Can We Formally Catch Cheating in E-exams?

Abstract

Cheating in exams is a practice as old as exams themselves. Institutions and examiners have learned to mitigate traditional ways of cheating, such as the use of crib notes. Yet, the massive digitalization of the world has facilitated the application of electronic exams (e-exams), for which more innovative and sophisticated ways of cheating have emerged. The advent of Information and Communication Technology is changing the threat model as the e-exam environment is not restricted to a classroom anymore; and examiners are simply not wellequipped to supervise a digitally connected network. To a large extent, the research on the subject follows one of two main approaches: philosophical, focused on trying to understand the causes and behaviors of cheaters; or pragmatical, aimed at providing means for preventing or detecting fraudulent scenarios. Here, we take a different perspective and look at cheating as a theoretical information security problem. More specifically, we aim at finding specifications that allow us to unequivocally decide whether an examinee has tried to subvert an exam protocol by using unauthorized means to answer questions. We discuss how we could formalize such definitions and comment on different frameworks suitable for the task. Our discussion provides insights into future research directions towards devising formal frameworks for a rigorous study of cheating scenarios and thereby, the development of e-exam systems that would be resilient to such scenarios by design.