Effective assessment is an extremely important component of learning in higher education. In chemistry, tests typically measure students’ knowledge of critical thinking skills, vocabulary and application of concepts from one chapter to another. The content in introductory courses is usually scaffolded over the semester and the material also lays the foundation for advanced courses. While it is relatively straightforward to measure concepts like scientific vocabulary and algorithmic problem solving with paper-pencil based testing, an online exam with no proctoring, presents significant challenges in terms of ensuring that an exam is not compromised. In the COVID-19 era, when instruction moved online, it was imperative that the authenticity of the tests administered to students was maintained, irrespective of an institution’s choice to allow students to select credit/non-credit or pass/fail options. Another aspect of the challenge was to ensure equity and inclusiveness, taking care of learning and assessment needs of all learners, while maintaining stringent guidelines to minimize cheating. We describe some of the challenges faced during online testing and the various strategies we used, such as creating hypothetical compounds, incorporating watermarks to prevent copy-pasting, and uploading questions as images, among many others. We have developed and standardized these measures over three semesters to ensure a robust assessment metric, without compromising on catering to the diverse needs of our student population.

Encouraging academic integrity: Developing equitable, inclusive, and cheating-resistant online exams

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.