Cultivating An Environment of Academic Integrity with Online Testing for Nurse Practitioner Students

Cultivating an Environment of Academic Integrity with Online Testing for Nurse Practitioner Students The enrollment of nursing students in online classes has reached over three million annually and is expected to continue to increase. This increase has created concerns among nurse practitioner faculty about their ability to ensure academic integrity in a non-proctored online testing environment. Traditionally, expectations for behavior during proctored tests have been delineated in the syllabi. Among these expectations have been consequences for breaches of testing integrity. These expectations become more difficult to monitor and enforce as non-proctored online testing becomes more commonplace. Methods for maintaining online testing integrity are discussed, including browser security, identification authentication, and webcam. These techniques are effective when administering a multiple choice exam. Despite the above strategies, concerns over possible breaches to online testing integrity has prompted the faculty at the College of Nursing to review their online testing polices. As a result of the review, faculty have implemented additional features to maintain academic integrity with online testing. The College of Nursing has implemented an online honor system that must be signed by students prior to commencing with any online test. Additional measures such as randomization of test questions, limiting the time with each question, and denying the option to return to questions have been implemented. Despite these strategies, a system for distance proctoring is being explored. While the added features have been largely successful in maintaining academic integrity of online testing, other issues persist. Most of the features are designed for a multiple choice test design. A multiple choice test cannot effectively evaluate higher level cognitive skills such as critical thinking and reasoning skills, and few features are designed to ensure the integrity of these alternate test designs. The faculty of the College of Nursing is responsible for maintaining academic integrity for online testing of their students. They will continue to discuss options to effectively maintain online testing integrity until those issues are resolved.