Academic honesty is a core value at UNH. The resources on this page support faculty in enforcing the UNH Academic Honesty Policy.
This policy is included in the UNH Student Handbook (page 30 of current version).
Student Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities Handbook
Minimizing Cheating on Quizzes/Exams (myCourses/Canvas)
When quizzing or testing is appropriate, use Canvas quiz settings to make the test more secure and mitigate cheating.
Set Time Limits. When you set a time limit for a quiz, students who are unprepared risk not having sufficient time to finish all the test questions. This deters looking up answers, as that takes time. Please remember to provide an alternate quiz with timing that accommodates any student identified by Student Accessibility Services as needing additional time for quizzes and tests. If you are setting a Time Limit in the quiz, the Available From and Until dates do not need to be set to the same time as in the Time Limit. Best practice is to make the Available From and Until dates a wider time range to allow students time to access the quiz. The timer will start when the students start the quiz and the quiz will end automatically at the end of the allotted Time Limit.
Shuffle Multiple Choice Answers. While students get the same question, they might not have the same answer options. Do not use this if your question has an option like "all of the answers above."
Display Questions One at a Time. It will be easier for students to take a screen-shot of the full exam and share with their peers if all the questions are displayed at once.
Require Text Entry. In addition to multiple choice questions, consider asking one or two higher-order questions that require students to synthesize answers from their knowledge on a few key concepts. Questions that extend past fact-recall will ensure that you are assessing students’ knowledge and understanding.
Use question banks. The question bank will generate a quiz with random questions from the question bank. If the question bank is large enough, students will have less chance of getting the same questions for the same quiz. However, this practice should be used with caution for high stakes assessments, like exams, because using different questions could result in different difficulty levels across students.
Randomize quiz questions. You can randomize the order of the questions so students are not likely to get the same questions in the same sequence when taking a test. This is recommended for exams and quizzes.
Use the Respondus Lockdown Browser to lock down the testing environment in Canvas. When students use Lockdown Browser to take a quiz, they are unable to print, copy, visit other websites, access other applications, or close a quiz until it is submitted for grading.
Respondus LockDown Browser Instructor Quick Start Guide
Respondus Lockdown Browser Faculty Overview
Respondus LockDown Browser Student Overview
Identifying and Preventing Plagiarism
Turnitin’s SimCheck, integrated in myCourses (Canvas), can help faculty to identify potential plagiarism by generating similarity reports that compare submitted student assignments against a large database of submitted documents. However, Turnitin should be used with caution.
We recommend reading these resources about pitfalls of the software and considerations about proper use.
Turn it Off: Perils of Plagiarism Software
TEACHING AT PITT: Turnitin pros, cons and best practices
Using Turnitin with Canvas (Turnitin Guide)
Canvas: Faculty Guide - Using Turnitin's SimCheck assignment originality tool
(UNH Knowledge Base article)
Refer students to the UNH Library’s resources on Citation Styles.