Are webcam-based invigilated assessments secure? The ways and danger of cheating
We moved assessments to the online environment. But is it safe in terms of security of exams? It creates some challenges for faculty and teachers. Does webcam based proctoring prevent cheating in online exams? Do we have to use complicated methods or software to hack the problems? Researchers from UK compared the results of online and traditional exams.
Let’s explore how the results are: https://youtu.be/v7QzscFSxnY
Hi and Hola para amigos!
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted medical education worldwide. Social distancing requirements forced medical schools to find unusual ways to carry out assessment. The prominent solution was the online exams. Medical schools employed online tests with proctoring the students using webcams. However, is online invigilation enough for carrying out a secure exam?
At this point, researchers from UK turned the pandemic into an opportunity to answer this question. In their paper published in Medical Teacher in 2021, they presented a comparison of student performance on identical content in an offline, traditionally invigilated format against an online, webcam invigilated format. They tested whether performance varies depending on whether candidates are assessed in an online or traditional format.
The flamingo is excited to present the results.
Final year medical students from 34 UK medical schools sat the Prescribing Safety Assessment on either February or March 2020 for a total of 6048 sittings. These exams were carried out in a traditional in-person invigilated way. Then, due to pandemic precautions, they could not make it using traditional way. The next two exams were carried out online in either May or June 2020, for a total of 2044 sittings. The students were invigilated using webcams. The researchers compared the student performance in traditional in-person exams and online exams.
But what questions did they compare? If the questions are completely different, it does not make sense too much. Anchor items provide advantage at this point. In all of the exams, some questions were “anchor items”. I think I should provide an explanation of anchor items.
It can be described as “a set of identical items deployed across multiple assessments”. The use of anchor items enables comparisons between cohorts and can be used to directly compare performance (or progress) even when a majority of the items on each assessment are not shared.
So, the researchers used these anchor items to make a comparison of two groups.
Here is the result.
As the researchers stated, “Across all anchor items, candidates sitting online anchor items (M=0.762, SD=0.34) very slightly outperformed candidates sitting offline items (M=0.761, SD=0.34), but the difference was non-significant and would equate to a difference of less than one mark on the assessment. Similarly, we identified no significant differences in variability.”
They are saying that “There was no evidence of performance change as a result of moving to online assessment”. So they concluded that the findings of the study increase “confidence that online assessment can replace traditional assessment formats.”
But we should be cautious. The current study only explores students at UK medical schools, and so it is not known how generalizable such results are to other contexts. It could change depending on exams, invigilation methods, etc.
In spite of the limitations, it is apparent that the results strengthen the defensibility of webcam-based invigilated assessments.
For those interested in, I added the link of the article at the description below of the video: https://youtu.be/v7QzscFSxnY
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See you and adios para amigos.
And also, don’t forget the flamingo.
