Online Essay Exams

Essay quizzes and exams are valuable for assessing students' comprehension of course objectives. As technology changes, there is a growing concern for keeping exams secure and keeping students from cheating. Online essay exams seem to be more susceptible as AI chatbots are on the rise. Below are several suggestions on how to securely administer these exams and question types. If you have any additional questions, consult with an Instructional Designer.

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No Virtual Proctoring - Plagiarism Detection

If you are giving an open book, open note essay exam with no time limit and your only concern is plagiarism then we recommend creating an assignment with plagiarism checking rather than using a Canvas quiz. See the Create a Copyleaks Assignment page for instructions and more information.

Virtual Proctoring

Creating a virtually proctored essay exam is as simple as creating any virtually proctored exam. The idea is to be able to monitor any suspicious activity while your students are writing their responses to their essay questions.

Before you create this assignment, make sure that you have the Secure Exam Proctor tab enabled in your course navigation.

1

Navigate to Quizzes

quizzes tab highlighted

 
2

Click + Quiz

arrow pointing at + Quiz button

 
3

Select Enable Proctorio Secure Exam Proctor in the Quiz Restrictions section

Quiz Restrictions section with Enable Proctorio Secure Exam Proctor activated.

 
4

Navigate to the Questions tab and select + New Question

Questions tab selected

 
5

Expand the dropdown and select Essay Question

We suggest that you separate your essay questions into different questions rather than making the students respond within a single text box.

Question dropdown expanded with Essay Question highlighted.

Paper and Pencil Exams

You can have your students turn in an essay written on paper through Canvas. The idea is to have your students write their response and then take a picture of or scan their written work and upload it into their quiz or exam.

This can be administered through individual questions or entire exams.

 This option may be more convenient than requiring your students to go to the testing center, but that does come at a cost. This way requires that your students have a second device to be able to scan or capture an image of their paper. If they use a scanner, it may cause your student to get up and temporarily leave the view of the camera. To capture a picture of their paper will require that your students use their phones during the exam. Additionally, this is assuming that your students have a second device in the first place, which may not be the case for everyone. The availability of a second device also creates a potential for cheating from the second device which would be undetected because you expect them to be using the second device.
1

Navigate to Quizzes

quizzes tab highlighted

 
2

Click + Quiz

arrow pointing at + Quiz button

 
3

Select Enable Proctorio Secure Exam Proctor in the Quiz Restrictions section

Quiz Restrictions section with Enable Proctorio Secure Exam Proctor activated.

 
4

Navigate to the Questions tab and select + New Question

Questions tab selected

 
5

Expand the dropdown and select File Upload Question

Each question submission will have to be downloaded if you decide to use this approach. We recommend that you group your paper and pencil questions if possible, so that you will only have to download a single file with multiple questions instead of several files with a single question attached to each file. This will simplify the grading process and minimize the amount of files you need to download for your entire class.

Question field example with File Upload Question in the dropdown