Tips for Preventing Cheating

When developing online assessments in Blackboard, it is important to consider the security of the exam and to make every effort to remove opportunities for students to cheat. The current version of Blackboard does not inherently prevent students from printing the questions of an exam or copying and pasting the questions to word processing application for printing. However, faculty can prevent students from saving or printing exams by following the steps for either of the following:

• Disallow Printing of the Test
• Disallow Printing and the Copying/Pasting of the Test

NOTE: The following will ONLY work when initially creating a test. They will NOT work once the test is created.

Disallow Printing of the Test

<style type="text/css">@media print {BODY {display:none}!important}</style>

This code, pasted into the HTML screen of the Description area in Blackboard, disallows printing of the assessment. When users submit a print request, the resulting printout is blank. It has been tested on Windows XP and the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 8.0, Firefox 1.5, and Opera 8.51. The script may work differently in other browsers and on other operating systems.

When creating the Assessment, do the following:

1. Under the Description area, click on the small down arrow on the left-hand side of the text entry box to reveal the additional text options.
2. Click on the <> option
3. Copy and paste the code into the HTML View, either before or after your test instructions.
4. Click Submit.
5. The code will not be visible to students.

Disallow Printing and the Copying/Pasting of the Test

<SCRIPT language=Javascript src="http://www.blackboard.niu.edu/blackboard/javascript/noprintcopy.js"></script>
<STYLE type=text/css>@media print {BODY {display:none}}</STYLE>

The above code can be copied into test instructions to disable the right click and copy feature; it will also prevent students from printing the test. It has been tested on Windows XP and the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 8.0, Firefox 1.5, and Opera 8.51. The script may work differently in other browsers and on other operating systems. While users can still use the print function of the browser, a blank page is printed. Users are also prevented from copying and pasting test content.

To prevent printing and copying Blackboard tests, follow the instructions for copying the no-print code into the HTML screen. Substitute the longer script listed above

Last Updated: 07/07/2011