Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World: Preventing E-Cheating and Supporting Academic Integrity in Higher Education

179 Pages·2020·7.071 MB·English

by  Phillip Dawson

Defending Assessment Security
in a Digital World
Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World explores the phenomenon of
e-cheating and identifes ways to bolster assessment to ensure that it is secured
against threats posed by technology.
Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the book develops the concept of assess-
ment security through research from cybersecurity, game studies, artifcial intelli-
gence and surveillance studies. Throughout, there is a rigorous examination of the
ways people cheat in diferent contexts, and the efectiveness of diferent approaches
at stopping cheating. This evidence informs the development of standards and met-
rics for assessment security, and ways that assessment design can help address
e-cheating. Its new concept of assessment security both complements and chal-
lenges traditional notions of academic integrity.
By focusing on proactive, principles-based approaches, the book equips educa-
tors, technologists and policymakers to address both current e-cheating as well as
future threats.
Phillip Dawson leads research into academic integrity at the Centre for Research
in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE), at Deakin University in
Melbourne, Australia. He uses his background in assessment and cybersecurity to
protect education from cheating. His work involves unorthodox methods like
computer hacking and paying professional cheaters.

Defending Assessment
Security in a Digital World
Preventing E-Cheating and Supporting
Academic Integrity in Higher Education
Phillip Dawson
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Phillip Dawson
The right of Phillip Dawson to be identifed as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Disclaimer: References are made to use of the Internet in which material, products
and services of potentially illegal nature may be found; the author and publisher
maintain no responsibility or liability for any loss, damage or other outcome from
searching for, or attempting to procure, any material, product or service, regardless
of intent or method.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dawson, Phillip, author.
Title: Defending assessment security in a digital world : preventing
e-cheating and supporting academic integrity in higher education /
Phillip Dawson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2020019978 (print) | LCCN 2020019979 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367341541 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367341527 (paperback) | ISBN
9780429324178 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cheating (Education)–Technological innovations. | Cheating
(Education)–Prevention. | Educational technology–Security measures. |
Universities and colleges–Examinations. | College students–Conduct of
life. | Education, Higher–Moral and ethical aspects.
Classifcation: LCC LB3609 .D39 2021 (print) | LCC LB3609 (ebook) | DDC
371.2601/3–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019978
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019979
ISBN: 978-0-367-34154-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-34152-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-32417-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Global, India
Contents
List of Tables x
Acknowledgements xi
1 E-Cheating 1
Defning e-cheating 4
What is diferent about e-cheating? 5
Academic integrity, fraud, hacking and e-cheating 7
An afordance-based taxonomy of e-cheating approaches 8
Providing access to unauthorised information 9
Cognitive ofoading to a tool 11
Outsourcing work to a person 13
Disrupting the assessment process 15
E-cheating: a signifcant problem, but what can we do about it? 17
Things to do 18
2 Assessment security 19
What is assessment? 20
Two key features of assessment security 21
Authentication 21
Control of circumstances 22
(Im)perfect assessment security 24
Approaches to improving assessment security 25
Detection, evidence and penalties 25
Technology 26
Assessment design 32
Legal approaches 35
Problems with assessment security 36
Things to do 36
vi Contents
3 The E-Cheating lifecycle and how to disrupt it 38
Awareness raising 39
Students don’t just fnd e-cheating; e-cheating fnds students 39
Review sites, discount codes and seduction 41
‘Free’ e-cheating 42
Approaches for disrupting e-cheating awareness raising 42
Purchasing 43
Contract cheating websites 44
E-cheating hardware websites 45
Gig economy websites 46
Large-scale e-commerce sites 46
Dark web 47
Approaches for disrupting e-cheating purchases 47
Content production 48
Human cheating content production 48
