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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-a-look dept.

The Danish Ministry of Education has developed a "digital exam invigilator" to be used by students in the equivalent of high schools ("gymnasiale uddannelser"). The purpose is to be able to detect cheating during written exams. The program:
  - captures all keystrokes (keylogger)
  - captures a screenshot every minute and whenever you switch tasks
  - a list of all open webpages
  - network configuration
  - which programs are running
  - whether it's is running in a VM
  - contents of the clipboard
  and sends this to a central server during the exam. The data is kept for 4 months.

The initiative is getting a lot of criticism.
  - In 2017 there was 229 suspicions of cheating out of more than 200.000 students, so this initiative may be out of proportions.
  - The program is only available for Windows and MacOS. No support for Linux or ChromeOS.
  - It may be possible for a 3rd party to do a MITM-attack and take over the students' PCs.
  - If a student is unable or unwilling to install the program he can perform the exam under "extended surveillance" (good old-fashioned humans watching) at the school's discretion. Some schools deny students this option and instead just fail them.
  - The program will likely collect private information.

The schools do not provide computers for students because they cannot afford it. So its BYOD. On some schools (eg. some vocational schools) Linux is quite common. Some schools have trouble affording the extra human invigilators.

So soylentils: what would you do given the constraints? What do other countries do? Ignore the risk of cheating? Spend money on human invigilators?

All sources are in Danish as this news has not hit the international scene (yet). Sorry.
Danish Ministry of Education page on the program: https://www.stil.dk/uvm-dk/gymnasiale-uddannelser/proever-og-eksamen/netproever/den-digitale-proevevagt
Short analysis by security expert Peter Kruse: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/den-digitale-proevevagt-overvaagnings-kritiske-elever-faar-ministeriet-til-rette
A Reddit thread on the subject: https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/avovqx/staten_har_nu_krav_om_at_vi_installerer_et/
A discussion on version2 (an EE and CS site): https://www.version2.dk/artikel/digitale-proevevagt-totalovervaagning-elevers-computere-midlertidigt-trukket-tilbage-1087609


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  • (Score: 1) by EJ on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:36AM (5 children)

    by EJ (2452) on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:36AM (#810531)

    They can always just require you to let them boot the system for you, and use their own monitoring software to detect any reboots. The specific software they mentioned is not the only option. There are Linux tools if you own the image. Another consideration is LAN only. No outgoing connections.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:57AM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:57AM (#810540) Journal

    I'm more of the opinion that if the school requires a computer for testing, then the school should supply the computer. The Danes are doing something wrong here. Of course, it isn't just the Danes - most of the rest of the world is doing wrong in different ways.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by isj on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:29AM (3 children)

      by isj (5249) on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:29AM (#810551) Homepage

      Note: The age group affected by this are 15-19 years old.
      Most schools do not _require_ the student to have a computer, but you'll be at a disadvantage if you don't have one.
      Providing personal computers would not be a good idea - you can guess how they would be treated. Instead it's BYOD, but that means multiple OSes and capabilities, and students would be set back if the school provided common computers during exam (and those computers would probably only be used during exam time so ... meh.). Just ask the follow soylentils about using a government-provided keyboard... And you cannot reasonably force the students back to pen&paper because they probably haven't used those devices for the past 7-8 years.
      If you try to restrict access to the internet then it can be easily bypassed with a 3G/4G/LTE card in the laptop. And apparently some exams require access to web-only CAD or CAS.

      So there your have it: Students bring their own laptop. With full internet access. How to you prevent/detect cheating during exams? That's the conundrum.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:59AM (2 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:59AM (#810642) Journal

        How to you prevent/detect cheating during exams?

        It's called open book exam [google.com].
        When properly done, it's one of the hardest to take (and grade).

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @03:49PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @03:49PM (#810737)

          I hated open book exams. My professors designed them so that if you needed to research anything in the books you brought with you, you wouldn't have time to finish the exam. The books were meant to act as reference material where you looked up a formula or data value. Anything more and you ran out of time.

          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 06 2019, @11:12PM

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 06 2019, @11:12PM (#810916) Journal

            That exactly the idea. If do need to study in advance and understand the matter but don't need to bother memorising a bunch of formulas (and be afraid of not getting them right).
            Pretty much as in the real professional life - when you have a concrete problem to solve, it's more important to understand the problem and plot the course of action than to actually apply formulas (understand why you are doing first, know how to do it second).

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford