Authenticity of Students at e-learning?

Mar 06, 2012

How can/ or what are the ways in which we can make sure that a student doing e-learning is he himself? How can we prove authenticity that the student is not asking someone else to sit and do the assessment for him at home if he is doing a course assessment online.???

16 Replies
Natalia Mueller

Ajesh, the concerns you bring up are definitely some challenges of online learning. I remember back in my college days I had professors in some of my larger classes  who required us to show our student IDs when we turned in our tests. There were also courses where I thought "man, anyone could be taking this test and put my name on it. Too bad I don't know anyone who wants to take an extra test today."  

I guess it comes down to the fact that if someone really wants to cheat, there is usually a way. Even showing a student ID wouldn't matter in a huge lecture where the professor doesn't know all the students because IDs can be fake. Of course I understand that you don't want to make it easy and therefor a widespread problem either. 

Is there already a portal or some type of site they have to use their student # to log into? Requiring them to log in with something that they would not want to just give out (ie the same # that they use to see their grades, schedule classes, etc) could help. I really can't think of a way to ensure they don't have someone sitting in their room with them. But along with the lecture comparison, they can stop a student from writing answers on his hand either. It could help to have questions that are very specific to material presented in the course so someone outside the class couldn't help as much. Or maybe just have those course-specific questions worth more than others.

Ajesh Abraham

Hi Natalia,

Thank you so much for your response.

We came across this issue when asked by an auditor as a response to our submission for the accreditation of a specific course online. We do have moodle where we give the students login and password. We know that if a student wants to cheat they will cheat. But we need to

  1. Find a good response to the auditors question?
  2. Establish a process/step/system whereby we can monitor/minimise or if possible stop cheating and plagiarism online.
Poornima Ramachandran

Are your target audience nearby your location? In that case, you can ask them to complete the course online, but ask them to come for the quiz part, (Not sure if logistics would be in your favour).

If the students stay far away, may be you can tie up with centers which can host the quizes, so that students can go to these centers and take up the quiz. So there will definitely be a supervision. How about that?

Bob S

Ajesh,

As mentioned by others here, if there's a will to cheat then there's a way. All we can do is decide how hard we want to make it for the "casual" cheaters.  With that in mind....

Have you considered some sort of security call and response? For example you might include in the course (or as a result of the quiz) some sort of secret password that appears. The user would then have to submit that password to you (admiinstrator) by clicking an email submit button. Certainly not foolproof but would provide some evidence that the course is being taken from the proper user's computer.

I've also heard of folks doing the same thing in reverse for certain purposes.... providing a secret answer that the student can only get by interacting personally with someone. They put that secret answer into an online quiz.

Hope this helps and good luck,

Bob

James Brown

Depends on the course. If we are talking about an online LMS course, plain and simple.. look at the writing styles. If you require blogs and posts and then you incorporate essay questions into your final test you will quickly realize who did what. While attending Boise State it would have been very difficult to cheat. The grading was done with the aid of ruberics and you either did the work or you didn't. The true test comes when that person applies for a job. You can either do the job or you cannot. I remember working with a few individuals who were hired boasting how well they could perform a job only to find out that they could not. Needless to day these people were quickly exposed for who they were.

However if we are talking about an online first aid course or firearm safety course, there really isn't a way to prove that unless they had to perform an actual skills assessment. If the person says they did the program but then fails the physical skills assessment that tells you that the person clicked through the content and then opened a new tab when doing the test or someone did the work for them.

Now you need to ask, if I get paid for the course, is it your responsibility to ensure that the person signed up for the course is the one taking the test? Sorry but that rests solely on the person taking the course and if they hurt or injure someone due to their negligence, than it's on them. It also is going to affect their employment prospects. Either you can do the job or you can't and if you decide to cheat, you are going to be the one who suffers.

Richard Campbell

From the perspective of my university and my personal testing protocol, I always mandate that when students take an exam, they MUST be proctored by either myself or a responsible person that I pre-approve. No cell phones are permitted, and I use the Respondus Lockdown Browser - www.respondus.com when the exam is given. I am reasonably certain that minimal cheating is going on by carefully looking at the stat analysis of the exams.

April Edmonds

I'm teaching 2 online courses this semester. It is a real concern. I ended up using Skills Assessment Manager (SAM). They have a way to encode files with a unique code for each student, each assignment. If students try to upload someone else's assignment, and it doesn't have their specific code assigned, then it marks as plagiarized.

I have heard of ProctorU. Although it might be a little pricey for students. 

Vasily Ingogly

When I've taken online certification/licensure exams, they've asked for a photo ID  which they copy. Then, a webcam snaps my picture when I take the exam. Webcam image + photocopy of ID = near perfect identity matching. Of course, someone can always have a fake ID made then sit for the exam ... no system's 100% perfect.

Another option would be to assign a unique ID to each student at the beginning of each course, and change it for each course. They would connect securely and need to enter the ID before being allowed to take the exam. Or you could use a soft RSA key the student would load on their smart phone, tablet, or PC. Keeping track of the soft RSA keys assigned to students and expiring them would give you the auditability you need.

Muhammad  Ghani

Hi Ajesh?

I am an auditor and now started my own advisory and training firm for which we have online part. 

We have kept the on-line portal on hold due to same and some other reasons as cited by you. 

After reading all points above, an idea just clicked that one can use official social media IDs as identification too. 

This is because people rarely share the passwords for them in their peers and friends.

But this is just maybe. 

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