I taught a face-to-face logic class for which I had a marking scheme that assigned certain percentages of the grade to assignments, tests, and the final exam. I also told students that if it was to their advantage, I would automatically count the final exam for 100%. There were always a couple of students who didn't put any effort in throughout the year, skipping assignments or tests (for which they then received a mark of 0), as well as many classes, but who managed to do a study blitz the week before the final and achieve a respectable mark; in one case, the highest mark in the class. (Identities were verified via photo student card and signatures at the final.)

A student suddenly performing better could be cheating, or an epiphany that taking school seriously matters, or finally getting technology to work, or a new living situation more conducive to learning (etc). Though the ease of cheating with online distance learning makes it more likely, can we be 100% sure without evidence? The best I feel we can do is preventative design to minimize cheating. We can design our assignments to be open note/book (since we can't stop their use anyway). We can grade with many small assessments instead of a bigger one (i.e., reducing the stakes reduces the motive to cheat). We can use our Learning Management System (LMS) to randomly order test items and randomly order answer choices within each item for each student (to make cheating more tedious). We can use our LMS to time limit access to assignments (so somebody can't ask for somebody else's work from yesterday to copy). Hope some of these ideas are helpful, Hani. ~ Kevin

I taught a face-to-face logic class for which I had a marking scheme that assigned certain percentages of the grade to assignments, tests, and the final exam. I also told students that if it was to their advantage, I would automatically count the final exam for 100%. There were always a couple of students who didn't put any effort in throughout the year, skipping assignments or tests (for which they then received a mark of 0), as well as many classes, but who managed to do a study blitz the week before the final and achieve a respectable mark; in one case, the highest mark in the class. (Identities were verified via photo student card and signatures at the final.)

Time to time evaluation is required to avoid the cheating and provide us change the system.

I changed my way of exam! but totally nothing to the student

As long as there is no prove, the student should have the obtained score

As a student I would recommend oral exams, focused mainly on concepts rather than facts.

I believe in this way you will truly know if a student is qualified to pass a course or not.