Using Digital Logs to Reduce Academic Misdemeanour by Students in Digital Forensic Assessments

Abstract

Identifying academic misdemeanours and actual applied effort in student assessments involving practical work\rcan be problematic. For instance, it can be difficult to assess the actual effort that a student applied, the\rsequence and method applied, and whether there was any form of collusion or collaboration. In this paper we\rpropose a system of using digital logs generated by selected software tools (such as FTK- Forensic Toolkit and\rEnCase), for the purpose of identifying the effort and sequence of events that students followed to complete their\rlearning activities, (say, arriving at conclusions relating to an assessment question) and thereby determining\rwhether it is likely that an academic misdemeanour may have occurred. The paper elaborates on an assessment\rexercise conducted with a cohort of 67 students in a specific class of disciplinary learning, highlighting the\rprocess that students have to follow, and then proceeds to show in some details how selected logging facilities can\rbe used to provide evidence that students may have committed an academic misdemeanour.