Addressing cheating in e-assessment using student authentication and authorship checking systems: teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Student authentication and authorship checking systems are intended to help teachers address cheating and plagiarism. This study set out to investigate higher education teachers' perceptions of the prevalence and types of cheating in their courses with a focus on the possible changes that might come about as a result of an increased use of eassessment, ways of addressing cheating, and how the use of student authentication and authorship checking systems might impact on assessment practice. This study was carried out within the context of the project TeSLA (an Adaptive Trust-based e-assessment System for Learning) which is developing a system intended for integration within an institution's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) offering a variety of instruments to assure student authentication and authorship checking. Data was collected at two universities that were trialling the TeSLA system, one in Turkey, where the main modes of teaching are face-toface teaching and distance education, and one in Bulgaria, where the main modes of teaching are face-to-face teaching and blended learning. The study used questionnaires and interviews, building on existing TeSLA project evaluation activities and extending these to explore the specific areas we wished to examine in more depth. In three of the four contexts cheating was seen by teachers as a serious and growing problem, the exception was the distance education context where the teachers believed that the existing procedures were effective in controlling cheating. Most teachers in all four contexts expected cheating to become a greater problem with increased use of eassessment. Student authentication was not seen as a major problem in any of the contexts, as this was felt to be well controlled through face-to-face proctored assessments, though the problem of assuring effective authentication was seen by many teachers as a barrier to increased use of e-assessment. Authorship checking was seen as a major issue in all contexts, as copying and pasting from the web, ghost writing and plagiarism were all reported as widely prevalent, and authorship checking was seen as becoming even more important with increased use of e-assessment. Teachers identified a third category of cheating behaviours, which was the accessing of information from other students, from written materials, and from the internet during assessments. Teachers identified a number of approaches to addressing the problem of cheating: education, technology, assessment design, sanctions, policy, and surveillance. Whilst technology was not seen as the most important approach to prevention, student authentication and authorship checking systems were seen as relevant in terms of reducing reliance on face-to-face proctored examinations, and in improving the quality of assessment through supporting the employment of a wider range of assessment methods. The development of authorship checking based on computational linguistic (Continued on next page)

Cheating and Plagiarism in E-Assessment: Students’ Perspectives

“…The consortium is composed of 18 partners, including 8 universities, 3 quality agencies, 4 research centers, and 3 companies. The TeSLA system involves authentication (face recognition, voice recognition and keystroke dynamics) and authorship (forensic analysis for writing style and plagiarism detection) checking instruments which can be used in all e-assessment models to prevent cheating and plagiarism (Mellar et al, 2018;Noguera, Guerrero-Roldán & Rodríguez, 2016). This study is not an evaluation of the instruments, however, an investigation of students' perspectives on cheating and plagiarism in e-assessment before using the TeSLA system.…”

“…For example, there are arguments in the literature that suggest the use of technology for assessment makes cheating and plagiarism easy (Bartley, 2005;Rowe, 2004;Gathuri, Luvanda, Matende & Kamundi, 2014). Students and teachers frequently express their concerns about the cheating and plagiarism that can result from e-assessment and this concern is limiting the widespread use of e-assessment (Mellar, Peytcheva-Forsyth, Kocdar, Karadeniz & Yovkova, 2018;Hillier, 2014). To overcome this problem, a number of authentication and authorship checking systems have evolved over time to ensure secure authentication (Peytcheva-Forsyth, 2017).…”

“…Cheating and plagiarism is regarded as a greater concern compared to traditional paper-based assessment (Pedersen, White & Smith, 2012;Rowe, 2004;Xu & Mahenthiran, 2016). Some of the types of cheating and plagiarism that have been examined in the literature with regards to e-assessment include impersonation, taking materials into exams, looking at others' answers and ghostwriting (Apampa, Wills & Argles, 2011;Bartley, 2005;Mellar et al, 2018). Clearly, these forms of cheating and plagiarism have a negative impact on the validity and reliability of the e-assessment process as well as students' trust in e-assessment (Dermo, 2009).…”

Pedagogical approaches for e‐assessment with authentication and authorship verification in Higher Education

“…Pilot coordinators play an important role to communicate needs and technical issues to the technology developers and keep course teams and students—including special educational needs students—well informed and supported on security and privacy as well as on fraud detection (QAA, ), prevention and trust (Mellar, Peytcheva‐Forsyth, Kocdar, Karadeniz, & Yovkova, ; Okada et al ., 2018; Park, ).…”

Using a Student Authentication and Authorship Checking System as a Catalyst for Developing an Academic Integrity Culture: a Bulgarian Case Study

“…The Horizon 2020 funded TeSLA project (2015-2019) involved a consortium of technological, educational and quality assurance institutions in order to develop a technological system and an assessment design approach to address cheating and plagiarism through the development of a modular system for student authentication and authorship checking (Mellar et al 2018;Noguera et al 2017;Okada et al 2019a, b). The TeSLA system brings together a number of technological strands for addressing cheating, offering a choice of Face Recognition, Voice Recognition and Keystroke Dynamics instruments to authenticate students' identity, and Forensic Analysis (a stylometric approach) and Plagiarism Detection instruments for authorship checking.…”