Hybrid Authentication Combining Student Behavior and Knowledge for E-Evaluation Transparency and Equity Over E-Learning Platform

Abstract

COVID-19 has forced academic organizations to migrate rapidly to distance education or online (electronic) learning (e-learning) owing to its benefits, mainly offering innovative teaching and transparent evaluation. However, e-learning stakeholders, faculties, staff, and students have evoked evaluation security concerns regarding authenticating takers during the electronic evaluation (e-evaluation) comprising electronic assessment (e-assess) and examination (e-exam). This paper presents a hybrid scheme that resolves this challenge using a dynamic authentication method for supervising e-evaluation. This approach builds an active student profile employing students’ information and behavior gathered during the courses’ activities and uses them for managing unethical conduct during e-evaluation. The proposed scheme ensures continuous authentication using active questions made using operational students’ profiles without a need for added components and extra cost. The student answers to the set of random queries developed dynamically, in terms of time and information, to ensure real-time authentication with e-evaluation transparency and equity. A mathematical model is developed and employed utilizing students’ and courses’ contents to enable a dynamic authentication algorithm throughout e-evaluation. The obtained results of the simulation work show that the authentication requirements are guaranteed at a low cost regardless of student number, e-evaluation content, anytime, and anywhere.