Dear Associate,

I attended the Association of Test Publishers Conference held in (sunny and warm) Palm Springs, California a couple of weeks ago. There were a good number of presentations specifically on the topic of test security. John Fremer, President of Caveon will be presenting a webinar “Ten Test Security Lessons from ATP 09” on March 25. Click here to learn more.

Here are just a few of the test security insights from the ATP conference:

1. Testing programs need very explicit security policies and procedures.
2. There is an adoption curve of good practices including those for security – many of the practices that exist have not been fully implemented by testing organizations.
3. There are innovative ways to develop test items so that they are not easily memorized.
4. Brain dump websites can be found, identified and stopped. Site owners need to be notified that a testing program’s intellectual property exists on their site and that the content must be removed.  
5. Precedent has been set in the United States for using data forensics as a basis for denying or cancelling test scores.

Here’s a short video from the conference.

Best regards,

Don Sorensen
Vice President, Marketing
Caveon Test Security

1 > Dan Ariely on Why We Cheat | Epicenter from Wired.com
Wired: What did your tests tell you about the ways people cheat and why they do it?
Dan Ariely: We came up with this idea of a fudge factor, which means that people have two goals: We have a goal to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves, and we have a goal to cheat and benefit from cheating. And we find that there’s a balance between these two goals. That is, we cheat up to the level that we would find it comfortable [to still feel good about ourselves]. Now if we have this fudge factor, we thought that we should be able to increase it or shrink it [to affect the amount of cheating someone does]. So we tried to shrink it by getting people to recite the Ten Commandments before they took the test. And it turns out that it shrinks the fudge factor completely. It eliminates it. And it’s not as if the people who are more religious or who remember more commandments cheat less. In fact even when we get atheists to swear on the Bible, they don’t cheat afterwards. So it’s not about fear of God; it’s about reminding people of their own moral standards.

2 > “Cheaterpants!” - MSN Encarta
What a good teacher can do
Learning basic material is not unnecessary work. Good teachers can motivate students to learn the basics so that they have the tools to make connections beyond one class. Good teachers can make cheating harder by not reusing tests, and by using tools for detecting plagiarism. They also remove the temptations to cheat by knowing how students are doing it and punishing cheaters. Academic honor codes also work, the Center for Academic Integrity says. Students at schools where codes are in place are about 30 to 50 percent less likely to cheat on tests, and about 25 to 30 percent less likely to cheat on papers.

3 > Have N15,000 for special grades
Proprietor Damilola Adewara sums up the agency’s real business; “Our real aim is making sure those candidates that pay special fees pass the exams,” he said. Cheating in examinations is what agencies like Pinnacle specialises in. They provide answers, hours before the candidates enter their examination halls, and even, in some cases, write for absentee candidates. “We call it NA, an acronym for non available candidates. Though, I advice all of them to try and attend lessons and be at the exam, so that they will see what we are doing for them,” Rotimi Aseye, a co-proprietor at Pinnacle, said. He describes their services: “We arrange with the JAMB and WAEC people… security is no problem. Once you have your money, everything is possible, we even do aptitude test (Post UME) for our people at UNILAG.” The agency charges N5,000 for three months’ worth of lectures and N15,000 for fixing the examinations.

4 > 10 Purdue students cited in cheating investigation | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University announced Wednesday it had ended a weeklong investigation into allegations of cheating in an engineering class. Ten students enrolled in the ECE 270 sophomore-level course have been cited for academic dishonesty, according to Steve Akers, the university’s executive associate dean of students.

5 > Ex-teaching aide pleads not guilty to fraud - S.F. Chronicle
Harris’ office said Rickerson told students he had the authority to register them for a test, collected fees and then administered the exam to the students. Later, he changed the students’ school records to show that they had passed the test, prosecutors said. The alleged crimes took place during the fall 2007 and spring 2008 school semesters, said Erica Derryck, a spokeswoman for Harris’ office. “Stealing from cash-strapped college students, taking advantage of their trust and undermining the integrity of academic records is a serious offense,” Harris said.

6 > NCAA punishes Florida State for cheating scandal - News- msnbc.com
TALLAHASSEE: Florida State University’s athletic department is on probation for four years as punishment for a cheating scandal. The probation part of the punishment handed down by the NCAA that also includes scholarship reductions in ten sports – including football – and forfeiting games won during the period in which the cheating took place.

7 > Nigeria Loses N250bn to Exam Malpractices - Nigeria news
Special Adviser to the President on Relations with Civil Societies, Mr. Chineme Ume-Ezeoke, has said the country lost about N250 billion in 12 years to examination malpractice. In a statement in Abuja Ume-Ezeoke said the loss was due to fraud committed by candidates during examinations.

8 > Study: Honor students more likely to cheat : The Temple News
According to a study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, between 40 percent and 70 percent of college students admit to cheating. There has also been a shift in who is doing the cheating. Previously, struggling students were believed to make up the group more likely to commit academic dishonestly. Now honor students and others with higher GPAs make up the greater percentage likely to cheat, according to the study. This change comes from the rise in pressure to perform well and maintain grades needed for post-undergraduate life.

9 > Academic integrity lost on students - The Omega
This simple phrase is lost on many international students at TRU and can end up causing them more problems than they would expect. That’s because what’s considered cheating in Canada may not be cheating when abroad. Different rules in different countries often make it harder for international students to understand what is and what isn’t allowed. While a student may understand plagiarism, it can be difficult for them to grasp the concept of cheating.