Abstract:

Over the last decade, e-learning has played an important role in education. The growing number of users (70 million students and 1.2 million teachers across 7.5 million courses) has given rise to a major concern over protecting them from misuse; the most significant of the potential misuse is the cheating or unauthorised help during remote examinations. Whilst current researchers have begun to propose solutions in this respect, requiring a student to intrusively provide an authentication sample (e.g. password, ID card, or RFID), they fundamentally fail to provide the acceptable level of security or integrity required. Therefore, more reliable alternative solutions are required. Researchers have employed one or more biometric features of the candidate during the on-line assessment, including but not limited to: face, voice, fingerprint, keystroke analysis and mouse dynamic. In such systems, user satisfaction is an essential factor. Hence, transparency and continuous authentication are utilised to get a convincing level of user satisfaction, in which the current systems have not achieved this effectively yet. This paper is focused upon presenting an analysis including advantages and disadvantages of biometrics that have been used for invigilation in on-line assessments. Additionally, the study has explored the usability, feasibility, and transparency of some biometric modalities that have not been employed in this area and offers a promising solution. The analysis shows that the more transparent and robust biometrics that are employed; the more convenient and secure e-assessment are achieved.

Keywords:

E-assessment, e-invigilation, e-learning, biometric.