Maximizing Learning While Minimizing Cheating: New Evidence and Advice for Online Multiple-Choice Exams

The sudden and unexpected need to transition all university courses to online formats as a result of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 highlighted the challenges of developing and administering online multiple-choice exams. Because many more courses are expected to be taught online in the future, we sought to develop evidence-based recommendations for online multiple-choice exams. We analyzed data from our Spring 2019 and Spring 2020 introductory psychology courses to examine the impact of the shift from seated to online exams on exam grades and overall learning, as well as students' perceptions of online multiple-choice exams. Data from the COVID-19 Spring 2020 semester suggest that students performed better on online exams (open-note/open-book exams with no time limit) than they did on traditional face-to-face closed-note/closed-book exams. However, indices of learning suggested students learned less when the course content and exams were online. Using these data and the existing literature on best practices, we developed a set of recommendations for administering online multiple-choice exams designed to minimize cheating and maximize learning.