Multiparameter-based evaluation to identify the trustworthiness of the examinee during e-assessments

Abstract

Monitoring and confirming the examinee's degree of trust during online exams without the assistance of live proctors or invigilators has become a significant concern for most Universities in Sri Lanka. There are currently feasible proctoring options for institutions in Sri Lanka, but they have flaws that make it possible for students to cheat on exams. This study primarily intends to address that issue by introducing a methodology to determine the examinee's trustworthiness during the e-assessment period. As a result, it is critical to comprehend the ideas of trust and trustworthiness in the context of assessment and there are numerous definitions of trust and trustworthiness in the literature. It is essential to highlight that the concept of trust and trustworthiness is context-sensitive, and several metrics are presented in the literature to assess the examinee's identification and behavior-related trustworthiness. Biometric parameters are emphasized in the literature as important factors that are employed for the examinee's identity verification or authentication and there are other non-biometric parameters as well. The term "examinee trustworthiness" as defined in this study refers to the state that an examinee achieves by adhering to the established rules throughout the e-assessment time. Also, researchers have further defined the “trustworthiness parameter” as any action, occurrence, or environmental change that influences the variance in the examinee's level of trust during the online assessment time. In the context of an online e-assessment, this research attempts to construct a multiparameter-based model to measure the examinee's trustworthiness. Using discrete image stream, and operating system event data collected during the online e-assessment, the researcher has conducted experiments and literature analysis in the first stage of this study to identify potential trustworthiness parameters. Through these experiments, the researcher has identified the examinee's environment's unacceptable background, the examinee's lack of visibility in front of the webcam, the presence of multiple people in front of the webcam, the examinee's false identity, and accessing unauthorized materials on the operating system as trustworthiness parameters in this study. Through the parameters used during phase one of this research, the researcher defined the qualitative concept of "examinee trustworthiness" in the context of online e-assessment in a quantitative way. The researcher also determined the proper weights of each chosen parameter to the examinee's trustworthiness because the identified parameters affect the examinee's trustworthiness to varying degrees. The researcher presented the novel concept of the “Trust Index”, which is a quantitative representation of examinee trustworthiness, in an online e-assessment context as an intergraded output of selected parameters as a multiparameter base model to evaluate the examinee trustworthiness. With the help of tooling the researcher had developed to capture each parameter of trustworthiness, the researcher qualitatively assessed the effectiveness of the proposed Trust Model using a simulated e-assessment with 15 participants. The researcher makes many recommendations for tools and the trust model that has been put in place for future research.