10/8/2010 12:51:38 PM permalink
James Posts 4	I have used Typing master for many years and have 300 students use it each year. some of them have become quite creative to find ways around your program. Another admin who uses your program also mentioned the same thing to me. Here are some ways my students tell me that they cheat or mis-use typing master that I would like to change some day. (right before they leave our school I ask them what they are able to get away with without punishment. These are just 5th graders who figure this out by the way but it gets around to my other grade levels who learn to cheat from them) Pass any tests just by typing one letter or word & then letting time run out. nothings wrong so it checks it off Pass any test: type random letters just never hit the space key or enter key and it will not mark it wrong - you look like your typing but your not really typing. Review wizard: just choose 00000 and hit next twice and it checks it off too. Review wizard: random typing works here too and you can pass Practice: get one word right and keep hitting the space bar and it will pass you too Number course just type the last two numbers and hit enter and it passes you to next screen Skipping words: they can type every third word and it does not mark the ones in between wrong Typing the same word over and over. no benefit here, but annoying. I would like typing master to check more carefully and alert me to things like this somehow by noise or a flashing screen or something so that students don't continue to abuse the system. I explain to students that cheating only hurts them but I guess it's more exciting to get around the system than to improve at typing. Walking around helps me best prevent this but I can't always do this as I have two jobs at the same time - one part is teacher the other is tech support/programming so I can't always watch all 32 computers all the time as I troubleshoot problems for staff and program things for the district. I'm hoping that rather than tell me I just need to watch more closely that you can please try to address some of these tricks above and prevent them. I started to write my own typing program in excel vba that prevents this but it's not polished like yours and I don't like mine and I don't want to spend more time on it as I have more important things to solve. Thanks James
	10/11/2010 11:44:26 PM permalink
TypingMaster Posts 136	Hi James, Thank you for writing to us and taking the time to outline the issues you are having. We notice that you are using version 6 of TypingMaster, which dates back a few years (version 7 was released in April 2006). Whilst there are a few things that you can do with your current version, upgrading will provide provide fixes to most of the cheating issues you listed. With your current version, you can use the lesson pass limits to at least have one forced full completion with pass limits in each lesson. To set the pass limit for net speed and accuracy, open the Manager and go to Common Settings. You can also arrange typing tests for assessment purposes, this is best done on the Groups tab > Arrange typing test.. The typing tests that are freely available for all students are meant for additional practice and do not by default have any pass limits. However, you can add these to individual tests as well. This is again done with the Manager, on the Typing Tests tab click on "Change Settings.." The later versions, either TypingMaster Online or TypingMaster Pro for Windows, have improvements that make cheating more difficult. In addition to the improved algorithm, setting pass limits can be done for each course separately (TypingMaster Pro) and even lesson specifically (TypingMaster Online / Intra). The program also saves more result data so that the teacher can easily spot significant changes in a student's progress. I tried the cheating methods you listed with our latest version, the results below. Pass any tests just by typing one letter or word & then letting time run out. nothings wrong so it checks it off If this is done, the program shows error "Cannot calculate results" and does show results to users. In the reports, there will be a zero-result. Pass any test: type random letters just never hit the space key or enter key and it will not mark it wrong - you look like your typing but your not really typing. Again, the program shows error "Cannot calculate results" (same as above). Review wizard: just choose 00000 and hit next twice and it checks it off too. Review drills are not used as assessment points and there is no "punishment" for not completing them. In the later versions, using "Next" to skip through the review drill can still be done but the exercise is not marked as completed. You can enable the "Exercise lock" in the Manager > Courses > Change settings to force users to complete the exercises to get the marked as completed. Review wizard: random typing works here too and you can pass Cannot reproduce. The exercise types used in the Review require that user types exactly what is shown on screen to be able to move forward. Again, as Reviews are not used as assessment points in TypingMaster, the user can choose the cancel the drill. This, however, is shown to the teacher in the reports that show the time used against the required exercise duration and the lesson number is in brackets which indicates an exercise not completed. Cannot reproduce. Key and word drills need to be typed as they are shown to move forward. Practice: get one word right and keep hitting the space bar and it will pass you too This is true for the exercise types that allow users to make and fix mistakes (paragraph drills, lesson exams and typing tests). With our recent versions you can set pass limits to lesson exams and typing tests which will efficiently prevent cheating. For the paragraph drill, however, you cannot set pass limits. However, the reports will show a considerable slump in results for those students who do not really work on the drill. And, of course, there is always the lesson exam at the end that requires full effort for passing. Number course just type the last two numbers and hit enter and it passes you to next screen Cannot reproduce this with later versions. Skipping words: they can type every third word and it does not mark the ones in between wrong To keep the screen uncluttered, the program does not mark word skipping as a mistake but it is noticed and is calculated in the results. Our later versions feature a lesson exam/typing test report where the text typed is compared agaist the original. In this report, the word skipping is marked. Upgrading to TypingMaster Online or TypingMaster Pro 7 will give you more tools against cheating. You can try the new versions with the free trials and if you decide to upgrade, please contact our sales service for an upgrade offer. TypingMaster Sales Tel: 1 866-211-8973 (Toll free) Fax: (970) 243-9482 International callers: 1-970-243-3549 Email: http://www.typingmaster.com/business/contact/ Mailing address: 320 Dakota Drive Grand Junction, CO 81507 I hope this is of help, if you have any further questions please don't hesitate to ask. edited by TypingMaster on 10/12/2010 -- Best Regards, TypingMaster, Inc. www.TypingMaster.com
	10/12/2010 12:09:35 AM permalink
Anniina Posts 15	Hi, This is an interesting topic both from teaching and from program development point of view. For the teachers using a later version, TypingMaster Pro 7, TypingMaster Online or TypingMaster Intra, if your students have found ways to cheat the program to the point that it becomes a burden for you, it would be great if you could let us know. Do write to us! -- Best regards, Anniina K. TypingMaster Team
