Biometrics in Online Assessments: A Study Case in High School Students

This paper describes the use of a prototype online assessment system with biometric recognition capabilities applied to evaluate basic knowledge in a High School. The prototype system represents a first approach to identify remote students in online assessment to solve the well known problem: Who's there?. For our experiment, we randomly selected a sample of students (n=102) from a public High School, located in Morelos, Mexico. We carried out two evaluations, a control evaluation (paper and pencil), and a second test with our system with biometric recognition, this system authenticates the student by means of index fingerprint, allows subject selection to be evaluated, and shows the assessment consisting of a set of time limited questions and randomly ordered answers, simultaneously the student is being monitored by web cams until test is finished. Low grades were obtained using computerized test, due students feel lot of stress when time to answer is limited and a web cam is monitoring them, fingerprint recognition was very well accepted.