Ending Mystery Learners With Identity Verification Systems

10/27/2022

“verifying that you are credentialing, certifying and passing the student who has actually done the work. A new wave of solutions entering the mainstream purview aims to do exactly that by utilizing a combination of big data, artificial intelligence and remote human intervention. These solutions are dubbed identity verification systems (IVS) and their goal is to help educators and institutions better ensure online students are truly the ones doing the work they ultimately will be given credit for.”

“One common IVS approach takes a page out of something the financial industry has been doing for decades. By leveraging big data, a user is presented with personalized questions garnered from various data sources. These questions are then interspersed throughout learning or quizzes and presented to users with a short amount of time to answer.”

“The goal of this approach is to provide a diversity of questions that a random person would not know and could not easily be provided in advance to the student.l

“Another form of IVS is akin to remote proctoring. This process, although extremely thorough, is extremely expensive and resource-intensive.”

https://www.newsweek.com/ending-mystery-learners-identity-verification-systems-1754876

 

Isn't everything, these days? There are idiots in the financial field out there (hopefully none in in education) who employ such technology but don't have a clue how to drive it. Online, I answered a barrage of ID verifying questions from one and got an instant reply "Oops, sorry, we don't think you're you. Good luck somewhere else."

So I went somewhere else. And they agreed I was me. Better technology - a human asked the questions, saw the ID and pulled up what they needed to see. Zip - done.

To those other guys: Good luck with your new "app" - morons!

 

I really dislike these systems. I cannot even remember my own information, and it's even worse when I'm presented with answers on one of them is incorrect but that's the one the system thinks is correct. It's a very frustrating and what everybody's so concerned about identity theft and such I am more of the mind of going towards facial mapping etc. I would rather do that than be dealing with these ridiculous questions.

 

Even worse when it might TECHNICALLY be correct, but it's an address you had when you were 3. Who remembers all of their addresses since they were 3? I barely remember most addresses I had before my current address!

 

OK - but mapping MY face? That's really rough terrain. Who knows what vicious creatures lurk in those crevices? But they can go where no 4x4 can, I guess...

 

Many of the accreditors are starting to push student verification procedures/protocols for online courses. It started picking up after a study and article, I believe in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that was shocking with detailing the proliferation of online cheating companies and how effective they have become at being undetectable. Not just IP spoofing, but some were even taking samples of previous student coursework, to adjust the style of writing to not appear as flagrantly different.

Interestingly enough, there’s been a lot of push back against old tools like TurnItIn, and even a major but not binding Ohio court case that has created issues with online video proctoring as an invasion of privacy.