Dear Associate,

Caveon Test Security experienced an exciting event this month – we completed our fourth year in business! In the "early days" of our company we spent a lot of time preaching about the need for better test security. Now the need is readily apparent as almost everyday there are headlines related to the problem of test cheating. In fact just last week Newsweek magazine featured a story about Caveon. If you'd like to read the story click on the Newsweek logo.

During our last four years of business we've realized that many smaller testing programs and educational groups could benefit from our Caveon Data Forensics technology if it were available in a simplified web-based version. We're in the process of doing just that.

This new service under development called Caveon Test Detective will analyze all tests administered for a specific testing session. It will detect and report pairs of test takers where the test responses are more similar than we would expect under normal testing situations. In other words, we are trying to find pairs of test takers where one or both individuals did not do their own work.

We are conducting a short ten-question survey to help us put the final touches on this exciting service. If you would like to participate in the survey click on the link below.

Take the Survey

Best regards,

Don Sorensen
Vice President, Marketing
Caveon Test Security
don.sorensen@caveon.com
801.592.3396

1 > To Catch a Cheat - Newsweek.com
Back in 2003, when Caveon was founded, no one was paying too much attention to testing in grades K through 12. Then, Caveon’s focus was making sure testing for professional licenses, like massage therapist or food inspector, went smoothly. But as No Child Left Behind increased pressure on schools, Caveon’s K-12 business took off.

Its method for catching cheaters is based on probability. Caveon computers analyze the fill-in-the-bubble-type multiple-choice answer sheets for patterns. If, say, 80 out of 100 kids get an answer correct on a math test, that probably means the teacher covered that material sufficiently. If, however, Caveon software detects that 50 kids out of 100 have a long string of identical wrong answers on a big chunk of a multiple-choice test, or a suspicious erasure pattern, Caveon recommends that authorities start asking teachers and principals some hard questions.
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2 > Beyond the Blue Book - Inside Higher Ed
Donald L. McCabe, an expert on college cheating at Rutgers University’s business school, said he thought the model at Penn State was “somewhat unusual” but likened it to a 600-station facility long in operation at Brigham Young University. “I think when it started it was more for the convenience of the faculty members,” he said, because they could turn over the duties of administering tests to the center’s staff. The effect, he said, was to cut down on cheating: “There’s nobody sitting next to you that has the same exam.”
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3 > Everybody Does It / Academic cheating is at an all-time high. Can anything be done to stop it?
Technology has made cheating easier and more sophisticated. But Pirouz says it’s not causing the rise in cheating. “Cheaters are causing the rise. Technology is a catalyst, but text-message cheating is big because the cheaters are sending out the message. Some people keep their integrity, but some fall into the trap when it’s suggested.”
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4 > The Faculty Role in Stopping Cheating - Inside Higher Ed
So what strategies can a diligent faculty member adopt to combat student misconduct? First, offer students a forthright, unembarrassed explanation of what constitutes the work you expect in a course or an assignment and of what help they may and may not seek from others in completing it. Second, take reasonable care to design assignments and examinations in such a way that cheating on them will be difficult and could only result from a conscious effort on the part of a student to deceive. In a literature course, do not invite students to select their own texts to compare and contrast; pick works that the paper-mills are unlikely to have anticipated. When assigning a term paper, require at least one draft and insist that the final text demonstrate that its author has responded to your suggestions for improvement. And make it clear that you will be expecting all students to check their handheld devices at the door on each and every exam day.
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5 > New technology adds new tempations for scholastic cheating… and for its detection- mlive.com
Goran Cvetic had a tiny transmitter glued in his ear. A hair-thin wire wrapped behind it. Discreetly, he used a cell phone to open a line. Was he intercepting top secret information? Sort of. A student at another university was sending him answers to an exam. It’s an example of the high-tech cheating that educators see these days.
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6 > Testing: No Longer a Contact Sport?
I remember times she would come home distressed with frustration from the massive and obvious cheating that would go on in some of those classes during exams. She would describe trying to take an exam with her arms and elbows all over the table and moving her body left and right to try to shield the guys on either side of her from reading what she was writing: kind of like test taking as a contact sport.
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7 > DMV workers arrested in fraud scheme - The Providence Journal
Two clerks at the Division of Motor Vehicles in Pawtucket have been charged by the state police in a wide-ranging scheme of falsifying dozens of Rhode Island driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and people involved in midlevel drug dealing.
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8 > Why do people cheat? - International Herald Tribune
Cheating is often thought of as something that is done after cold calculation. But the new research has found that people are prone to cheat even when it is not in their best interest. Instead of carefully weighing the costs and benefits of breaking the rules, people can be heavily swayed by peer pressure, mood, their image of themselves. Sometimes, people even cheat out of a sense of fairness.

The new findings about the psychology of cheating comes at a time when other researchers are finding evidence that cheating is a widespread part of sports, and not merely in the sort of cases that make the news. Using economics as a forensic tool, they’re arguing that foul play, either by referees or players, is common in sports as varied as figure skating, basketball and sumo wrestling.
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9 > New Hampshire Split Over High School Cheating - NPR
A small town in New Hampshire is coming to grips with a scandal at the public high school where nine students face criminal charges for allegedly breaking into a classroom and stealing advance copies of final exams.

The incident at Hanover High School in Hanover, N.H., is sparking debate between those who believe the students are being treated fairly and those who think the charges go too far.
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10 > Nigeria: Country Loses N107bn to Exam Fraudsters - allAfrica.com
Speaking while releasing the report entitled “Exam Ethics and Exam Malpractice Ratings of States and geopolitical zones in Nigeria” in Abuja, executive chairman Ike Onyechere also accused lecturers in public tertiary institutions of extorting about N50 billion from students in 2006 alone.

Onyechere lamented that examination malpractice was no longer a matter of “indiscretion” involving students but had metamorphosed into organized crime controlled by syndicates with links in education ministries, examination agencies and educational institutions.
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Testing Industry Events

NOCA 2007: Exploring New Frontiers in Credentialing
November 14-17
Hyatt Regency, San Antonio, TX
This year NOCA celebrates 30 years as the source for certification solutions. NOCA serves as the source for information on the latest trends and issues of concern to practitioners and organizations working in certification. The NOCA conference has something to offer everyone, regardless of your experience.

Association of Test Publishers (ATP)
Innovations in Testing Conference
March 3-5, 2008
Gaylord Texan, Dallas, TX

ATP Test Security Summit (in conjunction with ATP conference)
March 5-6, 2008
Theme: Preventing Test Fraud and Protecting Intellectual Property