	10/12/2010 9:14:18 AM permalink
James Posts 4	Thank you for your detailed reply. I will re-check each item again. First, you can't assume what is in your database is correct and skip the step of asking me I have upgraded more times than I can count and I am currently using version 7 specifically build 792RP from January 12, 2009. I will try to upgrade to something in 2010 though to see if that helps. Also please understand that I am not just a basic user & teacher, I am a computer admin for 2 school districts. I have worked closely with Tommy Utriainen on several complicated situations and I know my way around typing master. It would be nice if a simple upgrade and user error would have solved this for me. I know the settings well and have them all set to 95% in all courses and typing tests. I have rearranged and edited most of the courses completely. Another possible problem may be that I have over - tweaked it and changed something important. For example, we are on a terminal servers environment with server 2008 and 2003. I was getting a lot of 1551 errors and so Tommy had me edit Policy.dyn file with notepad and add this line: WKSLegacyMode=1 Could that perhaps have an effect on some of my user experiences? I will try upgrading again and go back over each item to re-check on my system. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE typingmaster even with these challenges I am facing. Most students do not try to cheat but there are are enough who are cheating that I thought I would bring it to your attention. James edited by James on 10/12/2010
	10/12/2010 10:50:46 AM permalink
James Posts 4	I see two newer versions. I am using 792 and I see 794 and also a beta version out this last month. I will try the 794 first. it says it's more recent than the initial web date would suggest(1/15/2010). Is the beta stable and a complete program as it appends extended on it instead of 700. Thanks James edited by James on 10/12/2010
	10/13/2010 12:01:09 AM permalink
Anniina Posts 15	Hi James, Thank you for your reply and confirming that you are indeed using TypingMaster Pro 7. I am sorry about us assuming otherwise. When developing TypingMaster, there are a few guiding principles that we have relied on: - students cannot get good results by cheating - weaker students are not "punished" for not reaching a certain level in exercises that are not assessment points when they are doing the best they can. - student may decide how much or how little work they put in, the program allows you to skip and interrupt exercises. At the end, the lesson exam is the main assessment point with the strictest settings. In light of the first point, our approch to preventing cheating is to make sure that random typing or not typing at all results in a zero result or a very low net WPM and accuracy. From your emails we do realize that we have not fully taken into account a situation where a student would decide not to put in any effort and not care about getting a bad result. In this light, the situations that you describe can easily be created with TypingMaster. To force students to complete all exercises in a lesson, TypingMaster features a lesson lock and an exercise lock. The exercise lock saves student's results only if they've typed for the full duration. The lesson lock in turn locks the next lesson until the previous lesson has been passed (lesson exam completed and, if exercise lock is on, all exercises are marked as completed). The exercise lock in TypingMaster is maybe a bit too relaxed for situations like yours and maybe a reasonable solution could come from making it stricter. How would you feel about this? We are thinking that the exercise lock could also have minimum pass requirements, either as defaults in the program in which case they will need to be fairly lenient or as settings that you can change from the Manager. As to the later versions, your build 792 is as good as 794 which is our latest CD build. Newer versions will not offer you any new tools for cheat prevention. The build 806 available as download (appended with 'extended' as it gives new users an extended demo), will give you a color coded-keyboard as a new feature. All other fixes in the three builds have to do with other language versions than English. Please do go back over the items you listed and let us know what you find out. I would imagine that editing the policy.dyn file has nothing to do with the experiences, but cannot say for sure. We'll give this some thinking. -- Best regards, Anniina K. TypingMaster Team
	10/13/2010 1:59:17 PM permalink
James Posts 4	Hi Anniina, Thanks for getting back to me so fast. I like your guiding principles, especially not 'punishing' those who do their best. After re-reading your posts I finally understand what you're saying about tests being the real check. Now that makes sense why some of my students get stuck in the test area for much longer than the practices. And that's ok for me - I don't grade any of them based on how fast or far they get - I only ask that they type correctly. As I think about this, I need to bring some perspective to any readers and remind myself too: Most students correctly in my lab and gain the full benefit of Typing Master. I have 300 students go through me (10 classes) and they type 5 days a week for about 25 minutes/day. 9 of 10 classes don't appear to be cheating that I have noticed. There are always a few students in each class who instead of cheating just type randomly or nothing at all until I walk by them again. But they are not trying to 'cheat' to pass anything. Of course I would like their screen to flash or something if they stop typing for too long but that's just a feature request. Only one class has maybe half the students cheating regularly. So overall that's really not so bad. I purposely make their grade for typing totally independent of how fast or far they get so that they don't make it a race (ie, so they focus on the process and skills, not just finishing). And this group of students has found a way to get around some other programs I have made or use too. Which means they would likely find ways around any program which is too bad because it only hurts themselves. I have explained this but some persist. I will, just for the sake of clarifying, re-check for myself which of their 'tricks' seem to really work. I have my lessons and exercises locked already which has really helped prevent students who used to race ahead. I'll post back what I can verify. Thanks for reading. James
	10/14/2010 2:58:47 AM permalink
Anniina Posts 15	Hi James, Thank you - we look forward to hearing from you, especially if you find out that your students have found out ways to abuse the system for a good result. Your feature request has been logged and will be considered upon next development cycle (release in Q2/2011). On a positive note, the students who spend time trying trick the program are showing interest in computer programs in general. I wonder if there would be a way to harness that towards something positive? Maybe if you had them type up a short memo or discussion board message for what they tried and whether it worked out or not, would have them for the very least - typing :-) -- Best regards, Anniina K. TypingMaster Team
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