experience with other tools at other institutions, and whether they worked well (or not) and what you liked or didn’t like about them. Whether you are a student or faculty member, we’d like your insights! Take Survey

And some faculty with experience at other colleges and universities have helped us understand some of the innovative and enterprising ways in which students in some of those contexts have cheated, even with in-class exams. Again, we’d like to hear about your experiences with such things outside of Swarthmore! We’ll help build a repository of information about what to look for, and protect against, in conjunction with the Teaching and Learning Commons, and the Provost’s Office. Take Survey

Let us know your thoughts! Please email: willen@swarthmore.edu or acadtech@swarthmore.edu or Take Survey.