DISCUSSIONS &
HOT TOPICS
(many of the links and
text on this page are taken from the T3 WebCT Trainer Certification online
course)
Need Help with this Module?
Contact the author
or Cambrian Online
Questions to ask yourself before you leave
this module:
-
What are accessibility guidelines for Web
sites?
-
How do I know if my Web pages meet these guidelines?
-
How do I accomplish this?
-
What is meant by "fair use" as it applies
to copyright?
-
How are "fair use" guidelines implemented
at your institution? By Whom?
-
Why do students cheat?
-
How can you minimize the need or opportunity
for cheating?
-
Try brainstorming ways you could reduce cheating
in your courses. See my list.
There are three topic areas on this
page. Click the text link below to get to one fast.
Topic
One: Universal Design Guidelines for Accessibility
Topic Two: Intellectual
Property Rights & Copyright
Topic Three: Academic
Honesty
Topic One:
Universal Design Guidelines for Accessibility
In order to meet guidelines for
individuals with disabilities, you should follow these simple rules:
-
Maintain a simple consistent page layout
throughout your site or module - (Assists
people with learning disabilities who
have difficulty following disorganized presentations.)
-
Keep backgrounds simple. Make sure
there is enough contrast between the background and/or the text and imagery
(People
with low vision or color blindness have difficulty reading information
on busy
pages, pages with busy backgrounds,
and pages with dark background colors.)
-
Use standard HTML tags. (While non-standard
tags exist, using the standard HTML tags will guarantee your content will
be accessible to all the students in your class.)
-
Design large buttons (Large buttons
and link images make it easier for everyone to navigate links. )
-
Include a note about accessibility (State
your concern by including a web access symbol or statement on the welcome
page of WebCT, on any tool page in the header section, or on any of the
content pages. Invite constructive feedback.)
-
Discuss accessibility with other professionals
(Post questions or comments in the area especially for this topic,
Accessibility: Universal Design and Students with Disabilities, on WebCT's
e-learning hub in the Online Teaching and Learning Community. Author's
Note: there are some good threads on WebCT 3.x improvements & compliance
with standards, and readers, such as JAWS screen reader.)
More Accessibility Resources
The Glenn
Crombie Center for Disability Services at Cambrian College - The coordinator
for these services is an excellent resource for school policies, ADA compliance,
and other services for students who may need special accommodations. For
more information, contact Susan Alcorn-Mackay 705-566-8101 ext. 7793 or
email Susan at samackay@cambrianc.on.ca
.
Center for Academic and Adaptive Technology
University of Toronto SNOW at http://snow.utoronto.ca
(Special Needs Opportunity Windows) is a project aimed at supporting educators
of students with special needs. Our web site serves as a clearinghouse
of practical resources and curriculum materials, as a place for educators
to meet and share ideas, and as a place for educators to develop their
professional skills. The information on this site can be translated online
into French.
Concrete suggestions for making your online
course accessible for students of all abilities
http://www.webct.com/service/ViewContent?contentID=1790151&communityID=-1&categoryID=-1&sIndex=0
Accessible HTML at http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/geektalk/97/11/index4a.html?tw=design
How To Make Your Site More Accessible
at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2243403,00.html
Validate your Web Site Online with these tools:
Bobby:
A free service provided by CAST to help Web page authors identify and repair
significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities
W3C HTML
Validation Service: HTML 4.0 validator provided by the HTML standards
source checks documents for conformance to W3C HTML and other standards.
RetroAccess:
A website evaluation and repair package that automatically evaluates your
website for accessibility using an online interface. Uses checklists to
guide you through the repair of those problems.
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Topic Two:
Intellectual Property Rights & Copyright
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Page
Topic Three: Academic
Honesty
Why Do Students Cheat?
There are as many reasons for
cheating as there are individuals taking tests. Some of the most common
reasons are:
-
Pressure from parents and/or employers who
are footing the bill or will only pay for passing grades.
-
Licensing, promotion or pay increases are
dependent on passing grades.
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Fear of failure and humiliation.
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Different cultures can view cheating differently
than American university faculty. Some foreign students submit purchased
papers thinking it is acceptable because they have paid for them. Other
cultures view the instructor-student relationship as adversarial,
and take an “anything goes” approach to passing a course.
-
Unclear guidelines for using papers and projects
from other courses.
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Individuals are angry with the instructor
or institution offering the course, or they are angry at their sponsoring
organization for making them take the course.
Minimize Cheating
Cheating is a concern for every
course, whether face-to-face or web-based. The opportunities for cheating
in the web environment are perceived to be greater than those in more traditional
classroom settings because the instructor is not in the same room as the
learner. There are many ways to design effective web-based courses and
tests that drastically reduce student cheating.
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Keep the course current. If course materials
are fresh, and test questions renewed, old content has little or no value.
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Print an academic dishonesty statement on
the syllabus.
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Give proctored exams.
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Use WebCT’s Quiz Settings to randomize
the questions given to individual students from a larger Question Database.
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Require a password for quiz access.
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Limit the computers available for a test by
using WebCT’s IP address mask feature.
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Design effective test questions.
Tips from the Field
Here are some thoughts and strategies
that have worked for me:
Cheating online should be looked
at no differently than cheating in a traditional setting - cheating is
cheating. Those who want to, and can, will. It will often catch up with
them, by the employer, a proctored test, or a simple, old fashioned portfolio
assessment, or as someone in a previous post pointed out, it would be obvious
in a focussed post-discussion group. We can't prevent all forms of cheating,
but we can reduce the ease with which it can be accomplished, and strive
to eliminate all potential opportunities or the need to cheat.
-
Essays, documents - Use Dogpile(TM),
Copernic(TM) or other search agent to find plagiarized
portions in "term paper mills" or news articles
-
Quiz questions - only the choices, NOT the
actual questions are listed online - they're provided on paper, which must
be handed in when leaving a test center
-
WebCT has lots of tools to help: Criteria-release,
timed, password-protected, random generated quiz questions and question
sets, multiple quiz versions (as long as the question type and level of
difficulty is the same
-
Have students sign a "non-cheating" contract
at the beginning of the semester..."I pledge that all work submitted by
me will be original, etc....."
-
Post a disclaimer & rules at the top of
each quiz and on the assessment organizer page - "By pushing the 'Take
the Quiz' button, I am pledging that I understand the rules on cheating
and I will not exit the test, I will not use any mail programs", etc.
-
If the students are writing the online test
in a lab, use "NetSchool" or similar monitoring software, orient seating
so you can see everyone's screen from the back of the room, walk around
and look at the screens, or get proctor help.
-
Provide review questions for each module of
content. Don't give away the answers, but take them up in class, or in
the discussion area.
-
Provide review quizzes before a test. Use
all auto-grade questions, allow for unlimited attempts, and release grades
immediately. And if the questions on the review are slightly harder than
the test questions, students' confidence & performance will improve.
-
Just as in GTP's, be available to students
to discuss academic difficulties BEFORE the test. Suggest additional or
alternative resources, another faculty perspective, peer tutoring, etc.
to deal with the problem before things escalate. In other words, reduce
the student's panic and need for cheating in the first place.
More Resources
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