Publish at October 08 2013 Updated June 07 2022
In October 2012, education journalist Sean Coughlan published the article How do you stop online students cheating? on the BBC News website. In it, he mentions the growing problem with student assessment in the rapidly expanding field of online education. How do we ensure that the student on the other side of the world is not cheating and that the certifications awarded at the end of courses taken on the web have real value?
The author gives a series of ways that educational institutions can prevent fraud at the end of these ever more numerous and popular online courses.
One way, mentioned by Professor Peter Taylor of Open University, would be, using dedicated software, to remotely lock the student's computer so that the student cannot use any material other than the exam itself during the time allotted for the assessment. Coupled with webcam monitoring, to prevent viewing on other media, this method could be an effective replacement for taking the exam in an actual proctored room.
A second technological solution ensures that it is the enrolled student who is answering questions remotely, and not an "accomplice." Indeed, there is a digital tool that analyzes the keyboarding technique for each individual, including the specifics of the rhythm when entering data. This unique way of typing would represent the signature of the student enrolled in the online course and allow for recognition (much like that other biometric tool that, in turn, can recognize an individual by their irises). Professor Taylor, whose words are echoed in Coughlan's article, believes that these remote monitoring and recognition methods could be in effect in the near term.
On the edX platform, students enrolled in online courses would instead take their exams online at the organization's website, but with more traditional supervision in an international network of real-world classrooms. In addition, randomly created and combined exam questions would allow different tests to be given to thousands of students at different times and in different locations around the world, reducing the possibility of leakage. According to edX's Agarwal, also reported by the reporter on the BBC News website, the speed of feedback when taking online exams, a feature highly valued by students, limits the topics that can be assessed via the web, however: a computer is going to struggle to mark an essay on irony. Grading software can't be as subtle and intelligent as a human grader, at least as things stand.
Enrolling thousands of students in online courses poses the problem of mass grading, says Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, quoted in Coughlan's article. Human feedback is essential to assessing the quality of a response. Peer review is one possible solution, but raises, on the other hand, the question of the trustworthiness of the students who review.
Another solution, low tech this one, is available to educational institutions: it involves having a clear code of ethics in assessment, endorsed by students; it seems that this would help to decrease cheating rates where it is applied.
Denny Carter also wrote in August 2013 about the potential for solutions to curb cheating with respect to online course evaluations. His article is published on eCampus News (Technology News for Today's Higeher-Ed Learner) and is titled Top 3 solutions to cheating in online education. The keystroke monitoring software, described above, is mentioned there, but it is specified here that it would become more effective by coupling stylometry, i.e., authenticating an author by his or her linguistic style. This technique would prevent, for example, a student from typing what another person dictates, which would quite easily defeat the monitoring software by the key on the keyboard.
Carter, too, points out the possibility of multiplying the content and format of a single exam, but a reader notes in the comments area that this method would not prevent a cheater from searching for answers, on Google for example, for each of the individual questions. Instead, the commenter makes the suggestion that prevention should be done by reminding students of the importance of integrity and personal accomplishment in passing a course.
Resources
Sean Coughlan How do you stop online students cheating? BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19661899 [accessed October 7, 2013]
Denny Carter Top 3 solutions to cheating in online education, eCampus News (Technology News for Today's Higher-Ed Learner): http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/solutions-cheating-online-001/ [accessed October 7, 2013]
Headline image: copyright Sergey Nivens via Shutterstock
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