Do Not Use "Force Completion" and Stranger Things

You are putting together a test for your online course in Blackboard.  As you scroll down to look at the different options after the timing options, you see “Force Completion”.  If a student navigates away from a Test, and the Force Completion option is turned on, the Test is automatically submitted for them by the system.

This test you are creating is online, and we cannot be too careful.  This tool will ensure that students cannot cheat, like a proctor, right?

No.

While this feature is often wrongly attributed to making online examinations more effective by dissuading academic dishonesty, Forced Completion creates more harm than whatever good it is intended to do.  Problems with Internet providers or browsers are more often the culprit than students attempting to abuse the testing time. On countless occasions help desks get calls from distraught students because their system lost the connection and their test was submitted – incomplete. Worse still, there is nothing they can do to help. This has motivated multiple universities to recommend not using, ”Force Completion”

If your goal is to punish students who have unreliable internet, browser, then "Force Completion" is a great tool.  However there is no pedagogical value in this and it creates serious issues of equity in your course.  The unreliability of Force Completion and the technical issues it creates makes it ineffective at what it was designed for at best, and discriminatory at worst.

If an assessment requires forced completion to be effective, it wasn’t much of an assessment to begin with.  Forced Completion offers arbitrary criteria in evaluating students and burdens support services. Effective online assessments allow students to demonstrate their mastery of the subject.

This can be done without forcing student to recite answers in a short period of time with arbitrary punishments divvied out.  The key to online learning is to focus on constructivist techniques for learning, and not passive learning activities.  This is not to say that online tests are not effective, but to suggest how they are used, such as a tool to help students self-assess their understanding, is key to using test successfully.  While this can be difficult to navigate, minimally it means that you should not use Force Completion.