Cheating prevention steps for the ‘new normal’
Turnkey solutions to ensure integrity in education assessments
Oneconnect strives to offer turnkey technological solutions to educational institutions at every step of the teaching and learning journey. Simply providing learners with a virtual classroom, however, is not enough, as feedback remains an important part of the educational process. This is done through assessments such as assignments, tests and exams, explains Oneconnect MD and Chairman, Rogers Sithole. “Cheating, however, a pandemic in its own right, is something we all need to be concerned about.”
While many schools have migrated learning online, not enough attention has been paid to how to assess the learning experience remotely. Traditionally, students write exams in a controlled environment; a physical exam venue where they are closely monitored by an invigilator, separated from academic resources and aids like text books, mobile devices with internet access or study notes. Students sit in silence to dissuade answer sharing.
This, however, has changed and online learning institutions need to be innovative and progressive when it comes to preventing cheating and ensuring the integrity of assessment and exam processes. Students are now assessed remotely, and the environment they are in cannot be monitored or controlled in the same way as before.
Current solutions being utilised in the online education and remote learning space are largely insufficient. Some institutions employ anticheating measures like the locking of browsers during an exam to stop students from accessing notes or search engines, but few people only own one device, and a learner could be accessing external resources through their mobile phone. It’s also not enough to just monitor students and their environments via webcams. “A learner could have a subject expert sitting at the table across from them, out of sight of the camera, feeding them answers,” says Sithole. “Someone could connect a keyboard to the device port just off-screen and be typing the entire exam on a learner’s behalf.”
This, he adds, will cause long-term problems and have a far-reaching impact on future studies and employability: “It might lead us to doubt the quality of a qualification that someone attains in this period; we don’t want children who have worked very hard to achieve good marks during this pandemic to have their education seen in a bad light because of the unethical actions of others. The fact of the matter is that people might be disadvantaged because the integrity of the assessment process is called into question. So how do we stop this from happening?”
The answer to the question of how to maintain the integrity of assessments, especially high-stake exams, says Sithole, is once again technology.
Oneconnect solutions utilise state-of-the-art facial recognition to authenticate the identity of the person in front of the screen, as well as their attentiveness during the exam, while also locking the browsers and ports to block any external input. Artificial Intelligence is used to analyse the typing patterns as another form of authentication. “Although we might both type at 250 words per minute, we each have a typing pattern as unique as our fingerprint,” Sithole explains.
The technology also constantly scans the room, and the moment someone enters the room or the exam taker gets up from their seat, the system locks and re-authentication is required to continue.
“So we’ve got a solution, and it’s an awardwinning solution that takes the whole assessment space into consideration,” says Sithole. “In this way we can ensure that institutions are able to, not only teach, but also conduct high-quality assessments that guarantee integrity in their processes, especially when it comes to high-stake exams and tests.”