Abstract
Student authentication in online learning environments is an increasingly challenging issue due to the inherent absence of physical interaction with online users and potential security threats to online examinations. This study is part of ongoing research on student authentication in online examinations evaluating the potential benefits of using challenge questions. The authors developed a Profile Based Authentication Framework (PBAF), which utilises challenge questions for students’ authentication in online examinations. This paper examines the findings of an empirical study in which 23 participants used the PBAF including an abuse case security analysis of the PBAF approach. The overall usability analysis suggests that the PBAF is efficient, effective and usable. However, specific questions need replacement with suitable alternatives due to usability challenges. The results of the current research study suggest that memorability, clarity of questions, syntactic variation and question relevance can cause usability issues leading to authentication failure. A configurable traffic light system was designed and implemented to improve the usability of challenge questions. The security analysis indicates that the PBAF is resistant to informed guessing in general, however, specific questions were identified with security issues. The security analysis identifies challenge questions with potential risks of informed guessing by friends and colleagues. The study was performed with a small number of participants in a simulation online course and the results need to be verified in a real educational context on a larger sample size.
Highlights
This study investigates student authentication in online learning and examinations
4.1 Usability analysis The usability results presented here are extracted from the data taken from the participants’ interactions with the online learning and examination phases discussed in Study design and methodology
We have analysed the usability of questions in the online examination and traffic light authentication phases
Summary
This study investigates student authentication in online learning and examinations. Student identification in online learning is largely reliant upon remote authentication mechanisms. The absence of face-to-face identification can make online learning and high stakes examinations vulnerable to a number of authentication threats and the security of online learning environments is highly important. Effective authentication approaches are important to ensure secure, reliable and usable student authentication mechanisms in an online learning and examinations context. The implementation of a reliable and secure approach to students’ authentication is vital to ensure trust of the stakeholders in the assessment process It has been an active research area and a number of authentication techniques have been implemented in order to ensure secure online examinations. A number of previous studies have acknowledged that student authentication in online examinations faces many security threats. A large number of authentication techniques have been developed, which can be implemented to enhance the security of online examinations
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