EU-backed tool to combat cheating in online exams finally ready

A European Union-backed tool designed to stamp out cheating in online assessment with facial and keystroke recognition is finally ready for launch and will be available for free.

Despite having reported successful pilots in 2018, the €7 million (£6 million) Adaptive Trust-based E-assessment System for Learning (Tesla) tool had not made it to market by the time the coronavirus pandemic forced universities to switch to remote assessment last year.

This was because the researchers wanted to make sure that the technology was effective and worked across a range of disciplines, and that the handling of personal information would comply with data protection laws, explained Ana Elena Guerrero Roldán, who coordinates the Tesla project at the Open University of Catalonia.

THE Campus resource: Fair assessment and tackling the rise in online cheating

The team has created a new tool, Tesla Community Edition, that uses facial and keystroke recognition to check that online exam candidates are who they say they are and are not cheating. It will also compare learners’ work to check for potential plagiarism.

The community edition will be free and should be available for use by this summer.

Amid reports of a spike in cheating, technology companies rushed out online proctoring products during 2020. But many faced a backlash from students who found tools such as video monitoring intrusive, while academics questioned the efficacy of such products.

Denise Whitelock, professor of technology-enhanced assessment and learning at the UK’s Open University, which was part of the EU project, said universities should be reassured that the EU had helped to develop Tesla. All Tesla data and communications are encrypted, and the team behind the tool has produced a series of peer-reviewed journal papers.

“We have had lawyers working with us from the beginning to ensure that the way the data is handled within the system complies with the law, and this was built into its architecture,” Professor Whitelock said.

More than 27,000 students at seven European universities took part in trials of Tesla. This led to the removal of a “forensic analysis” tool, which compared writing styles to check authorship, because the results were not clear enough.

For Dr Guerrero Roldán, the key advantage of Tesla is that it was designed to support continuous assessment rather than just catch cheaters.

“If you, as an institution, think only about cheating, then you are not devoting efforts on rethinking your educational model according to modern times,” she said. “If institutions are able to track learners across the whole learning path in a course, then final examinations can be reduced because authentication and authorship can be assured across the whole learning process.”

Professor Whitelock rejected any notion that Tesla had missed its big opportunity when Covid hit, emphasising that the team had been “testing and testing this product for a long time”.

“We’re now ready for the next phase [of online assessment], and with everyone concerned about the need for quality assurance, it is a great time for Tesla,” she said.

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com