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Solution for online cheating?

Test-taking in online courses often leads to discussions about cheating and possible ways to minimize cheating. In some cases, proctored exams solve the problem, but that's not always a good solution for everyone and it may require that students pay money for the serverice. Course management systems may allow for randomly generated exams using a bank of questions, something which can minimize the kind of cheating where students share information about tests. Another way to address this is to use project-based learning techniques rather than multiple choice tests. This can help avoid the temptation to cheat, but it would still allow someone else to do the work for a student enrolled in an online course.

Apparently cheating on tests is a very big issue at Troy University in Alabama, home to 11,000 online students. They will soon require their online students to purchase the $125 security webcam made by Software Secure in order to monitor student work in online courses. The device includes a 360 degree webcam as well as other security features. It will record audio and video, so an instructor who suspects cheating will have a way to review a digital record. It seems like the presence of the device would be enough to discourage cheating, but many students still submit plagiarized papers through TurnItIn, so you never know what's going to happen. How long before hacks which allow you to disable the device are available online?

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