How to take an online exam in the DOT mode?
- Please turn on your instructor’s WebEx room as you do during the online lecture so that we can see you while you are working on the exam.
- Please read the instructions carefully at the beginning of the exam (typically, specific information on the first page of the exam presentation).
- Please enter your iPhone number (a chance is that you will be called right after the exam).
- You will be presented questions one by one. You have a different sequence of questions from the same pool of questions. Each question must be answered within the allocated time slot. You cannot modify the answer after the corresponding time slot is over (which helps suppress cheating).
- After all the questions are done, please also provide your suggestions on how to improve the DOT design. Thank you for your collaboration!
- We are developing a model to suggest some exam takers for a one-to-one phone/WebEx interview within 1 hour after the exam. Such an interview could be for various reasons (one of which is to assess your online learning experience/outcomes, and another could be that the system automatically detects a high cheating likelihood, and your instructor wants to interview you privately for making sure).
- Warning: The DOT system effectively suppresses cheating so a cheater’s gain is generally insignificant. Furthermore, if you cheated badly, the system can detect with a high probability with a high confidence level, and you will be penalized accordingly. Your best bet is to honor academic integrity.
What if I am unable to take this exam?
You need to offer a qualified reason/evidence/letter and arrange with your instructor for a make-up exam. Note that your make-up exam could be harder than the original exam, although the instructor will do the best to make all exams consistent in quality.
How will my results be graded?
It is most important that you perform relatively better than others (which is another reason that you should share your answers with others). The raw scores will be normalized so that the letter grades will be distributed in the range consistent to that we had previously (a few As, a large number of Bs and Cs, and few D and F).
No, if you are interested in using this platform and/or collaborating along this direction, you can email Prof. Ge Wang (wangg6@rpi.edu), Prof. Hisham Mohamed (mohamh2@rpi.edu), Prof. Lirong Xia (xial@rpi.edu), and the lead software developer Mr. Lei Luo (phantomlei3@gmail.com). RPI has the key pending IP on the DOT technology. We are also open to investment.
How to share data for publication?
This project is considered as human subjects research. We are interested in getting data from faculty with other universities who use the DOT platform but they need IRB approval or enter into a reliance agreement with RPI (the other IRB will defer to RPI’s decision on the protocol).