Computerised cheating content production 51
Approaches for disrupting e-cheating content production 51
Delivery, submission and after-sales care 52
Delivery 52
Submission 53
After-sales care 54
Approaches for disrupting e-cheating delivery, submission and after-sales care 55
Things to do 57
4 Cybersecurity, E-Cheating and assessment security 59
Cybersecurity basics 59
Implications of cybersecurity for assessment security 61
Cybersecurity depends on an adversarial mindset 61
Assessment security has a harder authentication problem to solve than
regular cybersecurity’s authentication problem 61
The contexts of assessment security impose some challenging
constraints for security 62
Assessment security depends on hardware security and software security 62
Assessment security will always be imperfect, but that doesn’t mean
we shouldn’t try 63
Security through obscurity is not enough 63
Once an expert makes software that can cheat, everybody can cheat 64
Attack is easier than defence 64
Attackers don’t need to account for laws, policy, ethics, student rights
or public opinion 64
Improving assessment security through cybersecurity 65
Contents vii
Penetration testing 65
Disclosure and transparency 66
Working with students 68
Working with cybersecurity 69
Things to do 69
5 Lessons from E-Cheating in games and gambling 70
Cheating in online games 70
Cheating in esports 73
Cheating in online gambling 75
Anti-cheating technologies in games and gambling 77
What lessons can we learn? 79
Even with much bigger budgets, e-cheating cannot be completely defeated 79
Schneier is right: once an expert writes software that can do something,
anybody can do that something 80
Honest players are a big asset in reducing cheating 80
Anti-cheating technologies reify particular understandings of e-cheating 80
Independent bodies can regulate and keep records on individuals
that span contexts 81
Some degree of secrecy and undercover operations is necessary to keep
ahead of e-cheating 81
Anti-cheating can be ofered as a service 82
To understand e-cheating’s future, look to games and gambling 82
Things to do 82
6 E-Cheating, assessment security and artifcial intelligence 83
What AI is and what it can and cannot do 83
AI for e-cheating 85
AI can already meet some learning outcomes for students; do
we still need to assess them? 86
What if AI becomes so good at meeting outcomes for students that we can’t spot it? 87
Where is the boundary between AI help and AI cheating? 89
AI for assessment security 90
Can AI detect e-cheating? 90
Can AI be the decision-maker? 90
AI is imperfect but it scales well 95
What will humans and machines need to do? 96
Things to do 97
7 Surveillance and the weaponisation of academic integrity 98
Academic integrity, e-cheating, assessment security and surveillance culture 99
viii Contents
Who will surveil students and to what end? 100
Routine surveillance will catch too many 102
Trust, surveillance and gamifcation 102
The future of surveillance is weaponisation 103
Alternatives to surveillance 104
Living with surveillance 105
Things to do 107
8 Metrics and standards for assessment security 108
The problems of metricless assessment security 108
Difculty to cheat metrics 109
Cost to cheat 110
Limitations of cheating difculty metrics 115
Detection accuracy metrics 116
Limitations of detection accuracy metrics 119
Proof Metrics 119
Limitations of proof metrics 120
Prevalence metrics 120
Limitations of prevalence metrics 122
Learning, teaching, assessment and student experience metrics 122
Limitations of learning, teaching, assessment and student experience metrics 123
Towards standards for assessment security 124
Things to do 126
9 Structuring and designing assessment for security 128
Assessment design trumps assessment security 128
Assessment design decisions 130
What doesn’t work in designing assessment for security 132
Obvious mistakes that weaken assessment security 133
Reusing the same assessment task 133
Unsupervised online tests 133
Take-home ‘one right answer’ or lower-level tasks 134
Poor examination practices 134
Invigilation and assessment security 135
Group work and assessment security 135
Authentic restrictions and assessment security 136
Programmatic assessment security 137
Dialogic feedback and assessment security 138
Random assessment security checks 139
Assessment design and quality control processes 139
Things to do 140
Contents ix
10 Conclusion: Securing assessment against E-Cheating 141
Focus on assessment security alongside academic integrity 141
Take an afordance-based approach to understanding e-cheating, and
a principles-based approach to stopping it 142
Perfect is the enemy of good, so aim for incremental improvements 143
Build a culture of evidence and disclosure 143
Resist assessment conservatism and assessment security theatre 144
References 146
Index 164