Secure Proctoring of Contactless Handwritten-Assessments with Insufficient Computing Resources using Smartphones

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed many aspects of people's lives, including education. The pandemic impacted schools, undergraduate, and graduate university education worldwide. Some educational institutions have moved to distance learning to prevent students and their families from getting infected, whereas others have face-To-face examinations to ensure students' integrity. However, paper-based exams are more likely to increase the virus's risk. From another perspective, the tremendous sums of papers used during exam preparation contribute significantly to paper waste. Existing proctoring solutions include learning management software or required additional hardware and software setup. In this paper, we propose a mobile application that facilitates the contactless submission of paper-based exams. The app is designed to be a medium where students can view exam questions and write down their solutions on their sheets of paper while in a proctored setting. Instructors can create exams, grade them, and monitor students through the app. The app consists of a cheating detection feature that constantly monitors app switches and network disconnects during test-Taking to combat any cheating attempts. Once the exam is over, instructors are provided with the ability to view a list of students' activities before submission. Once cleared, students can scan their solutions and upload them for grading. Our results show that the proposed tool is low-cost, user-friendly, and reliable and can be used to conduct exams in a safe and healthy environment. © 2022 IEEE.

Keywords: Automated Proctoring, MLearning, Mobile Computing, Pandemic EdTech