Security Issues Specific to e-Assessments

Abstract

E-learning systems play a primary and/or supportive role in modern education. With e-learning systems e-assessments are an integral part of a course be it to do formative or summative assessments. This paper identifies security vulnerabilities unique to e-assessment that are not addressed in commercial products and web security research. The reason for the additional requirements is that e-assessments are being used more and more to replace paper based tests. The e-assessments need to be in an environment that is at least as secure as conventional paper based tests. As will be expanded on in this article there are several scenarios that need to be considered and catered for to make sure that e-assessments can truly be considered equal to paper based assessments. This is not to say that paper-based assessments do not have the problems but rather to ensure that e-assessments are taken with the same degree of rigour as a well supervised paper based test. The urgency to improve e-assessments is due to the fact that electronic corruption is much easier if they are implemented correctly