Making it harder to cheat

Here is the problem: teachers want to engage their students with interesting demonstrations and activities to motivate them to think about  a scientific concept. Students, on the other hand, just need a good mark on the tests and assignments so they can become a doctor, or a lawyer, a cobbler or a candlestick maker, etc.

As the technology available to students to help them answer their assignment questions gets better, teachers need to think about how to structure questions to make students think, rather than just google the answer.

Here is an example of a pretty standard sort of test/assignment question; What properties of aluminium make it suitable for use in cooking pots.  Give a disadvantage of using aluminium for pots.

If you copy and paste that into google, there are 2,090,000 results, and the top of the page will read, "Aluminum is lightweight, cheap and very good at distributing heat. It doesn't retain heat particularly well though, so the temperature will fluctuate as food is added to a hot pan. It's also the softest metal on our list, so it will scratch and dent pretty easily."

Assignment done! No thought required!

So we need to re-structure the question. How about this...

On the planet P42da, the element potsnpanium is used to make large pots in which the P42daians heat soup to above the boiling point of liquid water at 1 atmosphere. What properties of potsnpanium make it suitable for this purpose. Give an example of a safety precaution the P42daians should take when handling potsnpanium pots. Describe a way to reduce this hazard.

Copied and pasted into google this yields 0 results and a heap of useful suggestions:

"

• Make sure that all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.
• Try fewer keywords.

"

Might force some students to have a think about it.