Brainstorming: Ways to prevent online fraud?

That's a good point. Maybe you don't have to make it "bullet-proff". Maybe you can increase the nuisance factor enough that it will deter most. Most people don't have the technical skills to fake fingerprints anyway and wouldn't go that far even if they did.

 

I guess we uncovered there two important assessment categories:
- The system should not be so complicated that it drives potential students away.
- The system should generate some subjective sense of security for the public (similar to airport security).

Btw my personal view is that cheating primarily occurs because students see no value of the assignment outside of the grade. So the question should be less what kind of punishment controls should we install and more why do they cheat, what kind of cheater are there, which ones can we prevent and which ones are almost impossible to prevent.

 

I would imagine that all of the for-profit schools (like the one I go to now) will avoid doing anything until they are somehow forced to, either by public opinion or by legislation. Like you said, the last thing they want to do is to drive students away. IMO That is a disadvantage of going to such a school; like any business, the bottom line is something that plays into all considerations.

 

There have been several good ideas posted here already, but here are a few more:

*** I have a paper that I've written on this subject at:

http://www.plagiary.org/papers_and_perspectives2008.htm

1. Randomization using the last two digits of a student number - Any exam I give that has calculations includes randomization. How might this work? Say you are doing an income statement. I might tell students that a firm's sales revenue is $8XY,000, where X and Y are the last two digits of their student number. Everybody has the same problem - but different numbers.

2. Multiple phase assignments - One great way to help students is required multiple phases to a written paper. For example, a topic and one page outline is due week 6 of the term. A list of sources is due week 9. The final paper is due week 12. What this does is help the student not to procrastinate. Procrastination is a leading cause of plaigirism.

Regards - Andy

 

Those are two very good ideas. It seems like both would create a lot more work for you, but I suppose that's the price that one must pay to address the cheating problem.

 

On the randomization idea - I create an Excel spreadsheet that has the solution for the problem based on the last two digits of the student's id. I simply enter the two digits - and presto! I have a key for that student's paper.

For the multi-phase paper - yes, it takes more work. But if I don't do this, students end up submitting last minute plaigirized papers. These take a lot of time to resolve. Bettter bet - help students do things the right way.

Regards - Andy

 

Having been an administrator and faculty at non-profit schools, I can assure you that,in this respect, they are no different at all than for-profits. They will avoid change unless they are forced to do so. for example, there is quite a bit of scrambling is done when a visit by the accrediting agency is imminent. Both non-profit and for-profit DL programs have to face the same issues.

 

Do you think that a for-profit school would be more concerned about alienating potential students than a non-profit school would?

 

TeleSign Offers Ways to Prevent Online Fraud

As for your point on ways to prevent online fraud mentioned in the above post, I personally think online payment systems are up-to-date with their security protocols. But here I would also like to add that the spammers also are gaining the similar kind of knowledge to break the security sources of online payment through credit cards. For which specialists should take some more proactive approach in building the security gates higher.

By saying that, I would like to introduce some powerful tools to successfully block fraud while minimizing friction for legitimate users. One such service provider is TeleSign INC which serves some of the world’s largest and most prominent web businesses in social media, lead generation, classifieds, financial services, eCommerce and cloud-based services. The tools mentioned by Telesign, Telephone Verification, Two-Factor Authentication, and PhoneID are powerful tools in online fraud prevention and user verification.